Objective moral norms?
ONE comes across as naive to many when one insists that moral norms are objective. Decades ago, one popular song, “You Light Up My Life,” summed up the present persuasion succinctly: “How can it be wrong, when it feels so right?” Not too long ago, I chaired a discussion group of graduate school professors, and one in the group from a leading Manila university, without batting an eyelash, dismissed morals or ethics as nothing more than social convictions about acceptable and unacceptable conduct and deportment. Actually, it is not clear what exactly millennials and those after them — whatever they may call themselves — think about morality. For some, it is a matter of feeling. If it feels good, it is right; if it is repulsive, it is wrong. For others, it is the rule of the herd: Where the herd grazes, there they will follow. It is the rule of the majority applied to ethical standards. Still, for others, moral norms are part of the baggage of tradition that should no longer weigh us down, we, sons and daughters of the age of liberty unbounded (or so we think).
Many times, the more reasoned objection to theories of objective moral norms are spawned by an opposition to religion. Traditionally, it was thought that God laid down the law for humankind. Often, the recourse was to myth — such as the Eden stories with their injunctions. At other times, it took more intellectual form: the rational mind of man grasping, as far as it could, the Divine plan for all things. It was inevitable then that with the eclipse of God, claims at objective moral norms shared the same consignment to oblivion. Sartre is a good example of what I characterize as “purposive atheism”: If himself — to articulate his own essence — and consequently to lay down the law for himself, then there cannot be a God who brings about a pre- conceived idea of what such a person should be. The demise of God is the ontological condition for the freedom of the human person.
But how does one “subjectivize” and “relativize” the slaughter of 6 million? Which moral theory is there that gives a seal of approval to genocide? Without getting into the abortion debate, is there, seriously, any plausible ethical argument in favor of murdering a newborn infant, or cutting down a toddler? And when you have a document like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is that nothing more than the convictions of the strong imposed on the weak? The fact is that a thoroughgoing ejectment of “objective norms” never succeeds as a project. Habermas demonstrates that convincingly in his theory of the speech-act. Every act of communication presupposes some norms. In writing this column, I presuppose the norm that I have the right to write this, as I grant those who read it the right to agree or to take issue with it. And so the very rejection of objective norms involves the implicit recourse to one or the other “universal” norm — hence, a performative contradiction.
At no time has the need ever been more urgent than now to be clear that moral precepts cannot be made to depend solely on the personal inclinations and subjective preferences of persons: that some things are good, although they may be unpleasant, and some things are wrong although they may “feel so right.” This goes into every debate on abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty and other “grand” issues of ethics; but it also implicated in many claims made in the name of inclusiveness, political correctness, cultural accommodation, gender equality and the other mantras so dear to this age.
One way to do it is to take the route of discourse ethics that insists that action norms — which include moral norms — will be binding only in the measure that they can meet with every objection raised by all who are affected, who treat each other as equals in free and unbridled discourse. In short, a moral norm, to be valid, must be so defensible that no objection can truly stand in its way — the presumption, of course, being that people are willing to go by reason. This is not too different, really, from the Scholastic version of natural law that made “right reason” the organ for grasping rules by which to live life and to live with others!
To be sure, every conviction about how one ought to act, every norm or rule of conduct and right living, though sufficiently backed by reason so that it withstands question and doubt, must always allow the “humility proviso” to be tagged to it: I humbly concede that with an evolved human consciousness and a more mature understanding of things, what all of us so different. And to keep this from being mere lip-service to what even Aquinas grants as “the development of natural law,” one should ever be on the lookout for valid objections to positions now so intractably maintained, excited about the prospect of either strengthening one’s position further, or yielding to distinction, perhaps, even revision. It is, in Marion’s language, the only way we can avoid the worship of idols.
Perhaps, it is Levinas who provides us with some way out of what many think to be the conundrum of “objectivizing” ethics. The face, on which is inscribed the command “Thou shalt not kill,” is neither phenomenon that awaits my acknowledgment, nor theory that awaits proof. It irrupts into my horizon and compels my acknowledgment. It is an “epiphany” against which there is no plausible argument. It is the fundamental ethical moment!
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph rannie_aquino@outlook.com
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Editor’s note.