For decades, those on the left have clashed swords with those on the right over the issue of \u201clegislating morality.\u201d\u00a0 The latter believes, not only that it is appropriate for law makers to \u201clegislate morality,\u201d but that it is impossible to avoid doing so. \u00a0The former, in contrast, rejects both contentions.<\/p>\n
Typically, the leftist will insist that in a free society of the sort that Americans inhabit, a society whose members subscribe to a staggering plurality of distinct and often mutually incompatible understandings of morality, legislators should always refrain from \u201cimposing\u201d a vision of morality upon citizens who do not share it.<\/p>\n
Let us first note that his protestations to the contrary aside, no one remotely familiar with either the robustness of the leftist\u2019s moral vision or the relentlessness with which he seeks to advance it could for a second accept his sincerity on this score.\u00a0 The leftist\u2019s commitment to \u201clegislating morality\u201d is second to none.\u00a0 When he argues otherwise, it is the other guy\u2019s<\/em> morality to which he refers.\u00a0<\/p>\n But on its face, the leftist\u2019s stated position on this issue is, <\/em>at least in part, correct.\u00a0 It is also, however, partially incorrect.\u00a0 And what is true of the leftist\u2019s view is equally true of his opponent\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n That both the leftist\u2019s and the rightist\u2019s claims appear to contain some measure of plausibility is due, I think, to the confusion that prevails on both sides of the political aisle with respect to the natures of morality, freedom, and the kind of association we compose as citizens of the United States of America.\u00a0<\/p>\n Morality\u2014any morality\u2014presupposes free agency, persons <\/em>with the capacity and the opportunity to make choices<\/em> among alternative courses of action, however constrained these options may be.\u00a0 Morality postulates freedom. <\/em><\/p>\n Now, freedom can be and has been defined variously.\u00a0 Without getting bogged down in this debate, it suffices for our purposes to establish two things.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, whether or not the phenomenon of \u201cfree will\u201d is a mass illusion, as \u201cdeterminists\u201d of one sort or another contend, is neither here nor there.\u00a0 What matters is that outside of a tiny minority of theoreticians, people find it impossible to elude their gut intuition that they are indeed free.\u00a0 In fact, even the tiny minority of \u201cdeep thinkers\u201d who reject this in theory have just as impossible time as everyone else denying it in fact.\u00a0<\/p>\n Second, both in regard to morality generally and politics in particular, freedom demands no more than the absence of coercion.\u00a0 <\/em>To put it another way, freedom demands that with respect to his own actions, the agent be sovereign. <\/em><\/p>\n This last point needs to be qualified.\u00a0 In his moral philosophy, Thomas Aquinas distinguished \u201cacts of a human being\u201d from \u201chuman acts.\u201d\u00a0 Acts of humans, like breathing, digesting, scratching, etc., are devoid of moral import\u2014i.e. they are neither morally right nor morally wrong\u2014for they preclude choice and, thus, are not uniquely human. \u00a0On the other hand, because human acts, having been chosen, are <\/em>unique to human beings, it is appropriate to praise or blame, reward or condemn them.\u00a0 Human acts are either morally right or morally wrong (immoral).\u00a0 So, it is respect to one\u2019s activities in this second, moral sense, with respect to which an agent must have sovereignty.<\/p>\n How do these ideas of freedom and morality relate to our political situation?<\/p>\n The modern state that is America is a certain kind of association.\u00a0 It is usually thought of as a civil <\/em>association.\u00a0 But what is a civil association?\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the emergence of the modern state in the post-Renaissance era some four centuries ago, political philosophers have labored mightily to discern the character of the modern state.\u00a0 Some have conceived it as a civil association.\u00a0 Others have read it in terms of a very different kind of association, what the conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott called an \u201centerprise association.\u201d\u00a0 The differences between the two kinds of association are stark.<\/p>\n An enterprise association is distinguished on account of the end <\/em>or goal <\/em>for the sake of which it exists.\u00a0 This end is a substantive state of affairs toward the realization of which all of the associates are expected to contribute.\u00a0 Enterprise associations are the stuff of which human life consists, the stuff from which human beings derive a sense of meaning, purpose, and even identity.\u00a0 It is understandable that the state should be seen as but another instance of this kind of association.\u00a0 But the state <\/em>is a compulsory<\/em> organization. What this means is that when the state is regarded as an enterprise association, the associates\u2014citizens\u2014are compelled to pursue the ends of another, ends that have been imposed upon them.\u00a0 Only those activities that don\u2019t threaten to impede the realization of the common good are then permitted.<\/p>\n In a civil association, however, there is no common good or end or goal.\u00a0 Unlike in an enterprise association which is held together by policy, <\/em>the members of a civil association are related to one another in terms of law.\u00a0 <\/em>Laws, in contrast to policies, are not <\/em>action-specifying; they do not tell us what <\/em>to do.\u00a0 Rather, laws prescribe how <\/em>we must do whatever it is we choose <\/em>to do.\u00a0 Laws are nothing more or less than the conditions we are obligated to fulfill in all of our self-chosen engagements.\u00a0 To put it another way, laws specify, not the enterprises upon which we must embark, but the obligations <\/em>we must discharge while deciding upon enterprises for ourselves.<\/p>\n It should be obvious that a civil association is a fundamentally different kind of association than an enterprise association.\u00a0 The goals of an enterprise association are of moral import, but if\u2014as in the case of a state\u2014the associates are conscripted in the service of these goals that are not of their own making, the association can no longer be considered a moral association.\u00a0 Such is not the case, however, with a civil association.<\/p>\n A civil association is indeed a moral association because the associates are free <\/em>to pursue their own ends.<\/p>\n There is not now nor has there have ever been a state that has perfectly embodied either of these two kinds of association.\u00a0 Rather, in reality, states have been mixtures of the two, usually with a tendency toward one kind of association dominating over the other.\u00a0 The United States, I think most of us would agree, was originally intended to be a civil association. This impulse toward civil association is not altogether dead, but ideologues on both the left and the right have done much to insure that it be eclipsed by the impulse toward enterprise association.<\/p>\n So, there is clearly a case in you \u201ccan\u2019t legislate morality.\u201d\u00a0 Once agents are compelled to devote their resources to fulfilling someone else\u2019s moral vision\u2014Equality, say, or Piety\u2014they are no longer treated as moral agents, subjects<\/em> deserving of praise and blame; they are, instead, reduced to objects, <\/em>servants of a purpose from which they are, of necessity, alienated. There is, though, another sense in which it is wholly inaccurate to think of the government of a civil association as being neutral or indifferent to morality, for the state conceived as such is <\/em>a moral association.<\/p>\n And it is a moral association because of the freedom that it presupposes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For decades, those on the left have clashed swords with those on the right over the issue of \u201clegislating morality.\u201d\u00a0 The latter believes, not only that it is appropriate for law makers to \u201clegislate morality,\u201d but that it is impossible to avoid doing so. \u00a0The former, in contrast, rejects both contentions. Typically, the leftist will…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n