I've been reading Alasdair MacIntyre's book "After Virtue" and I found it insightful regarding the problem of ethics in the modern age. In a previous post I mentioned this ethical concern through a discussion between Bishop Robert Barron and Professor Patrick Deneen. It was a discussion I found a bit dissatisfying but it did recognize the same problem that MacIntyre raised regarding ethical subjectivity and relativism.
In a very recent post I mentioned how arguments today are often not substantial and often rely on errors of reasoning that we call logical fallacies. MacIntyre's eye opening contribution however goes deeper. It names the philosophical shortcoming that has created this subjective environment which has debased any attempt at developing a morally objective framework. This he calls Emotivism and he describes it as such.
Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feelings, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in charachter. (MacIntyre, pg. 12)
The designers of emotivism suggest that objective morality has failed and the belief in some kind of teleological system is a superstitious fantasy. The result is to free the individual moral agent from a cultural context and a moral order. They are free to judge and evaluate their own actions based on a loose consensus of accepted social positions that the individual can emphasize based on their own lived experience. The problem is that such a subjective approach derails any hope for a substantial debate since there can be no objective conclusion. The only way is to create a stronger emotional appeal and as we see that has led to a broad use of fallacies that motivate others based on strong emotions like fear and anger. MacIntyre poses three social issues and demonstrates how the issues of war, abortion and economic justice can raise ethical concerns but they have conflicting values which are not grounded on an objective framework. The arguments will go around without any strong ethical position beyond an emotive appeal. This is what MacIntyre believes is missing from moral philosophy today and this has created the relativist situation we currently experiencing.
In chapter 17 MacIntyre depicts two type of Americans who will vote based on their own social positions. He calls them A and B. In both cases they will vote from their own perspective of economic justice. Yet, even though they frame their concern based on economic justice consider how divergent their views are and how that is illustrative of the political divide we currently experience.
A, who may own a store or be a police officer or a construction worker, has struggled to save enough from his earning to buy a small house, to send his children to the local college, to pay for some special type of medical care for his parents. He now finds all of his projects threatened by rising taxes. He regards this threat to his projects as unjust; he claims to have a right to what he has earned and that nobody else has a right to take away what he acquired legitimately and to which he has a just title. He intends to vote for candidates for political office who will defend his property, his projects and his conception of justice.
B, who may be a member of one of the liberal professions, or a social worker, or someone with inherited wealth, is impressed with the arbitrariness of the inequalities in the distribution of wealth. income and opportunity. He is, if anything, even more impressed with the inability of the poor and the deprived to do very much about their own condition as a result of inequalities in the distribution of power. He regards both of these types of inequality as unjust and as constantly engendering further injustice... He draws the conclusion that in the present circumstances redistributive taxation which will finance welfare and the social services is what justice demands. He intends to vote for candidates for political office who will defend redistributive taxation and his conception of justice. (MacIntyre, pg. 245)
MacIntyre's two types demonstrate the problem inherent in emotivism. Values are not grounded on a shared framework so the individual moral self-interest dominates type A’s political agenda while the communitarean moral interest dominates type B’s agenda. Both of their moral vision however is subjective to their own experience of what is just and unjust so in the end neither position can claim moral objectivity.
Our pluralistic culture possesses no method of weighing, no rational criterion for deciding between claims based on legitimate entitlement against claims based on needs. Thus these two types of claim are indeed, as I suggest, incommensurable, and the metaphor of ‘weighing’ moral claims is not just inappropriate but misleading. (MacIntyre, pg. 246)
MacIntyre suggests that we are in a desperate need for a shared ethical framework to get us off this moral morass. To this end he recommends the application of virtue ethics (although I also read into his description an appeal to the natural law) along with a defined teleology, that is to say a common purpose. He also calls for a process of moral discernment to help with choosing how to apply the virtues based onb the situation. He doesn't specifically mention the notion of casuistry but I suggest that such a discernement process based on case studies may assist with his proposal.
But his critique of emotivism is a moral concern that I believe needs to be recognized. At the heart of the moral relativism we experience is a system that was designed to respond to some of the abuses of universal norms by clinging to the use of emotional intuitions guided towards some utilitarean ideal of the good often defined by personal affection or an aesthetic claim. Emotivism denies a rational cognitive system of universal morality.
This does not negate the importance of the situation, what we Latino/a theologians call lo cotidiano. The context of the lived experience is certainly crucial to the moral enterprise but not on its own. The principle of lo cotidiano does not negate the need to a teleological claim or an objective moral framework. If we consider the contribution of casuistry we will recall that our 15th-17th moral contributions involved discerning universal moral norms from a faith tradition to applicable case studies like colonialism, international trade, slavery, governance, and regional conflicts. Respecting the situational reality does not negate the need for an objective moral order.
So along with logical fallacies lets us recognize the role that emotivism has had in developing moral positions that have no universal moral value. Let us recognize this as a dificiency to those who argue based on self-interest and from there promote a share teleology that defines the moral worldview of the virtues we support. This may have us develop a more parochial moral perspective, like the one that Catholic social teaching offers through the natural law/virtue ethics, but this may help other moral communities define their own platform and as a people we might be able to develop our own shared moral teleology.
I should perhaps mention (although I won’t go into any detail) that MacIntyre’s thesis includes the historical development of emotivism which he suggests was birthed with the Enlightenment. Hume, Kierkegaard and Kant’s religious critique and moral positions will pave the way for an eventual moral subjectivity based on a reduction of the theological underpinnings from which these moral positions originated from. Hume will center his approach on the passions (originating emotivism), Kierkegaard will focus on making a fundamental choice, and Kant will attempt to develop his categorical imperatives from a state of pure reason. In all cases however they depart from a cohesive moral order and so their approach becomes entirely based on the experiential.
I find it curious that Blaise Pascal’s Jansenist perspective was influential for these enlightened thinkers.
A central achievement of reason according to Pascal, is to recognize that our beliefs are ultimately founded on nature, custom and habit. Pascal’s striking anticipation of Hume - and since we know that Hume was familiar with Pascal’s writings, it is perhaps plausible to believe that here there is a direct influence - point to the way in which this concept of reason retained its power. Even Kant retains its negative characteristics; reason for him as much as for Hume, discerns no essential nature and no teleological features in the objective universe available for study by physics. (MacIntyre, Pg. 54)
I find it interesting because Pascal was the thinker who attempted to discredited the scholastic casuists through his provincial letters. I find it interesting because many of us believe that casuistry and the scholastic tradition can help us rediscover the lost framework for universal moral objectivity.
