Is There Anything ‘Moral’ About Morals?
I recently promised to write a few words about my problems with ethics and morals. To lay it out with any amount of sophistication I would have to put my life on hold for about six months and write a book or something like that. Nonetheless, although this silly little essay will not do the trick, I hope that, at the very least, it will sketch a vulgar and unrefined shadow of my position.
First of all, if you are unfamiliar with my sentiment on things in general, then, before you rush to judgment, please browse through some of my writing here that might hint at a few things that might be helpful: 1) I am a very real realist, ontologically speaking; 2) I am extremely skeptical about epistemological certainty; and 3) I consider the only way to understand what language means is using the criteria of belief. Taking that into consideration, I don’t think that you will be too surprised about what I think about morality and ethics, which is:
I do not think that morals exist. I deny the phenomenological reality and veracity of morals. Especially in language. The main reason is because I do not think we mean anything ‘moral’ when we are speaking about things that we assume to be related to morals (or ethics if you like). Languages of axiology, permissiblity, moral quality, goodness, rightness, and the rest are not ‘moral’ properly speaking, as I see it.
For example, the act of putting a cigarette out in the eye of an infant is not ‘immoral’. We might say that, but what we mean is not even a matter what is good or bad, permissible or impermissible, right or wrong, and so on. What we mean is that it is ugly and sick and twisted and a host of other things we cannot express. In other words, what we really seem to mean when we want to say that this or that is moral of immoral is really whether something is beautiful or ugly. Morals are deodorized aesthetics.
So, instead of confronting the sheer power of beauty in our lives, we prefer to use morals that create entire systems of judgment, behavior, norms, and alike. But, what we mean is not a matter of what is ‘good’, ‘true’, ‘right’, and alike, morally speaking; we mean what is closer to beautiful. What is closer to God.
While language will always distort the iconic reality of God, moral language is especially destructive. We begin to think that God is something good and not evil as a matter of conduct or behavior. The talk of morals reduces God from a divine artist, to a calculable and predictable—some call this scientific—actor. But this is a lie. Beauty is one of the few expressions that can escape the shackles of language and offer itself to us in the form of music, poetry, children, lovers, and God.
Good and evil, permissible and inpermissible, right and wrong, do not mean anything moral. What they mean, or what I think we believe them to mean, are aesthetic intuitions about how close or far away things are to or from God. Hate is not immoral, it is ugly. Making it immoral changes nothing about it except our ability to know the difference.
I have no problems using moral language. My problem is forgetting what we mean when we are speaking. Forgetting the aesthetic and divine meaning of morality begins an alienation from who we are as persons who are created and redeemed by a Love Sublime that exceeds morals and calls us home.
In short, there is nothing, at the level of belief and meaning, ‘moral’ about morals. At least that’s what I think on the matter.
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I have little idea about where to start commenting on your post, which is pretty deep, only that a lot of stuff that is very ugly and repugnant in real life can be experienced as beautiful in a work of art.
And then there is “the glamour of evil.” People do see beauty in all sorts of nasty things, like the career of Bonnie and Clyde, and the attitudes and experiences celebrated in certain kinds of hip hop poetry.
Another stray observation: Lots of folks don’t like the current form of the Catholic mass because it is not beautiful. While it is good to have a mass as beautiful as possible in aesthetic terms, I say that the mass is still the mass no matter how bland it might seem as art, and that is the main thing.
I only venture these thoughts because I am an artist who makes icons and other things (not to speak of my literary studies in the dim, dark past) and I am generally interested in aesthetics. It will be interesting to see where this conversation goes.
I am not a philosopher. But it seems to me that when people use words like good, bad, moral, immoral, they are referencing their moral intuitions, which I believe generally draw on a human recognition of the natural law, and not mere aesthetics. And even our aesthetics are somewhat (and should be) informed by moral beliefs – vice is ugly.
I think you’re right in the sense that the aesthetic quality of beauty is under-appreciated in ethical evaluations.
That said, I strongly disagree with you when you write: But, what we mean is not a matter of what is ‘good’, ‘true’, right’, and alike, morally speaking; we mean what is closer to beautiful. What is closer to God.
Perhaps I am misinterpreting, but I think you are causing an unnecessary division between truth and beauty. Truth is beautiful and beauty is truth. When we see an immoral, it contains not merely ugliness but also untruth i.e. that it is good (or beautiful) to stick a cigarette in the eye of the infant.
As beauty relates to truth, then morals is not merely deordorized aesthetics but also involving philosophical discussion, reason, etc., all the things that come along with truth being involved.
Given the difficulty of language expression reality, how can we say it is not more that when we talk of something being beautiful we mean that it is right, and that when we talk of something being ugly we mean it is wrong?
Though I wouldn’t agree that ‘moral’ language can simply and smoothly be reduced to aesthetic language, I think the two are closely linked. Moral judgements are usually not the result of a kind of calculus, but an intuition (as Zak notes) which involves things like proportionality and simplicity. This comes through clearly in Aquinas’ moral theology, with the virtuous person being one whose acts habitually strike a proportion between extremes and for whom bad acts are evil insofar as they display a certian lack of wholeness, balance, and clarity. For a Thomist, the reason moral language and aesthetic language would bear such similarities is that, according to his transcendental thought, such language would refer to the same reality (assuming beauty is a transcendental for Thomas, which is a disputed point), with only a conceptual difference. I also think this is why it is so hard for people to be morally indifferent to art (although, more and more, moral judgements about art have been made on the basis of content and less on form).
So, instead of confronting the sheer power of beauty in our lives, we prefer to use morals that create entire systems of judgment, behavior, norms, and alike. But, what we mean is not a matter of what is ‘good’, ‘true’, right’, and alike, morally speaking; we mean what is closer to beautiful.
I wish I had more time to respond (I have a thesis deadline looming). What I will say is what you describe here strikes me as a rather common account of moral feeling, especially as it was developed in Hutcheson’s An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue which looks to aesthetics to explain feelings of agreeableness and disagreeableness as opposed to Hume’s attribution of such feeling to mere passion. Even Kant acknowledged the importance of looking at morality as aesthetics in developing an empirical or observational account of morality (see, for instance, his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime). However, as Kant has shown (though one need not adopt his conclusions), no account of morality as aesthetics can provide an account of obligation, whose idea is forced upon us and whose analysis rests beyond the scope of phenomenology or empiricism (John Paul II, himself, noted the inadequacy of phenomenology for moral analysis in his study of Scheler’s ethics).
So what I see in your post is mostly correct in terms of moral feeling and expressions of those feelings. However, one still may comfortably work out an account of normativity quite apart from aesthetic experience. This is true even if one adopts your antecedently drawn epistemological boundaries (which seem to come quite apart from any phenomenological account of what’s given in experience, a philosophical problem in its own right). Consider the work done by neo-Kantians such as Rawls, Korsgaard, and Herman, who do not think one needs epistemological certainty (a matter for meta-ethics) in order to have a theory of normativity in ethics. Also, the work of neo-Aristotelians such as Finnis likewise carve out an account morality that is not beholden to any epistemological commitments in speculative reason.
What I am really getting at here is that there is absolutely no reason to doubt that “morals exist” based on your epistemological and ontological commitments. Of course moral truth is not given in experience as an object (phenomenology), nor does it have any real subsistence in the world (realist ontology). But none of this affects the questions of obligation that arise through practical reason.
Hello everyone,
As I said this is a rough—very rough—sketch that (as Poli notes) should come as no surprise to a lot of people from Thomists to Kantians and even pragmatists (see, C.S. Pierce). It is not very sophisticated and intuition nails it down just fine, I am sure I will rant about that at some time too.
My point is not to develop a linguistic preference for aesthetic terms over moralistic ones; not at all. My point is to think about what it is we mean by morals and what they might actually be, as a matter of phenomenological giveness or metaphysical substance (I would normally quibble here but the general point is what’s important).
You may quickly scold me for saying such crazy things like “moral don’t exist,” but they really don’t. We all agree about that. In fact, aesthetic language is also sloppy, but, for the reasons I mentioned, it serves us better for keeping the meaning of things in front of us, so to speak, which is the only ‘moral’ to this story.
Now, as far as the “philosophers only” sensibility I got from some of your comments I want to say two thing:
1. Relax. I am not a philosopher either. Really. My PhD will be conferred by a department of education, not a philosophy department. For a real philosopher, you should refer to Policraticus. Which leads me to…
2. This post is not really opening the door to do some philosophical arguing. If it was I think that Poli’s critique of my stance on ontology and epistemology would be a fine place to engage. But he has no time to do that and neither do I. I am actually glad Poli is unavailable because he might line-by-line me like he’s been doing lately and send me packing in shame.
Seriously, though, Poli: We need to air this one out sometime sooner than later, it would help me think more clearly and sharpen your philosophical dagger on my blunt club, I think.
In short (even though this comment isn’t short), I haven’t read anything I would think, given the purposes of this post, I would disagree with too much. So, I am leaving things as they are. I only hope this was something stimulating to think about. Now of course I am assuming too much of a difference between truth and beauty—it is God afterall.
When it comes down to the raw point of all this stuff I find that we are left with the excessive, unanalyzed totality of God mediated through the poverty of human experience. That this is too poor, then, is as it should be.
Peace!
I can’t resist; one quick argument. Obligation may serve some nifty ways to mapping out what we ought to do, but the intuitive reasons for obligations still render themselves into the categories we’ve mentioned—Kantian obligation shouldn’t get a pass.
Okay, one more: I’m on Scheler’s side on this one. JPII can’t seem to resist the desire to want morals to serve as action police, a la Kant, but I think that has little to nothing to do with the issue of meaning which is what ethics—especially Scheler’s ethics—are about, I think. Well, at least the ones I want to say deserve the name… See? I ruined it. Damn.
I thought what you said had genuine insight- even if I couldn’t agree in every detail. It made me think and I appreciate that. Thank you. Don’t apologize or depreciate yourself. If you submit your intellect to what God has revealed and ask for his guidance in your reflection, you shouldn’t fear speculation, especially philosophical reflection done in collaboration with others- who can become a source of insight and correction. Just don’t get drawn into (pardon the phrase) philosophical pissing contests with people. Its not about padding our egos, its about the joy of being able to struggle for the truth together. When philospohy or theology becomes about one-uping others- its time to pack it up.
Sam,
There is no need to hand wave–I think you have, without pointing too fine a point on it, stressed an important aspect of morality that is overlooked by many who obsess over objectivity in morals. Given my own limitations, I related your thoughts back to what is more familiar to me, namely the historical engagement of moral sentimentalism with deontological ethics. My familiarity with phenomenological accounts of ethics begins with Scheler and von Hildebrand and ends with Gadamer (which means there is a big gap in my thinking). I have altogether neglected Levinas and contemporary French philosophy, which puts you in a much better position to speak of these contemporary trends in ethics, politics, and aesthetics. My hope is that you will develop for us a bit more your insight here, which seems to stem not from the British moralists as I had hastily supposed, but from more original reflections. That said, I think I was too quick to reduce your ideas to the moral feeling tradition in ethics.
Br. Matthew & Poli: No need for the “keep your chin up” advice, although I do appreciate the charity of it. I think that my style is just a bit too melodramatic. I love to play the “hey, I’m not a real philosopher!” card a lot, for lots of reasons beginning with the reality that it is the stark institutional reality in the culture of professional philosophy. I also am quick to retract entire things I’ve said for the sake of the general purpose of sentiment of my work and this is a calculated and serious (to me) move to make. Okay, and I lather it all up with heavy doses of “stupid me,” which is probably false humility. On the other side of the balance I can be a downright mean viper-like polemicist (I’ve had extensive training in debate and rhetoric), so, I try to err on the side of self deprecation—neither one of them is any good. I’ll work on that.
Poli: Your right, but don’t be too quick to dismiss the sentimentalist persuasion. I would cite mine more to Paschal than to Scheler, although Scheler opened this world up to me in Dr. White’s texts class. So I can smell what your steppin in, but, as you rightly point out, I think I am doing something that has moved to a different place. I will try to write something that clears the air on where I’m at soon.
Pax!
I have wondered for some time if it is possible not merely for a moral code to determine the right thing to do, but whether God himself always knows the right thing to do. Suppose you feel you have been neglecting your children, and you promise them — in no uncertain terms — that you will take them to the zoo on Saturday. When Saturday morning arrives, your mother (or mother-in-law, or best friend) calls and asks for help in something important but not absolutely vital. You are going to have to let someone down no matter what you do. Is there a “right” thing to do?
Or, for that matter, can God answer the question of whether a fertilized egg is a person? Person is a term that human beings have invented. I don’t believe God has given a definition of the word person or any other word, for that matter.
I am not suggesting God is not omniscient. I am raising the question whether human beings frame things in such a way that an omniscient being can say, “X is the right answer, and Y is the wrong answer.”
There is a debate whether viruses are alive or not. It really depends on your definition is of what it means to be alive.
I am not suggesting that if there is no empirical answer to a question then the question has no meaning. And I am not suggesting that if a question can’t be answered, it is not worthwhile to debate it. I am also not suggesting that there is no such thing as truth. I am suggesting that some things we deduce to be true from the system we employ to make such determinations may not be true because of a deficiency in the system. I am suggesting (to take one example) that Cardinal Newman may have been wrong when he said that from the Church’s point of view, it would be better for millions to die in agony than for an individual to tell one willful untruth that harmed no one. It seems to me that if you arrive at a conclusion about what is the right thing to do (even in a hypothetical situation) that no one in his or her right mind would do, you have to reexamine your premises (like the idea of “intrinsic evil”).
Pulchrum et bonum in subiecto quidem sunt idem… sola ratione differunt [Thomas].
For the distinction between ethics and morals, GKC gave an excellent example:
“A man who shoots his grandmother at 100 yards is a good shot. He is a bad man”. The former is ethics; the latter morals.
I don’t think it has anything to do with defining the difference between ethics and morals (if there is one).
David, I agree with you on the GK quote and the supposed distinction between ethics and morals. I also share some of your curiosities on the nature of God.
Gabriel, to echo what’s been said in a stronger way, if their is something this post might do is question the distinction you mentioned as something real and relevant to our lives.
David Nickol Says:
May 12, 2009
G. Austin writes: “The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.- G. K. Chesterton”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with defining the difference between ethics and morals (if there is one)”.
Dr. Mengele may have been a good doctor [in the practice of his medical skills]. He was not a good man.
Likewise [in my opinion]a doctor who aborts, however skillfully.
Ethics relates to a skill, or profession. Morals to the whole man.
how is the goodness of the doctor different from the goodness of the man? Can a good doctor be a bad man, and so on?