Reputation and morality

Introduction

An old riddle asks: “What is it that belongs to you, yet others use more often?” The answer is: your name. This riddle pertains to a person’s name simpliciter. Add to this name the adjective “good” or “bad,” and we can make an even stronger claim. A person’s good or bad name is not “used more often” by others, but rather is determined by others. This is what reputation means. It is, by definition, public opinion of a person’s character. Being public, it is for others to decide. And yet, as the riddle has it, it does not belong to others, it is “yours.”

An array of questions arises out of this puzzle about reputation. How should “others,” those who shape a person’s reputation, regard the task of shaping it? Should there be some moral guidelines on this issue? If someone’s reputation is unduly good, should others (who?) correct this misconception and tell people (who?) the truth about her? Who is at fault if a person’s reputation is unjustifiably bad? And if one’s reputation is bad, but rightly so, should others make efforts to stop spreading the rumor so that no more harm is done? Or perhaps, to the contrary, they should tell people so as to warn them of the person’s flawed qualities? Such questions have barely been addressed by philosophers. The concept of reputation remains almost entirely unanalyzed.

The analogy with property

David Oderberg’s essay is an exception to the philosophical neglect of reputation, and in what follows I often allude to it. While I agree with many of his remarks on the subject, one of the central themes on which he builds his argument is at odds with the picture sketched in the first paragraph. Oderberg describes reputation in the following manner:

If, as I contend, a good name is one of the more specific goods at which we should aim, in what broad category of good should it be located? The most likely seems to be that of property, which Aristotle identified as an ‘external good’ that contributes to overall happiness. Property is not an end in itself, but a means to an overall good life — facilitating not just one’s own physical and mental health, but the sorts of virtuous behaviour, such as generosity, kindness, thoughtfulness, material aid to those in need, and so on, that are characteristic of good people. Similarly, a good name is a means to the end of overall goodness of character. This time, however, the means are not material but psychic or spiritual: a good reputation is a spur to continued good behaviour, setting a standard that most people are naturally motivated to meet and adhere to. (Oderberg, 2013, p. 12)

However, although Oderberg finds affinity between a good name (or reputation) and property, his characterization seems to miss the nature of reputation in two ways, which, surprisingly enough, appear to beat odds with each other. First, property has by definition to do with what I own. It is mine. It rests safely within my house, or in a safe, or wherever I choose to keep it. It is for me to decide whether I want to show it to anybody else. My property has very much to do with privacy. It is nobody else’s business but my own, as long as I do not choose to share it with others. By contrast, reputation, as we have seen from the start, is about how I am construed publicly. It is for others to decide how they view me, how they treat me. My reputation is mine, but it is theirs to construct.

In this sense, the analogy to property is misleading because it places reputation too close to me, as it were. My reputation is out there, in the public domain, not in my private sphere. The other sense in which the analogy doesn’t work is in its placing reputation not close enough. My property, as Oderberg correctly says, following Aristotle, is an “external good.” My property, be it as dear as it might be to me, is not a part of me. It is what I have. By contrast, my reputation is a description of who I am. If I have a good reputation, say as being honest, or a bad one, say as being lazy, these attributes capture character traits that describe me. They are not “external” at all. They describe my personality.

That is not to say that Oderberg is unaware of these characteristics of reputation. Consider his claim:

If I have a true, good reputation, I have a right to it – but how much is it like a property right? I can sell my property, but can I sell my good name? It seems I cannot unless I can also sell the identity that goes with it, because a good name is essentially that of a specific individual. (Oderberg, 2013, p.13)

Here Oderberg does admit the strong connection between reputation and identity, which I have been pointing at, as opposed to the more distant connection we have with our property. Next, note that Oderberg acknowledges our “near-total dominion over property but very imperfect control over reputation” (2013, p. 14). Here he does speak about our distance from our reputation, as opposed to our control over, or closeness to, the possessions that are considered our property.

However, Oderberg goes on to say that “whether this [difference in control] is a difference of degree or kind does not seem to me a matter of importance” (Oderberg, 2013, p. 14). In my opinion, it is a matter of importance. The difference is one of kind. Our reputation is not something we control, because, unlike our property, it is not something we have in our possession. It is an (abstract) quality that is ours, yet it is formed by others about us. Combine this with reputation’s additional characteristic (which Oderberg, as we have seen, does mention but does not stress)—its having to do with our identity—and we get the following: the construal of who we are, the name we have, is dependent upon others.

Links between character and reputation

I do not wish to claim that one has no control whatsoever over her reputation. I have claimed that others shape our reputation “to a large extent,” and that means that they are not solely responsible for it. Indeed, one’s reputation must depend on what one does, and we are, of course, responsible for our actions. A causal chain should lead from my having a certain character trait (I’m stubborn), to my acting in certain ways (I often act stubbornly), to others noticing my actions, to their talking about them, and to my having a reputation for being stubborn. Supposedly, I can prevent my stubborn reputation by cutting off the first links in this chain. I can try and be less stubborn, or at least refrain from acting stubbornly, despite the urge to do so.

Indeed, the necessary link between a person’s inner character and its outward manifestation might diminish the chance of that person having a false reputation. Lawrence Beals criticizes Glaucon’s famous example in Plato’s Republic along these lines. Glaucon presents the hypothetical example of “the perfectly unjust man,” who “must be allowed to do the greatest injustices while having provided himself with the greatest reputation for justice” (Plato, 1991, 361a). As opposed to this man, he describes “a man simple and noble” who, “doing no injustice,” has “the greatest reputation for injustice” (Plato, 1991, 361, b-c). Beals correctly asks

what would it mean to be ‘really just’ when such justice is required never to appear? Again, what would it mean to ‘appear unjust’ if in principle such appearance so completely misrepresents the reality as to be indistinguishable from it? There is no morality until the inner attempts to realize itself in the outer world. (Beals, 1952, p. 609)

But even if Beals is correct here, the fact that the inner has to “attempt to realize itself in the outer world” does not mean that it will necessarily succeed in this attempt. The chain we have described starts from my inner self and ends with public opinion of my character (i.e. my reputation.) There are various points at which it could be cut off. Suppose that I am indeed just, and that this virtue of mine is manifested in my actions. The people towards whom I act in a just manner are of course aware of my character, and might be happy to tell others about it. But their influence in the public sphere is weak. Others, more powerful than they, whose voice is more often heard, whose ability to shape public opinion is stronger, prevent the information about my being just from being spread around. In fact, these powerful people might do more than that. They might spread malicious rumors blackening my name. Not only is a false reputation a logical possibility, it is also part of real life. We are well aware of instances of it. Just think of an innocent person who is publicly blamed for a crime he did not commit, and is perhaps even convicted for it. His true, inner self will attempt to “realize itself in the outer world,” but to no avail. His chances of thriving in life will be considerably diminished. Some of us are more indifferent than others to what the world thinks of us. But all of us need others to have relationships with, to do business with, and so on. What they think is important to us.

Oderberg devotes much of his article to analyzing reputations along two dimensions: being true/false and being good/bad. He plausibly claims that having a true and good reputation is best for its holder, and that having a bad and false one is worst (Oderberg, 2013, p. 8). An evident conclusion can be deduced from this: if people are maliciously spreading false rumors about me, they are wronging me. Spreading falsities is what we call defamation, or slander, and no wonder we have laws that forbid it. As I assume that it is obvious that slander is wrong, I will not discuss it here. In what follows I will tackle a question that is harder to answer: if people are spreading not malicious false rumors but true facts, are they wrong to do so? In other words, I will deal for the most part with having a bad, yet true, reputation. Towards the end of my article I will also deal briefly with a good—and true—reputation.

Reputation and gossip

There are affinities between what I have just termed “spreading around true facts,” and the notion of gossip. Indeed, according to one definition, gossip simply is the spreading of facts. Consider Sisela Bok’s characterization of gossip: “it is (1) informal (2) personal communication (3) about persons who (4) are absent or excluded” (Bok, 1989, p. 93). I believe that most conversations in which each of us helps create the reputation of others are of the type that Bok characterizes as gossip. They involve informal, personal communication about other people. True, my portrayal of the creation of reputation has hitherto said nothing about whether or not the subject talked about is present. But let’s suppose that she isn’t. If the information we spread is negative, it is usually much more convenient to do it “behind the subject’s back,” so to speak. We are too embarrassed to talk about them to their faces. In such cases all four conditions that Bok mentions are fulfilled, and gossiping is simply spreading information.

However, Bok’s definition is not necessarily a good definition of gossip. Aaron Ben-Ze’ev says that “‘to gossip’ is ‘to talk (or write) idly about other people, mostly about their personal or intimate affairs’” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1994, p. 13). Similarly, Ronald de Sousa defines gossip as “conversation about other people’s private lives” (de Sousa, 1994, p. 26). If the matters under discussion are regarded as “personal,” “intimate,” or “private,” then the conversation has supposedly nothing to do with the notion of reputation, which we have described, from the beginning of this paper, as something that has to do with the public, common knowledge about each of us.

Note also that even when the information we share in gossip is not clearly private, it does not necessarily have anything to do with the person’s reputation. If A is telling B that C is going to move to another town, then A and B are gossiping, but the content of their conversation does not seem to pertain to C’s reputation. Most of us choose our place of residence for a variety of practical reasons, and leaving one town for another, though requiring many changes in our life style, does not seem to affect our character. Supposedly, C has no “reputation for living in town x rather than in y” (but what if C has announced herself to be a local patriot, and swore never to move away from her home town? Doesn’t this information affect her reputation? I’ll come back to this point.)

As sharing information that contributes to the creation of reputation and gossip are not one and the same thing (unless we adopt Bok’s definition), my discussion of gossip will not deal with all of its aspects. I discuss gossip both because, unlike reputation, this subject has been dealt with by philosophers (though not many), and because analyzing these philosophical discussions may shed light on the main issue that concerns me here: our right, on the one hand, to spread information about others and the caution with which we should use it, on the other hand. This spreading of information lies at the core both of gossip and of reputation.

Ben-Ze’ev and de Sousa’s articles appeared in a book edited by Robert Goodman and Ben-Ze’ev, entitled Good Gossip. The general aim of most chapters in this volume is to prove that gossip is, indeed, a good activity (de Sousa goes even further, describing the indiscretion involved in gossip as “a saintly virtue”). Ben-Ze’ev says in his chapter that “typical gossip is easygoing and enjoyable, with no significant intended practical results. Gossip is usually relaxing and effortless” (Ben-Ze’ev, 1994, p. 13). This portrayal clashes with the way we have been characterizing reputation. It is evident that Ben-Ze’ev is concerned only with the conversing partners (or gossipers), but disregards their target. A person’s reputation should never be treated lightly, idly, in an easygoing manner. The people conversing about the person should bear in mind not only the fun that they might get from their dialogue, but what effect their conversing—first with one another, later on with others—will have on that person.

It might be claimed that, in their conduct, the gossipers are betraying Kant’s categorical imperative, as they use the person they are talking about merely as a means that contributes to their enjoyment. In her analysis of gossip, Gabrielle Taylor admits that such pleasure is, morally speaking, likely illegitimate, as it is gained “at the expense of a third party.” However, she goes on to say, using Kantian terms here is taking matters too seriously (Taylor, 1994, pp. 42-44).

I do not agree that alluding to Kant here is exaggerated. Looking at the way gossip might help shape a person’s bad reputation would yield a different result. Philosophers discussing gossip tend to focus on the effect of the conversation on its participants: they gain knowledge (Adkins, 2002), develop a stronger feeling of belonging (Ben-Ze’ev, 1994, p. 15), and participate in an activity that “express[es] some of our most valuable human traits, especially the interest we take in each other’s lives and the delight we take in entertaining one another” (Morreal, 1994, p. 64). If we shift our attention to the third party, instead— the person being gossiped about—we find that it is her dignity that is at stake. Rather than ask ourselves about the people conversing, rather than doubt whether they are using her as a means, we should look at her and ask ourselves whether they are seeing her as an end in herself. Her reputation is her public face. It is the outward manifestation of who she is. Treating a person as an end in herself means having respect for her and considering her goals and aims with the utmost seriousness. Therefore the easygoing, uncaring manner with which the gossipers view their role in diminishing their target’s image could be compared to—is perhaps even identical to—not treating her as an end.

Not judging people vs. exposing them

But the conclusion we have reached might be too harsh. Recall that we are not discussing cases of defamation. If what we say about her is true, aren’t we right to talk about her the way we do? If she were indeed honest, just, virtuous, that is how we would describe her. If she is not, it seems that she has only herself to blame. Dan Sperber and Nicolas Baumard consider in their study of reputation the option of being Machiavellian, that is, trying to cheat your way through and maneuvering others into regarding you as just even though this is not your true character. Based on empirical findings, they conclude that this strategy is not worth pursuing. Instead, “at the cost of missing a few opportunities for profitable cheating, a genuinely moral person is in a uniquely good position to be regarded as such” (Sperber & Baumard, 2012, p. 499).

Honesty is indeed the best policy. In other words, if you want people to think favorably about you, here is what you should do: have good qualities, manifest them publicly, and then you’ll have a reputation as a good person. The same goes for other positive qualities, which we tend to value but are not necessarily moral: if you want us to praise you for your creativity, be as creative as you can. Recall that the chain we described as the way to acquiring a reputation started in the following manner: my having a certain character trait ( I’m stubborn) leads to my acting in certain ways (I often act stubbornly), which in turn leads to others noticing my actions. Block the first two stages, and you don’t get to the third. People will not notice my stubbornness if I am not stubborn. But when I am, are they to be blamed for noticing?

It seems that Oderberg is suggesting just that. Consider the following:

What if information comes to you about someone’s character or behaviour, even though you have no need to know and would never have been permitted to inquire into it yourself? If a highly reliable witness tells me, without any doubt in her mind, that some bare acquaintance of mine has been stealing from his employer, may I judge that this is so? Strictly, it seems, I may do so without being rash. It would not be wrong of me to do so, but that does not make it a duty for me to form my judgment in this way. Again, from the point of view of social harmony, surely it is better for me only to entertain strong suspicions, raising them perhaps with others but only if they need to be informed. In other words, if I am to take the duty of charity seriously, shouldn’t I bend over backwards to avoid firmly assenting to an unfavourable characterization of someone when it is not a direct concern of mine and there is no concrete interest to be served by such assent? (Oderberg, 2013, p. 28)

But this seems irrational. The person telling me about the theft is described in this passage as “a witness.” She was there. She saw it with her own eyes. She is “highly reliable.” I know I can count on her. And she knows the facts: she recounts them “without any doubt in her mind.” If “I bend over backwards,” as Oderberg suggests, I undermine my own rationality. Note that the question he is asking is not whether I should tell people about the theft, but rather what I should believe about my acquaintance: “may I judge that this is so?” (my emphasis). I cannot see any reasonable ground for not answering in the affirmative.

More than that, note what the information is about. This person “has been stealing from his employer.” Stealing is a serious matter. It is a crime. It concerns us all, as a public. It is not (only) a matter to be discussed between the thief and his employer. If and when caught, the thief would have not only to pay back the money, but also to bear some punishment, sanctioned publicly, by public institutions (the police, the court of justice). “Social harmony,” in the name of which Oderberg is trying to defend ournot blaming the person, would demand the opposite of what he is suggesting here.

The fact that it is a theft we are dealing with pertains also to the notion of the people “who need to know,” which Oderberg emphasizes. If someone is stealing from his employer, isn’t he a thief? If he is a thief, might he not steal from others as well? And if so, shouldn’t we all know about that? The very concept of reputation runs counter to the attempt to compartmentalize people into those who should “be in the know” and those who shouldn’t. A person’s reputation is by definition something we all know and share.

Such sharing is important for us socially. If we look up the philosophical literature on gossip again, we may find analyses that describe it as valuable because of this aspect of sharing. As opposed to being trivial, as some of the portrayals we have been discussing indicate, it can be treated as a serious tool for spreading information about people, discussing matters it might be harmful to talk about in the open. Mary Leach says that gossip “supplies a weapon for outsiders; it often reflects moral assumptions different from those of the dominant culture; it provides language and knowledge potentially disruptive to the State order but vital to individual and community life of subordinated classes” (Leach, 1994/95, p. 301). Margaret Cuonzo gives an example of a student warning another of a lecturer who has a reputation for being sexually abusive (Cuonzo, 2008, p. 136). No conclusive evidence can be established, but warning a fellow student seems like the decent thing to do. And Oderberg himself agrees that warning people against a potential danger is not only permissible, but might be considered a duty: “if you suspect the likelihood of a specific injustice against someone due to a person’s unmerited good reputation, you are right to warn the potential victim. (‘You shouldn’t ask Fred to house-sit for you—he breaks promises like pie crusts’, and the like)” (Oderberg, 2013, p. 16).

At this stage, we are trapped between two ways of treating reputation, which are at odds with each other. On the one hand, we have seen the strong connection between a person’s identity and her reputation. All of us, as outsiders, are the creators of her reputation. And as such, we have to handle it very carefully. We have the power to utterly destroy her, as cases of shaming through the social media prove once and again. It seems that we should do our utmost to protect this person. On the other hand, warning people against others who might wrong them seems to be our moral duty. If a person has a rotten character, it seems that she deserves to have her true nature revealed. It seems that we should do our utmost to expose her. How should we decide how to go about it?

Being a “Godsib”

Here I want to refer once more to gossip. This time, we should consider the origin of the word. It comes from the Old English “Godsib.” “Sib” (or “sibb”) means “related,” usually in an intimate way. A trace for that use can be found in the word “sibling.” Our siblings are the people closest to us—the people we grow up with, members ofour family. “Godsib” originally referred to the person in your family whose relation to you is accompanied by divinity. A godsib, or gossip, is a godfather.

We can make a guess as to how gossip acquired the meaning it has today. A person’s godsib, or gossip (as a noun) was considered an intimate partner in whom he could confide, the person he would share his secrets with. Their conversations had the character of an intimate closed system of warmth and security. You could discuss whatever you liked. You could be assured that nothing you said would be leaked to the outside. Both partners’ lips were sealed. Within their closed circle, they could—and did—discuss matters that pertained to others, not included in their private sphere. They gossiped about them (and now we are using the term in its current meaning.)

Gossip has long ceased to be an intimate conversation between two confiding partners. The circle of communication has increased tremendously. Large groups share information, and each member spreads the news further, to more and more distant arenas. The internet, and other means of communication, enable the information to be spread worldwide. These are the means not only for gossip, but for creating a person’s reputation. Her destiny, her identity as manifested in the eyes of the public, is for us to shape.

Our moral duty is to look at the information passed to us in the way a “godsib” did the information entrusted to him. We should handle it very carefully and delicately. It is within our power to praise or bury the person. To some extent, this is of course an exaggeration. We do not literally bury anyone. But in another sense, in an era when wars are fought, and sometimes won or lost, by public opinion, reputation is indeed a matter of life and death. Highly reputed people have much power—economic, political, social. And shaming or public scolding can push poorly reputed people to the verge of destruction.

Thinking what to say about someone is a subtle matter. The fact that a person’s reputation is determined by the public has much to do with the fact that nobody has a “right” not to be talked about. Emrys Westacott makes this point in his analysis of gossip, which he tends to support on utilitarian grounds. If a person has no “right” not to be talked about, then it is merely her wishes we ignore when we contribute to her true, bad reputation. A person’s wishes, as opposed to her rights, might indeed be ignored. Westacott, however, goes on to say that a more accurate claim would be that these wishes are not ignored, but overridden. They are overridden by our interest in discussing other people, which is one of the subjects human beings are most concerned with. However, “where we are close to the person and know him to have a particularly intense distaste for having a certain matter—one for which he is in no way responsible—discussed by others, we might well choose to refrain from gossiping. This indicates that we are not usually oblivious to the wishes of those we talk about; we keep their wishes in mind but may not give them much weight” (Westacott, 2012, p. 78).

Westacott has in mind one person talking to another person about a third party. By contrast, acquiring a reputation involves a whole public, conversing constantly about that third party. This is conversing on an enormous scale. That is why the damage we might cause is vast, and why, contrary to what Westacott claims, we should give the person’s wishes much weight. The large scale of the conversation also means that notions of being “close to the person” are practically out of the question. A reputation is shpaed by people who are not close to that person. However, they should acknowledge that the power to protect or destroy that person is entrusted to them. Therefore, they can and should imagine that they are close to her. They should take her interests most seriously. “Bending over backwards” so as not to believe the credible information given to us by a reliable witness, as Oderberg suggests, is going too far. But he is right to caution us against easily participating in contributing to a person’s bad reputation. In the global village the world has become, we are all, to a certain extent, “godsibs” of one another. Each and every one of us entrusts his or her own identity to the others, who help create what is known about us publicly—our reputation.

But this should also make each and every one of us cautious about trying to present to the world an image that is not truly our own. It is our own identity that we entrust to other people. We should make sure we present it as it really is. To go back to an example I used earlier, if a person has announced herself to be a local patriot, and swore never to move away from her home town, she cannot blame us for spreading the information that she is moving elsewhere. She presented herself as being the opposite of who she in fact is. Her reputation, which we help shape, is about who she really is. If she was lying about her true identity, it is not our job to keep lying for her. Honesty, as I have claimed, is the best policy—for her as well as for us.

This lesson is also relevant to a lecturer who harasses students, or a person who steals money from his employer. Recall that Oderberg speaks about treating this employee with “the duty of charity.” This duty means that we should look at people favorably to begin with. This is indeed, I believe, the usual case. We should, and typically do, judge people not to be corrupt unless we have evidence that shows that they are. If you tell me a story about an employee who is a stranger to me, seldom if ever will I entertain the thought that he is stealing from his employer, unless I’m given a reason to think so. I will not say—neither to you nor to myself: “well, I am unfamiliar with this person. Who knows? Perhaps he is stealing from his employer.” I will not assume that he is stealing unless I have evidence that this is indeed the case. But if it is the case, and I hear about it, the person who steals has only himself to blame. He himself has harmed his good name.

Our relations with one another begin on neutral ground. Later, impressions and stories about our conduct accumulate, and reputations are built. The emphasis I have put on the care we should exercise when contributing to this process might be interpreted as directing people towards a morality that would work as follows: do your best to contribute to the person’s good (and true) reputation, and try to avoid contributing to the person’s bad (and true) reputation, unless given a strong reason to do so. However, the first part of this description seems wrong to me, for reasons of privacy.

Suppose that I like to help people. This tendency to help is rooted deep within my values. You know me quite well, and you hear stories about my being helpful from people who have benefited. You want to spread the rumor around. You want me to have a good reputation. However, I would be angry to learn that my lending support and doing favors have become well-known. I do not want to become a public figure. I am shy, and content to be shy. My privacy is very important to me. I am well aware of your good intentions, but if it had been up to me, I would have begged you not to publicize my actions.

It is the same principle as the one we have been discussing so far, only this time we are dealing with a good reputation rather than a bad one. If my helpful behavior has been revealed in private, I am right to ask that it be kept unknown. However, if my help was offered publicly (suppose that I came to a crowded gathering to speak on behalf of the person I wanted to aid), I can hardly blame people for talking about it. It is my appearing in public that has caused this public to talk about my actions.

Conclusion

A person’s name is uniquely hers. Saul Kripke famously analyzed proper names as” rigid designators” in his philosophy of language (Kripke, 1980). They are so rigid that they designate their bearer in every possible world, no matter whether any description about her, true in our world, would also hold in that other, possible one. When dealing with names in a more abstract manner, that is, with people’s reputations, we should bear in mind that identities are flexible and fluid. Character traits are generalizations. You witness a few cases of a person being unwilling to change her mind, and you describe her as stubborn. You know of a few instances of someone not being true to his word, and you conclude that “he breaks promises like pie crusts.”

Such characterizations are hard to get rid of. Although we know that people’s identities are fluid, labeling them helps us to control the vast amount of information that we come across in our daily life. We summarize one person as “friendly,” another as “funny,” a third as “hesitant,” and move on. What we ascribe to people tends to stick rather rigidly. True, unlike Kripke’s rigid designators, the characters we ascribe to others can be changed and reconsidered, upon further evidence. But once a reputation is formed, a stubborn person or promise-breaker might find it very hard to control. Every one of us is responsible for beginning the chain of our own reputation, but it is for others to continue it.

Others will decide what they say about me, how to spread the information, how they contribute to my identity as it is perceived publicly. In judging what to say about me, and how, they should always remember that what has been entrusted into their hands is as precious as anything: my reputation, my name, myself.