Robert P. George (of Princeton University) is one of my favorite philosophers. He is intelligent, articulate, and civil. I always learn from him. My reading for today, after my 10K race (report to come), was his review essay "Law, Democracy, and Moral Disagreement," Harvard Law Review 110 (May 1997): 1388-406. On page 1399, George writes: "To be clear, I am not suggesting that the people who perceived the enormity of the evil of slavery prior to its abolition should not have opposed it with resolution and determination, or that they should have refrained from protest and civil disobedience in the cause of ending it."
George is confusing "enormity" with "enormousness." The latter, which is normatively neutral, means hugeness or vastness. The former, which is normatively charged, means outrageousness, ghastliness, or hideousness. (You would never say "the enormity of X" if you had a favorable—or even a neutral—opinion of X.) Read literally, "enormity of the evil" means outrageousness, ghastliness, or hideousness of the evil, which is redundant, since evil, presumably, is outrageous, ghastly, and hideous. Good writers avoid redundancy. What George meant, I am sure, is hugeness or vastness of the evil, in which case he should have used the term "enormousness" instead of "enormity." There are two ways he could have avoided redundancy. He could have said either (1) "the enormousness of the evil of slavery" or (2) "the enormity of slavery." Either would be preferable to what he said.
Or would it? It occurred to me after writing this post, but before publishing it, that George may be making a distinction between two types of evil. Some evils are outrageous, ghastly, and hideous (he may be thinking) and some not. Slavery is one of the outrageous, ghastly, and hideous ones. This interpretation would rebut my criticism, since his expression would no longer be redundant. But it seems odd to me to talk about different types of evil. Isn't evil, as opposed to mere badness, essentially outrageous, ghastly, and hideous? If it weren't outrageous, ghastly, and hideous, wouldn't we call it badness rather than evil? What do you think? Does it make sense to classify evils as outrageous or nonoutrageous, ghastly or nonghastly, hideous or nonhideous? I want to be as fair to George as he is to others.
Addendum: Robert P. George is a natural-law theorist (a.k.a. natural lawyer). Here is one of his books. It contains the essay that I read today.
