Over the past two Insight columns, I’ve examined two competing, overarching, concepts of morality: relativism and realism.
Relativism, as I argued, is the dominant morality of left-progressivism and capital-M Multiculturalism. All cultures are equal, there is no real ‘right and wrong’, except that it’s ‘wrong’ to judge others, individually or culturally.
As I showed, that’s a confused, contradictory and (in practice) grossly hypocritical ideology.
Yet its opposite, realism, founders on the rocks of deductive logic. Still, realism, if nothing else, allows concrete moral judgements in at least the most obvious cases. It also allows the possibility of a universal morality for all cultures (even all sentient species).
But where does all of this leave the individual? After all, it’s not cultures which have to make moral decisions, it’s people. Yet the last few centuries of moral philosophy have left the question of individual morality more confused than ever.
So it may be that one of the most ancient theories of ethics is due for a comeback.
First, let’s quickly run over the last few hundred years of moral philosophy. Beyond realism and relativism, two other competing ideas of ethics have dominated the scene.
The first is ‘deontological‘ ethics. This is a fancy word for ‘duty-based ethics’. Judaeo-Christian ethics are, in fact, a form of duty-based ethics: we are duty-bound to follow God’s ethical precepts. But, as I previously showed, there are inherent problems with this argument (not least, where does it leave the non-believer?). Immanuel Kant tried to rescue duty-based ethics from God.
Kant proposed a “categorical imperative” which is not unlike the Christian “Golden Rule” of treating others as one wants to be treated. Kant also argued that moral actions should be judged by intentions rather than outcomes. But there are obvious problems with both.
Firstly, what if some people want to be treated badly? As shown in the previous Insight, in the SF novel Speaker for the Dead, Ender undertakes the grisly task of ritually dismembering a living alien being: because that is what the alien wants. It’s an essential part of their biology and the highest honour their culture can bestow.
Beyond the realm of science fiction, there are very real cases. For instance, some years ago, a German would-be cannibal advertised for a victim he would kill and eat – and actually found takers. On a Kantian judgement, there would be nothing wrong with killing and eating a willing participant.
Secondly, the best intentions quite often deliver horrifying results. Consider Communism, for example: at least some Communists sincerely believed they were building a paradise on earth. Kant would have to agree that killing tens of millions of people was justified by such a noble intention.
Opposing the Deontologists are the Consequentialists. As you might guess, Consequentialists, also known as Utilitarians, argue that only outcomes matter. The greatest moral good is that which delivers maximum happiness. Most of us would be familiar with it, as formularised in Star Trek: “The needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few”.
Again, there are many problems with this seemingly benign view.
For instance, Utilitarians like Peter Singer argue for abortion, up to and including after birth, for disabled children. It is more moral to eliminate a life of suffering than to kill a newborn. It has also been pointed out that Utilitarianism would justify wiping out lions entirely, as the short-term suffering of the lions would be more than outweighed by the continuing happiness of their prey.
Leaving aside the differing problems with Deontology and Utilitarianism, there is another objection to both: they are essentially ‘hollow’. That is, they both disregard actual people, making actual moral judgements. Deontology is, basically, a sterile set of rules; Utilitarianism hamstrings us with an equally sterile, not to say often bewilderingly complex, moral calculus.
Even Star Trek saw the problem: no matter how much he added up the outcomes, Kirk just could not live with himself for abandoning his friend to die. But if Kirk had followed the duty of “always save a friend”, hundreds of others would have died. Similarly, in Speaker, the duty of honouring the piggies’ desire for ritual dismemberment ignores the distress it causes the human Ender to do so.
Singer’s Utilititarianism argues that it is more moral to give away all your money to charity than save it all for your children’s education. Yet such an argument contradicts not just parental instinct, but everything that almost every culture believes about the necessity of looking after one’s family. Eliminating a few million lions might make billions of wildebeest happy, but it revolts against every idea we have of conservation.
Deontology and Utilitarianism are the Big Two. Another idea, given popular voice by people from Abraham Lincoln to Ricky Gervais, is ‘egoism’. This is essentially summed up by Gervais’s line: “When I do something bad, I feel bad. And when I do something good, I feel good”. But what makes a person feel good? A kitten-torturer presumably feels good torturing kittens: but who would argue that that makes kitten-torturing good?
People also make decisions which seem morally good, but surely could not make them feel good. The soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save the lives of his companions, for instance. In Middlemarch, Dorothea consciously sacrifices her happiness in order to adhere to the moral choice of not deserting her husband.
So when all the philosophical arguing is said and done, where does that leave us, the humble folk who actually have to make choices we hope are moral?
To answer that, some philosophers have argued that we should return to an ancient theory of morality: Virtue Ethics.
Unlike other theories of ethics, Virtue Ethics doesn’t bother seeking after abstract truths. Instead, it asks a very simple, very human, question: what type of person do I want to be?
Virtue Ethics is not perfect: for instance, it doesn’t even bother with the question of deductively seeking for unquestionable moral truths. But it is, on my view, the best fit for an imperfect, morally messy humanity.
I’ll explore Virtue Ethics – its faults and, well, virtues – in the next and final article in this series.
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