Moral relativism

August 31, 2006

!(inset)http://static.flickr.com/56/173345863_1add99e5bc_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdumlao98/173345863/

I don’t particularly want to write _All Religion All the Time_, but we’ve had long conversation “here”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2006/08/24/were-not-all-atheists/ and “here”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2006/08/29/the-prayer-study/. A lot of interesting ideas have been touched on in the process. Like, for example, the notion that universality gives morality its true value. Let’s see if we can find the argument in the comments.

Ah. “There it is”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2006/08/24/were-not-all-atheists/#comment-4652.

bq. The fact that there is no consistency (outside of religious) morals tells me that the morals created by men aren’t all that meaningful. If something is right or wrong, it doesnt matter where in the world you live. If that moral is truly good, it would be right regardless of your location. [ Ryan J ]

When people start talking about the universality of morality — especially people like “Judge Roy Moore”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore — my brain starts to hurt. This is primarily because I try to think of a universal moral and can’t. Apparently, neither could the author of “Ecclesiastes 3″:http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=RsvEccl.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=3&division=div1:

bq. For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.

What are these universal morals which are true all the time? And how are they useful? Is there anything, to use the Kantian phrase, that classifies as a “categorical imperative”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative?

The discussion of morality is about what is good and what is evil — or, if you prefer, what is right and what is wrong. But right and wrong, good and evil are essentially contextual. One person kills another person. Moral act or immoral act? You can’t tell unless you know the context. A time to kill, a time to heal.

There are principles we like to think are universally goods (e.g. love, generosity, compassion, justice, mercy) but they become destructive more often than we’d like to think, even within the span of our own lives.

It might be unnerving to think of morality as being *only* contextual if you’re not used to thinking that way. But it might help if you realize that no human experience is non-contextual. Everything happens in the context of something else, and we all do the best we can with it. When you understand that, the idea of a universal morality seems unlikely at best, logically incoherent at worst. And, even if it did exist, it would probably be so general as to not very useful in the real world. “Universal” is not always “useful.”

But a lot of people still seem to seek the universal, “perfect” morality, deriding a contextual morality — ie, “moral relativism”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism — as inherently flawed because it is not _always_ true. I think this is probably a consequence of believing in a perfect, timeless, unchanging God who issues perfect, timeless, unchanging edicts. Anything not perfect, timeless, and unchanging is less than God, flawed and fallen, and therefore not worth much.

People who don’t believe in divine perfection — like atheists, who (of course) don’t believe in the divine, or any number of other religions — don’t really have a problem with morality being imperfect. In fact, they prefer it that way. Everything is imperfect, everything is in process, everything is born, grows, and dies. Everything has context; nothing exists in a vacuum. A morality that can respond to this is better than one that can’t. Morality is seen as a tool for living in this world, not an artifact of worship from PerfectLand. There are hard questions, of course — do you steal to feed your family? Do you kill innocents and children to defend your country? — but at least a moral relativist has the ability to make the best, most constructive decision for the situation at hand.

And when you’re not hung up on perfection, you’re not as troubled by imperfection. It’s easier to see the details.

Moral absolutists, however, have a lot more trouble. If you mistake a non-universal moral principle as being universal you may behave destructively, believing your True Principle(s) override all other human concerns (see “Clayton Waagner”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Waagner). Less dramatically, though, you might also improperly balance moral concerns. An example of this is in policies passed to discourage extramarital sex which often sacrifice (or hold hostage) the health and welfare of children. And Heaven help you if two principles deeply held as universal moral codes come in conflict. It is at these times when the unattainability of a perfect moral code is most clear; it is also the worst time to find that out.

This is why a lot of us don’t seek a moral absolute. We believe it doesn’t exist — or if it does exist, it exists in a form that’s not useful to us. And the search for a moral absolute has led to some terrible mistakes, both interpersonal and international.

??Photo “When Things Happen for A Reason”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdumlao98/173345863/ by mdumlao98.??

Posted in Religion