Some people wish to escape convention as others wish to escape the necessity to earn a living. Indeed, unconventionality has become for them a virtue in itself, as originality now is for people whose artistic aspirations exceed their talents. A reviewer of a biography of the late philosopher A. J. Ayer wrote in the Times Literary Supplement, not exactly an organ of youth counter-culture, that among Ayer's virtues was that he was unconventional. The writer did not think it was necessary to indicate in what respect—what opinion, what conduct—he was unconventional. The virtue spoke for itself, as it were.
Of course, roasting babies for breakfast is unconventional, as was (at one time) drawing attention to the iniquity of Soviet communism or racial segregation in South Africa: but it is the form of unconventionality that is important, evidently, not its content, at least for the writer of the review, who is not untypical of many intellectuals in this regard. An artist who breaks a taboo, often said to be the last remaining one, though another is soon enough found in order to be broken (one is reminded of the repeated last performances of the Australian singer, Nellie Melba), is likely to be praised for his originality, courage, and so forth, irrespective of whether the taboo ought to have been broken, or of the social effect of having done so. The habitual breakers of boundaries are not so much objecting to any particular boundary, as objecting to the existence of boundaries as such. They want a life without boundaries: civilization always has its discontents.
(Theodore Dalrymple, In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas [New York: Encounter Books, 2007], 39-40 [italics in original] [first published in 2006])
Note from KBJ: I had no idea that Australia has produced only one singer! But seriously, even philosophers succumb to the siren call of unconventionality. In the ethics textbook I use, the author, Fred Feldman, refers four times in various places to what he calls "conventionalism": "the view that acts are judged to be right merely by appeal to the de facto practices that govern them." Feldman dismisses this view with the following comment: "The most cursory reflection on some of the darker pages of history should make clear that this view is not acceptable." What's interesting is that every normative ethical theory has repugnant implications to someone. Why are these other theories not dismissed? Feldman also says that "conventionalism turns out to be an extremely conservative moral doctrine." So! Utilitarianism turns out to be an extremely progressive moral doctrine. Does that make it unacceptable? Only if one is biased against progressivism! I would rather cast my lot with the accumulated moral experience of generations of my fellow citizens than with the musings of cranks such as Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and Peter Singer.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 