As Americans, we have a tendency to speak of morality as if it were one and the same thing for all people at all places and at all times.\u00a0 The popular notion that \u201ceveryone knows right from wrong\u201d is a function of this propensity.\u00a0 It also manifests itself by way of other popular expressions: \u201cThere is right and there is wrong;\u201d \u201cMoral values are absolute;\u201d \u201cAll human beings have rights;\u201d \u201cEveryone everywhere values liberty,\u201d and \u201cWe are all equal,\u201d to reference but a few. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The pervasiveness of this tendency aside, it is misplaced.\u00a0 There is indeed a very real sense in which it can be said that human beings are moral <\/em>beings.\u00a0 However, this is just like saying that human beings are linguistic <\/em>beings: just as the linguistic realm encompasses a rich, even a dizzying variety, of mutually distinct and incompatible languages, so too is the ethical landscape replete with a multiplicity of moralities.\u00a0<\/p>\n From this analogy between morality and language we can actually get much mileage, for there is more than one respect in which the two resemble one another.<\/p>\n Morality, like a language, is essentially a tradition<\/em>.\u00a0 In fact, a \u201cnatural\u201d language supplies us with a model of tradition at its best.\u00a0<\/p>\n After years and years of laboring indefatigably to undercut the institutions of the lands within which they were reared, radicals of all stripes are now reaping the fruits of their labor.\u00a0 One of these fruits is the delusional assumption, uncritically embraced by far too many, that tradition\u2014any tradition\u2014is an antiquated, possibly even superstitious, way of attending to matters.\u00a0 To observe a tradition is to act thoughtlessly.\u00a0 Tradition is static.<\/p>\n In reality, though, as we learn from the example of a language, we rely on tradition because we have nothing else to rely upon<\/em>. We are no freer to extricate ourselves from tradition than we are free to relieve ourselves from language.\u00a0 So, the radical\u2019s first error lies in his belief that there are alternatives <\/em>to tradition; there are not.\u00a0 Of course it is true that there are always other traditions <\/em>to which we can turn, just as we can always avail ourselves of the study of other languages; but this is far different from abandoning tradition altogether.\u00a0 And even then, the adoption of other traditions and languages is possible only because there is an original tradition or language by way of which we approach them.<\/p>\n Yet the radical\u2019s first error is by no means his last.<\/p>\n Tradition is no more and no less static than a language.\u00a0 This is to say that it isn\u2019t static at all.\u00a0 As one philosopher once put it, if tradition is \u201cblind,\u201d it is \u201cblind as a bat.\u201d\u00a0 The same can be said for language.\u00a0 Language, like tradition, is the present generation\u2019s inheritance, a magisterial estate that its ancestors, over the course of centuries and millennia, worked continuously, even if mostly unconsciously, to erect.\u00a0 For as expansive, as palatial, as this property is, however, it remains incomplete.\u00a0 By using and reusing what has been handed down to us, we preserve it while re-imagining it.\u00a0 Our legacy\u2014the words and phrases of our language\u2014is pregnant with possibilities for the present and future that each use of the language goes at least some distance in unlocking.<\/p>\n Tradition is just as stable, and just as open-textured, as language.\u00a0 This is no less so than when the tradition in question is a moral <\/em>tradition.\u00a0<\/p>\n To this line of thought many, including and especially those who regard themselves as conservative, will object that it is a species of \u201crelativism.\u201d\u00a0 The critics are wide of the mark.<\/p>\n For starters, \u201crelativism,\u201d is supposed to refer to a family of views that holds that in a contest of moral judgments where the contestants are different cultures, all are victors\u2014or at least none are losers. There is nothing in what I said that lends support to this position.<\/p>\n If \u201crelativism\u201d is true, then the moralities (if this is what we can still call them) of different cultures must be incomparable.\u00a0 Yet on the view that I offer, there can be and has always been commerce between moral traditions\u2014just as there is exchange between languages.\u00a0 What this in turn means is that it is most certainly possible, as well as <\/em>desirable, that we judge them against one another: some traditions, in other words, are <\/em>superior or inferior to others.<\/p>\n Yet our evaluations transpire against the backdrop, not of some supra-historical standard of Reason, but the standards peculiar to each tradition.\u00a0 For instance, let us say that we have a choice to make between Christianity and Islam.\u00a0 We need to determine which of the two is more defensible as a tradition.\u00a0 This is a judgment that can be made, but it obviously can\u2019t be made from the standpoint of one or the other.\u00a0 Each of these traditions\u2014like every other morality\u2014has some conception of human happiness.\u00a0 To this end, they have developed standards\u2014catalogues of virtues and vices and precepts of various sorts\u2014by which their adherents are to abide. \u00a0It is by the standards of Islam <\/em>that we judge Islam, and the standards of Christianity <\/em>that we judge Christianity.\u00a0<\/p>\n If there are tensions within the set of standards in question that have not been satisfactorily resolved, or if those standards have failed to promote the tradition\u2019s ideal of the good life, then on its own terms, <\/em>that tradition must be deemed inferior to that tradition or those traditions that are free, or at least not as<\/em> burdened, by such problems.\u00a0 At the present moment, with revolution spreading throughout the Islamic world, it appears that Islam just might be undergoing a crisis of epic proportions.\u00a0 If so, this could very well be as powerful an indication as any that it is a tradition in ill repair, a tradition that is suffering from some mounting incoherence to which its own standards have given rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n An ethical tradition is like a language in another crucial respect.\u00a0<\/p>\n From a living language we abstract rules and principles, what we call its \u201cgrammar.\u201d\u00a0 Ethical traditions can also be summarized in terms of principles.\u00a0 But this is the point: \u201cmoral principles<\/em>\u201d constitute a summation <\/em>of the tradition <\/em>from which they have been distilled.\u00a0 <\/em>Contrary to what all of the talk of \u201cnatural rights\u201d and \u201chuman rights\u201d and all of the rest would have us believe, \u201cmoral principles\u201d <\/em>no more precede the tradition from which they have been abstracted than do grammatical principles exist in advance of the language to which they owe their being.<\/p>\n Linguistic principles constitute a language\u2019s grammar.\u00a0 Similarly, moral principles constitute a tradition\u2019s ideology.\u00a0 <\/em>Both linguistic and moral principles are their respective traditions\u2019 cliff notes.<\/p>\n There are many folks, from across the political spectrum, for who my account of morality will be unsettling. In a future article, I will explain why.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Americans, we have a tendency to speak of morality as if it were one and the same thing for all people at all places and at all times.\u00a0 The popular notion that \u201ceveryone knows right from wrong\u201d is a function of this propensity.\u00a0 It also manifests itself by way of other popular expressions: \u201cThere…<\/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-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n