by Andrew Haines
Any good Thomist knows the maxim: “Never deny, seldom affirm, always make distinctions.” There’s no question that Gilson was one of the finest Thomists of the 20th century; thus, his propensity to clarify the terms of his critique of the decline of morality is not surprising.
Before approaching the actual subject of my lecture, I beg to warn this kindly audience that there is something deceptive in the simplicity of its title. Nothing would be easier than to begin with a depressing picture of contemporary morality. Our morning papers bring us every day our usual supply of crimes, armed robberies, criminal assaults, and quite especially those spicy private scandals which always find, in the mind of their readers, some secret complicity. Just take a look at the cheap collections of popular novels! What is the usual subject matter of these twenty-five cent pot-boilers? Most of the time, crime and sex. Nor is immorality confined to the sphere of private life. Governments themselves are today investigating their own criminal activities. Public reports are issued by official commissions revealing the corruption of politicians, of officials, of judges, and of the police, as though even those who make the laws, and who are in charge of enforcing them, no longer feel bound by their authority. Indeed, it would be very easy to show that there is a general crisis of morality in our own times, so much so that juvenile delinquency is becoming for the State a more and more urgent problem.
But that’s just the trouble, it would be too easy. Every historian knows that this sort of complaint is a perennial one. Each human generation seems to live under the delusion that the preceding ones were distinctly better, more honest and more virtuous. Now I would not maintain that all human generations are equally good or equally bad; my only point is that, in former times, it was all a question of degree. Just as we can distinguish good and bad moments in the lives of individuals, so can we discern, in the history of Rome, of England or of France, periods during which the bonds of morality seemed to get somewhat loose, and other periods during which these very same bonds appeared to tighten again. Let us remember, for instance, the puritan civilization of seventeenth-century New England, with the violent reaction it provoked in American literature. Or let us compare pre-Victorian England to both Victorian England and post-Victorian England. Here we can observe, under a very concrete form these alternations of moral rigidity and of moral looseness which follow each other, at least in some countries, with the regularity of an historical law.
What is happening today is something quite different. The very starting point of my remarks is not the breakdown of the mores, that is to say, of moral behaviour, but the breakdown of morality itself. The very idea that there is an objective distinction between good and evil, and that man, by consulting his reason, can tell with certitude what is right and what is wrong, is today publicly discussed, subjected to a sharp critique and, as often as not, rejected as wholly deprived of rational justification. This is something entirely different from, and much more serious than, any temporary relaxation or loosening of moral laws themselves. This is the denial of the very existence of such laws. The real trouble with our own times is not the multiplication of sinners, it is the disappearance of sin.
Unlike so many others of our day, there are no illusions for Gilson about what’s at stake in a discussion of moral decay. It’s not the quality of morals he concerns himself with, but the possibility of morality en bloc—the “very idea that there is an objective distinction between good and evil, and that man, by consulting his reason, can tell with certitude what is right and what is wrong.”
We have to ask, though: Is this a fair characterization of morality? Does Gilson’s short gloss of the term do justice to its rather amorphous character; or to the severely (and ironically) subjective element involved in conjoining ideas of good and evil with notions of “rationality” and “human personality”? Is it fair at all to suggest that morality—to remain intact—must be objective, rationally justified, and legally fixed?
I’ll be the first to admit that the word “objective” has, for many people, lost all significance. “Objective truth” is a buzzword in conservative religious circles; it points to something foundational, but almost always fails to identify its target. In its original (medieval) context, the word picked out something occurring obiective—as the object of some act. This is juxtaposed with subiective not in a strict sense—i.e., as totally foreign to or conflicting with a subjective act—but as its necessary complement.
If Gilson means that morality must be “objective” in this latter sense, then I think there can be no disputing the veracity of his claim. What is morality, after all, other than the final quality of personal acts? To interpret Gilson’s words in this light, an “objective distinction between good and evil” is not merely one owing to authoritative establishment on the part of a lawgiver, but more importantly—at least for civil society—the fact that good things and bad things are really different. Put another way, it means that the quality of goodness is absolutely incompatible with evil.
From here, it’s not hard to see whence flows his conclusion: namely, that the modern moral dilemma is “something entirely different from, and much more serious than, any temporary relaxation or loosening of moral laws themselves.” In fact, it is “the denial of the very existence of such laws”—of the possibility for the absolute quality of intentional acts.
If Gilson is right—if the basis for assessing personal behavior obiective is indeed corroding at the most foundational level—then ours really is a unique problem in the history of civilization. And it’s just the sort of problem, he will argue, that requires more than a simple reformation of civil society to remedy.
Andrew Haines is president of the Center for Morality in Public Life, and a leading contributor at Ethika Politika. He is currently working toward a PhD in philosophy at The Catholic University of America.
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ScottEF
/ January 25, 2012“Is it fair at all to suggest that morality—to remain intact—must be objective, rationally justified, and legally fixed?”
I think so, and have to also agree that at some level, the resistance to the idea that objective, rationally justified moral facts may be legally fixed is insidious, all-too pervasive in our society, and often uncritically accepted, even where you would least expect it. Why, just the other day I was reading a blog which pretends to support and demand objectivity in ethics, when I read it the following statement, apparently endorsed by ALL of its editors:
“government and law cannot compel any person to act against his or her conscience.” (http://www.cfmpl.org/blog/2012/01/24/conscience-protection/#more-3794)
I was aghast at this horrible, demented expression of pure subjectivity, of the demand for absolute individual freedom from moral or legal rules, regardless of whether their conscience is based on rational argument or not; this principle could support mere “preference” in the name of “conscience,” and really represents the right of any person to exempt themselves from any moral or legal principle without an argument of any kind, a mere “feeling” or “intuition” represented as a “conscience” will do, apparently. I was stunned and shocked, but I’m afraid not really surprised at the low level of discourse the supposed defenders of morality have fallen to. I hope you will join with me in condemning this disgusting lack of moral backbone, and apparently deliberate attempt to confuse the distinction between a real moral judgment and a mere idiosyncratic, undefended feeling.
Alberto Hurtado
/ January 25, 2012Scott, please do not threadjack this topic. While we appreciate all your comments on the conscience issue, they ought to appear on that post. Help us stay on topic. Thanks.
ScottEF
/ January 25, 2012I didn’t know that relevant comments were considered “threadjacking.” The point–I hope the irony is not too subtle to grasp–is that the danger of “relativism” in our society does *NOT* come exclusively, or even predominantly, from secularism. Rather, it comes more from religious groups who have no serious arguments with which to justify their imposition of doctrinal “morality” upon the rest of us, and resort instead to various ad hoc argument forms and premises, including those which implicitly support subjectivism and nihilism. This is extremely relevant to Gilson’s argument, which your earlier posts on him made clear ultimately are being used to support religious schooling as an “alternative” to secular, aka morally subjective, education. Gilson’s comments here suggest this more indirectly that we should return to a morality rooted in the concept of “sin,” aka with reference to pleasing the moods of a divine being, as postulated again by religious persons (which ones? again this is a surreptitious form of subjectivism if this is picked arbitrarily). So my point is that Gilson’s remedy is not a superior alternative–it *IS* a big, big part of the problem you can he claim to lament.
Alberto Hurtado
/ January 25, 2012The request is that you keep the discussion on point to Gilson. There is a lot to delve in there without touching yesterday’s topic, which can be touch in yesterday’s thread. Thanks.
ScottEF
/ January 25, 2012Again Alberto, the point is *EXTREMELY* relevant to Gilson’s larger point. Let me spell this out for you EXPLICITLY since you persist in not getting it, or pretending not to get it.
In attacking secular values as such, and promoting religious education as the only acceptable substitute for them, Gilson is essentially endorsing religious fascism. This is WRONG. It is EVIL. It is rooted in SUBJECTIVISM. Such subjectivism can be seen nakedly when well-educated students and lawyers, who should know better and have every opportunity to know better, nakedly endorse subjectivist principles in the defense of their religious views, and seem unable to come up with anything better. If *THIS* is what amounts to, or is the product of, the “religious education [which] alone can produce moral citizens,” if *THIS* is what is being offered as “an absolute basis for social stability…one bound up with eternal truths” (http://www.cfmpl.org/blog/2012/01/09/moral-authority/#more-3668)–then we have good reason to reject this “black is white, night is day” shell game. Subjectivism is being falsely presented here as objective moral ethics, in a move which undermines and confuses true objective morality.
Gilson’s position, therefore, is deeply evil and corrupt. So is the position of anyone who agrees with him, or attempts to use his position as a justification for demanding that they impose their subjectively-sourced albeit pretended “objective” morality upon the rest of us.
Gilson Gilson Gilson.
Do you get it yet? I’m talking about Gilson all along. But I admit it is convenient that the last three new posts in EP conveniently overlap and reveal the contradictions in the shared convictions of Gilson and the EP editors & authors quite explicitly. I will continue to point out such contradictions as I see fit, as I’ve been trying to do for quite some time here, and may well continue to do so until I am explicitly told that logic and truth-seeking is not wanted on this blog. If you find it inconvenient that one blog post contradicts another, written as a collective statement including the author of the first blog, and annoyed that I am pointing this out, don’t blame the messenger.
ScottEF
/ January 25, 2012Note: the “quote” on my last comment here was quite mistaken; I originally started a message replying to Andrew, then realized I should really reply to Alberto’s message, cut and pasted something from the old message by accident and forgot to take it out. Sorry that the “quote” thus is not a quote and makes no sense, please ignore it.
Andrew Haines
/ January 26, 2012Phew. I’ll just start with a new response thread. Thanks for clarifying the mistaken quote here, also.
While I appreciate your claim that some of the ideas in the past set of posts point to “contradictions in the shared convictions of Gilson and [me],” I disagree with it. I think it’s not accurate. And I think it’s based on a clear—albeit understandable—equivocation with regard to the placement and significance of “objectivity.”
I, for one, have never claimed that subjective assertions are incompatible with intact, objective grounds—for morals or anything else. And from what I point out here concerning Gilson’s use of the term “objective,” it seems he’d agree. Objectivity—to be objective—requires subjective assertion. But such a genesis is different than the mere translation of subjective claims into objective truths, which is what you seem to suggest I’m (we’re?) doing.
I don’t propose that this is all very easy or clear or distinct, and I think it takes some work to make sense of. That’s just the nature of rational morality. Thus, I believe the onus is on you, and those who share your criticism, to demonstrate just why others should condemn “the EP position” as inaccurate, and as nakedly (and detrimentally) subjectivist.
ScottEF
/ January 30, 2012Andrew, the onus is on the EP editors to define what they meant by “conscience.” To many people, it means any strongly-held moral conviction; and under that definition, an absolute right to avoid government compulsion against one’s “conscience,” regardless of the government’s reason for doing so, is pure subjectivism. If you meant something else, you’ve had over a week to explain yourselves….