• All Content
• Articles
• Links
• Books
• Comments
• Tags
• Contact
• OmniFlow

Most Nerd-Its | Nerd Trends | Last Ten

What is OmniNerd?

Voting Booth

Morality, as it is understood philosophically, is the attempt to establish universal ethical principles that can serve to guide man to some kind of betterment. This striving for the universal is a very familiar philosophical construct, most thoroughly expounded by Hegel and, naturally, pursued by many other thinkers. Kantian moral reasoning is similarly based on striving to create maxims that have universal validity. As the basest level for ethical reasoning, this precept is well founded. We generally accept that morality must, in some way, be universally applicable or else it would not truly be morality at all. If right and wrong were defined in solely individual terms, ethics would quickly devolve into relativism ad absurdum. If right and wrong are not universally relevant then the whole discussion is already moot. We will take this as our starting point. Ethical reasoning must strive for the universal; otherwise it is nothing more than a complicated endeavor in foolishness. The issue at hand, therefore, becomes through what system do we reckon ethics? Can some objective philosophy offer a method for understanding morality that also fits into the requisite notion of universal applicability? I contend that the answer to this question must fall in the negative. Moral philosophy, without some underlying theological teleology, will collapse under its own weight .¹

There are, as we all know, numerous intellectual constructs that attempt to explain ethical behavior (Sittlichkeit) and the ways in which we evaluate such behavior. Hegel, as I have mentioned, along with his sycophants judge the correctness of actions as they relate to the maintenance of some ill-defined societal unit. This unit could be the nuclear family or the community, but is more often delineated in terms of the state. Appeals to a higher societal unit will usually fail because states are frequently at odds with one another or, through war, are in fact mutually destructive. Clearly appeals to some extra-national societal unit from which we can adjudicate ethics are doomed from the start as the international system is far too Hobbesian for any adequate refinements of the moral code. International politics has ever been this way.

From this point we are left, according to this philosophy, with the state as the primary societal and, therefore, ethical unit. By this reasoning we must surmise ethical behavior based on the welfare and propagation of the state. That, of course, means that what is best for the state is morally correct for the individual. This idea is troubling in myriad ways. Firstly, the interests of the state, as the primary ethical unit, may conflict with the interests of subordinate societal constructs, e.g. the family. One can easily imagine the circumstances that could lead to this quandary. We could say that the state is the fundamental unit of interest and we should subordinate all actions to that idea, but how was man to rationalize morality prior to the state? This concept is familiar in many forms, such as in the ruminations of Confucius. Filial piety, as expressed by Confucius, commanded allegiance to one’s father as the lowest manifestation of overall subservience to the emperor. The moral construct became obviously difficult to maintain when the emperor acted exceedingly poorly.

This first indictment of ethical behavior as defined by the societal unit is much less egregious than the second. It is when we compare states that we truly appreciate the failing of this philosophy. If right is exclusively defined as maintaining or advancing the state, then what is one to do when the state behaves inimically to other such societal units or to members of the unit itself? Was a citizen of Nazi Germany acting immorally if he opposed the fascist regime? Surely not. But how are we to weigh such judgments when ethics are intertwined with statecraft? As we can see, this conception fails the universality test that we established at the beginning. Ethics as statecraft leads immediately to the arrangement that what is right for a German may not be right for an American or vice versa. This moral system imposes an unacceptable degree of relativism that defies the universality of true morality. This becomes practically insolvent when these competing moral paradigms seek to destroy one another, as in war.

Another common method of moral reasoning is called Utilitarianism. It is closely related to the ethical/societal reasoning previously discussed except that it purports to define good as what is best for the most people. This seems easy enough except that it leaves us susceptible to plainly unjust machinations. For instance, what if the general consensus demanded the death of an innocent man. It may very well be that the common good is best served by his death, but we would still find this disconcerting. This philosophy allows easily for such practices as genocide or euthanasia, depending on one’s definition of common good. The essential problem is that the “common good” is a far too amorphous term. Right and wrong cannot clearly be gleaned from one another. If the world consisted of only one hundred people it is conceivable that fifty-one could vote to kill the remaining forty-nine without ethical dilemma. Their decision, given the proper circumstances, could be justified within this framework. This is patently incorrect, as utilitarianism wars openly with our sense of justice.

A third specious ethical apparatus is referred to as Epicureanism. Epicurus believed that the goal of life is to seek modest pleasure and the freedom of fear. Though modern Epicureans have sought to distance themselves from ribald hedonism, both are essentially the same in effect, if not intention. Morality is defined in purely personal terms and does not allow for any universal applicability. No order can be expected or maintained in a world in which each person selfishly seeks his own material satisfaction. If morality is defined in such a way, it becomes acceptable to maul the rights of others to acquire this ultimate good. The first defense of the philosophy is, of course, that man should pursue pleasure only so far as it does not interfere with others’ ability to realize the same. We are caught in an intellectual impasse, however, when the object of one’s satisfaction becomes loss to someone else, as is the case with sexual deviants or those who would seek wealth by extra-legal means. If they are to restrict themselves and not indulge these desires than we tacitly admit that there must be a higher standard of moral adjudication. Stolid Epicureans may disagree with the pertinence of these possibilities, but their philosophy generally ignores much of the conditions of life and essentially denies that man is a political animal. Epicurus sat aloof from politics and argued lamely about a system of social agreements instituted by man as a measure of correctness. This fails our test in that man-made social agreements are always in flux and must always fall back on another moral philosophy to stay afloat. If right and wrong are simply a matter of social custom then any revolutionary can seize power and do as he likes. Do we believe that might a priori makes right?²

The last method of moral reasoning that I will treat with is not really a systematic outlook at all, and crumbles immediately under even the slightest scrutiny. That being said, it is perhaps the most pervasive in our current mindset, which, due to mass media and the enormous flow of information, has become quite comfortable with accommodating mutually conflicting viewpoints in our various compartmentalized frames of reference. This reckoning presupposes that there are moral truths that exist of their own accord and our known to us through our conscience. These objective truths, irrespective of their origin, guide us in life and allow us to assess the ethical validity of our actions.

Incumbent on this view is a standard moral vantage point for people across the globe. In some instances this method holds intellectual water. It is generally accepted that parents should not kill their children, but even here we meet with discrepancy. In China and even in the U.S., if we consider abortion, it is acceptable to kill a child under certain circumstances, the details of which are in wide divergence from culture to culture. We could even say that proscriptions about something as mundane as murder are subject to a great deal of interpretations from one person to the next. In the Western world the authorities might classify a particular death as murder, whereas in some tribal organization the same occurrence could be seen as a legitimate retribution. With only a vague notion of objective principles to reason from we are left in the dark over many decisions. And if we fail to make any judgments, ascribing morality as peculiar to a culture, then we become moral relativists, as culture is too loosely categorized to be meaningful. If I typify myself as representing a distinct culture then I can justify any action, no matter how heinous.³

Since the conscience seems to speak with varying degrees of audibility to different people then we are without recourse in too many ethical matters. Similarly, even if we could get a group of people to agree on a common set of standards, they would be necessarily arbitrary. The addition or removal of personages from our collective could change the set of standards or invalidate previous ones. In that respect our moral prescripts are without intellectual force. This proposition, however, has already bypassed the initial problem, which is that this agreement is hardly ever reached. Objective reasoning has proved incapable of establishing a common moral code and our cultural norms fail to address a wide berth of ethical conflict. Despite its popularity this idea falls short. It has no moral underpinning and unimpeachable bedrock from which to argue. Any code arrived at through this method is open to endless speculation and reinterpretation.

What are we to do then if moral philosophy, reasoned a priori, cannot establish a coherent moral framework? We could abandon morality all together and plunge into anarchy. That is always an option and some have eagerly sought it, despite its apparent shortcomings. The converse is to look for a simpler, but infinitely more robust ethical system. The presumption in this system is the existence of God and, more precisely, in his active and irrefutable Will. If we accept that God is the author of all things then He is therefore the highest arbiter of good and evil. Because He has created all things His Will is inherently good and thus defines good for us as well.

We may understand the ethical quality of a particular event by how it relates to the Will of God. Actions or thoughts that align with God’s law are therefore good and so on. Here we have an ethical framework untainted by relativism and universally applicable. By judging morality based on the progenitor of all goodness, we are able to confidently speak of right and wrong and judge them as such based on our reckoning of God’s law.

The question that obviously arises is: how do we know God’s law and Will? As we have established, though God’s law is an objective truth that transcends the human condition, it cannot be reasoned from any sort of natural philosophy. If we could then the aforementioned moral construct might have functioned properly. As it does not, we must accept that God’s law can only be known if it is somehow revealed to us. Once we have this moral code, in its revealed form, we may then reason a posteriori to arrive at moral conclusions. Taking the initial assumption that God exists as true, this system is not susceptible to the failures of the former intellectual structures. My belief, therefore, is that God has furnished us with his Word, in the form of the Bible, to fill this gap and establish an ethical construct that we may trust. From this we realize that to act correctly is to act in tune with God’s Will. We supplant our muddled vexations with his undeniable correctness.

Of course, this philosophy, if it can even be labeled as such, rests not on academic grounds, but as a matter of faith. Faith, operating outside the ken of human reason, is inimical to philosophy, but also far superior. Rational philosophy, devoid of faith, is baffled by this understanding, as is natural. For as Kierkegaard aptly observed, “faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.”⁴

The concept of faith is not something that I can explain and certainly not something that I can prove. However, I do believe that I can show that moral philosophy, without a concept of God, is incapable of establishing a coherent ethical system. In point of fact, I firmly believe that any claim to morality made without a belief in God is ultimately casuistic and mistaken. Man feels the twinge of God’s Will in his life, but without the leap of faith all is smoke and mirrors. The crux of morality must be an implacable belief in God.

¹ I will not deign to discuss moral relativism here. In effect relativism says that what is right for you may not be right for me. That thinking is philosophically untenable and, in practical terms, is utterly useless.

² See Epicureanism available online at http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/E/Epicureanism.htm

³ There are obviously many more moral philosophies that I have not dealt with. I believe, though, that they all are likewise handicapped.

⁴ Kierkegaard, Soren, Fear and Trembling, Alastair Hannay trans. (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 11.