‘It is not possible, many argue, to insist on respecting both difference and sameness when it comes to moral values: on honoring individual and cultural diversity while also holding that certain moral values go to the heart of what it means to be human and always have, since the beginning of time, and always must if we are not to lose touch with our humanity.’
– Sissela Bok
Morality is a strange thing.
For most people, morality is a construct developed through religion and imposed onto its followers. The figure, or figures, of worship will have some creed, or creeds, that they expect the devout to hold to, and followers can be assured they are on the morally correct path so long as they continue to uphold those virtues in every aspect of their life.
But the modern day has brought with it a rise in secularism, and beyond that, a broad recognition of the very different values that religions may espouse for their followers. It is difficult to say that two followers of different religions will agree on all the ways in which they are supposed to live their life, and often, the best guidance our modern political systems can offer is an assurance of religious freedoms – you can follow your creed, I will follow mine, and neither of us can make each other change.
But what I find particularly interesting, beyond the difficulty in reconciling religious perspectives in an interconnected world, is how vividly this shift in our culture has given rise to moral relativism. We live in a world where one person will tell us to follow a God, another will tell us to follow a different God, yet another will tell us to follow no God at all. There too, you will find people telling you it is wrong to eat meat, that you should donate to this-or-that charity, that the way of life of some group is better than another’s, and only more to the contrary.
It is a satisfying conclusion, in the chaos of all these messages, to say that everyone is entitled to their own morality. What I believe is right is right – for me. What you believe is right is right – for you. Some would say that this is the only natural conclusion you can draw from a world where we all have to live together, somehow, in this chaos.
It doesn’t help that our very frameworks for discussing moral questions are so deeply tied to our religious preconceptions of morality. In her seminal essay, Modern Moral Philosophy, G.E.M. Anscombe discussed the prominent use of the idea of the ‘Moral Ought’ in discussions within moral philosophy. This ‘Moral Ought’ is assumed to be some aspect of the universe, out there for us to discover, that gives us truth to statements such as ‘X is the right/wrong thing to do’. As she alludes to, this aspect of moral philosophy is both terribly engrained and terribly nonsensical – moral philosophy can and, historically, has, been conducted without reference to such an abstraction, and the very use of this abstraction appears most obviously to be tied to the proliferation of religious morals in the past few centuries of discourse, rather than being a product of any sincere necessity. If you believe that a God provides you with the moral truths of the world, after all, you must believe that the source of these truths remains outside of yourself – whether in a slate of Ten Commandments or in the ritualistic reading of sheep guts.
So in a world where we are forced to conceptualise morality as this thing ‘out there’ – this thing that exists somewhere in the world to be uncovered – and you conclude that there is no God or grand plan behind our lives, you naturally would conclude that there is no such thing as an objective morality, because there is nothing to create the Moral Ought. It is easy, then, to simply put the onus on others to live however they choose.
This is sufficient for some people. But perhaps it is obvious, as there is much time left in this essay, that it is not sufficient for me. And to explain why, I think a strange but ultimately intentional question can be asked: would you, or anyone else, ever consider ‘bravery’ to be a bad thing?
The notion is a bit silly, if you give it any more than a passing thought. Bravery and cowardice are the polar opposites of each other, and while they remain objective descriptions, they are innately loaded with values. Someone might say that you can be brave for the wrong thing, for example, for a terrorist cause – but in such a case, we would say the wrong thing is the terrorist cause, not the individual’s bravery within it. If you were to say it is bad simply to be brave and good to be cowardly, it is markedly unclear what exactly you would mean by that. There seems to be an agreement, far more ubiquitous and universal than a relativist perspective would suggest, that bravery is a good thing for an individual to possess.
As it happens, I am not the first person to notice this. And in fact, the discussion of it ranges far beyond the realm of armchair philosophy. In the realm of positive psychology research, an influential study was heralded by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman into this very observation – that there are certain things considered strengths of character independent of time and place. So the natural question was: what are these strengths, in practice?
Their research, which came to life in the form of the Values in Action Inventory, identified six core strengths which they found, in brief, were integral to the flourishment of people’s lives wherever or whenever in the world they may have lived. These six virtues were, in their own terms: Wisdom, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance, and Transcendence.
Wisdom, as conceptualised, was seen as the cognitive strength that entails the acquisition and use of knowledge. Courage was the emotional strength to exercise will to achieve goals in the face of opposition. Humanity was the interpersonal strength that let us tend best to others in our circles. Justice was the civic strength that made for healthy community life. Temperance was the prudent strength that prevented the harm of excess. And Transcendence made up those strengths which connect us to the world and help us find meaning in the time we have with our lives.
As with any study so ambitious and far-reaching, the exacts of Peterson and Seligman’s conclusions have been given thorough doubt and scrutiny. Questions can be raised over the finer details of this classification and their true applicability to the world.
But what I think is so poignant about this research, and so vital to the questions we have on hand now, is that it is an exploration of our moral world and moral truths that is not divined from a source outside of ourselves. It is, in fact, all about our own perspective – it is about how humans interact with the world, how they seek meaning and joy and flourishment, and a defense of those ways of life that enable totally humanistic motivations in the face of all that would stand against it.
It is precisely for this reason that I am unsatisfied with total moral relativism, and why I consider it a product of secular thought in an age still gripping with innately religious concepts. I do not believe in a Moral Ought – I do not think there is a code out there in the skies that tells us why murder is wrong and why we shouldn’t do it. And for some people, that is enough to say you have cast out morality entirely. But it is not for me.
What I believe is that, when we say that murder is wrong, we are not speaking to an appeal to something else out there – rather, we are speaking to a deeply personal function of the human mind. One that seeks to comprehend the world and to live a good life within it, against what conflict and challenge that might occur. And I further believe that the answer to how one might live a good life is not an abstraction, or merely subjective, but something we can evidence and put forward and fight for. So long as the moral and political discourse of the world never strays from the ultimate goal of facilitating this, I would have far more comfort in the righteousness of my actions than I could ever derive from alignment with a religious scripture.