The Motivation of Martyrs: A Philosophical Perspective

THE MOTIVATION OF MARTYRS: A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE MARTYRS ARE THE most widely praised and the least understood o£ all men. We regard the willingness o£ Christ or o£ Socrates to be martyred as being o£ monumental significance, and yet, in spite o£ countless opportunities to martyr ourselves, we invariably choose not to. All men sacrifice to some extent. Some give up great sums o£ money and others give up innumerable hours o£ their time £or their fellow man. Some are even willing to suffer great pain and distress £or their fellow man. They all get something in return: the enduring happiness that can only result £rom moral fulfillment. But what about those who die £or others? The people who sacrifice their lives so that others may live on to lead happy and healthy lives seem to get nothing in return. They lose their lives, their capacity £or happiness, everything. As much as we praise such men, we cannot help asking ourselves , "Was it worth it?" I£ we do not understand martyrs-if we have no conception o£ what could have possibly been motivating them-then our praise is empty. But the people who have in the last few decades concerned themselves with motivation have provided us with a picture o£ man that makes our praise even emptier. For these reasons, I should like to sketch out some alternative explanations o£ the martyr's behavior. Before I do so, however, I want to make some comments about the explanation I am rejecting. I It has become fashionable in recent years to antiseptically dissect human actions with the end o£ uncovering some latent drive which explains the actions away. The martyr's benevolence is reduced to a psychological-physiological abnormality 581 58~ JAY NEWMAN or coincidence, and in such a way is the moral inertia of the majority of men justified. Advocates of this theory of motivation argue as follows: while it appears that the greater part of human behavior is the result of conscious deliberation and free, rational choice, all behavior is, in actuality, the result of certain basic drives of which, for the most part, the agent is unaware. I do not want to attribute this theory of drives to any one particular man or school of thought, although this sort of reductionism unquestionably owes its popularity in recent years to the influence of psychoanalytical and behavioristic psychologists. In the years prior to the advent of the theory of drives, it was held that a martyr was one who, when confronted with the alternatives of expediency and justice, chose the latter over the former. He chose the latter because he valued it more highly He was not compelled either to make that choice or to hold the values which resulted in that choice. The emergence of the theory of drives has led to the discarding of this simple analysis. The new approach to an understanding of the motivation of the martyr involves delving into the martyr's background. What sort of relationship did he have with his mother? Was he a loner? Did he get on well with women? Did he have an authoritarian personality? Did he have confidence in himself? All these questions and others like them are seen as being relevant to the question, "Why did so-and-so run into the burning house in a futile attempt to save the three children?" Each of these questions opens up a new dimension of the martyr's character, and there is a distinct possibility that, after likely answers to these questions are considered, we will realize that the martyr was not a great man at all but just a pathetic, mentally-unbalanced fanatic who was led to the act of martyrdom by an intense, latent desire to destroy himself or to sublimate away his sexual energy. The theory of drives has brought with it a new conception of man, and while this conception of man may have done mankind a great service by enabling us to understand and even to treat many forms of mental and emotional illness, it has THE MOTIVATION OF MARTYRS 588 done mankind a great disservice by casting a new and suspicious light on those...