Between fending off charges of abusing their positions or exploiting their wealth for political advantage, politicians are currently debating the ethics of war, the liberties of religious denominations, the rights and wrongs of assisted suicide and the sexualisation of children. Such topics also form the staple diet of media discussions. And none are more hotly disputed than the issues of money and sex.
There has been widespread condemnation of the salaries and bonuses paid to bankers, broadcasters and public sector executives. Yet our attitudes towards wealth are ambivalent. On one hand, a large income gap between the rich and poor is considered wrong, but on the other, aspiration to affluence is thought to be a good thing. The Prime Minister recently talked of his conviction that everyone should have “the chance to rise as far as their talents take them”, and his desire to build an economy that would allow people to “get on in life”. But if getting on is good, and rising as far as your talents will take you is right, how can there be a duty to limit aspiration by restricting rewards, particularly when these may be necessary for the recruitment and retention of those who have the skills to create and maintain a strong economy?
As for sex, we find ourselves in a very confused condition: celebrating sexual freedom and guilt-free pleasure, made ever more youthful by the lowering of the age of consent, while at the same time agonising about teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and the sexualisation of the young. A recent Home Office report on the subject described “a drip, drip effect”, in which the so-called pornification of our culture was “hypersexualising girls”.
Then there are the ongoing debates about reproduction, abortion, gay partnership, marriage, the treatment of animals, the environment ... When these controversies are examined, some common patterns emerge. There is often superficial agreement on form but deeper dispute about substance. It may be agreed, for example, that at the heart of an issue lies the question of welfare, but then it is disputed quite what welfare involves, and whose welfare takes precedence. Equally, it might be accepted that an issue is about rights, but there is fierce disagreement over whose rights are more pressing.
There is also an inverse relation between the increasing number and complexity of ethical challenges, and the resources we have to analyse and resolve them. Social changes have brought some old issues, such as fidelity and integrity, into sharper focus. Meanwhile, medical and technological developments have created new possibilities such as egg-selection, cloning, genetic manipulation, multiple organ transplantation, electronic surveillance and weaponry of mass destruction. Yet over the same time-period, from the second half of the 20th century onwards, our ethical currency has been devalued and our moral reserves have been diminished.
These two patterns – agreement in form but disagreement in substance, and increasing problems but diminishing resources – are connected, and are largely traceable to a common cause, namely the decline of Judeo-Christian belief and practice. This suggestion will prompt some readers to think that this is just the old complaint of the religious conservative that the world is going to hell in a handcart. What I want to propose, however, is a somewhat different analysis which poses a challenge as much to a certain kind of religious believer as to a familiar sort of secular atheist. In short, I propose that our problem is that we need and generally now lack a philosophical understanding of human life.
The way we describe ethical challenges – using the concepts of equality, respect, justice, charity and so on – has a particular cultural and intellectual history. Central to this is Christian moral theology in which were fashioned the ideas of human dignity, the inviolability of the innocent, and concern for those in need. Important developments in moral philosophy have certainly come from the pens of agnostics, but the core ideas originated in a Judeo-Christian understanding of human nature.
The promotion of happiness, for example, is often thought to originate in secular rather than religious thought. Indeed, the utilitarian principle – act so as to promote the happiness of all, treating each as equal – is often paraded as an achievement of secular philosophy working in opposition to religious morality as represented by the Ten Commandments and other systems of “divine law”.
Yet if we ask why universal happiness should be promoted on an equal basis, it is hard to find a coherent secular answer. For the Christian, by contrast, the principle of equality of consideration is rooted in the idea that each human being, whatever their condition or talents, is equal insofar as they are adopted children of God. Likewise, in asking the question, “Who are we to care for?” the answer, “Whoever is in need”, has its origins in the parable of the Good Samaritan offered by Jesus in answer to the question: “Who is my neighbour?”
Similarly, the idea of human rights originated in scholastic theology. In the Middle Ages there was a debate over holy poverty which turned in part on the question of whether Christ and his Apostles owned anything at all. The conclusion was that everyone has inalienable rights of ownership and control over their own bodies. From this came the idea that people also have rights over what they create through their labour. These ideas are fruits of a particular religious understanding of human nature. Detached from that understanding it will only be a matter of time before they dry and wither. Of course, one might seek to develop equivalent fruits from a different source. The question is, can that be done?
The language of contemporary ethical debate originated in a religious understanding which is itself in decline. As a result, the language has become alien to us. We continue to use it but without having a single coherent source for that use. We speak of “universal rights” and the “equality of all” but by any natural measure human beings are evidently unequal, so whence comes this elevated status and inviolability? We speak of the obligation to clothe the naked and feed the hungry but whence comes that duty, if not from some broad notion of common membership of an all-inclusive moral community? And what basis for this can substitute for the religious idea of brotherhood?
In losing touch with the source of moral meaning our moral thinking has become confused. We invoke the principle of the inviolability of innocent life when condemning the bombing of civilians, but set it aside when it comes to abortion. We assert the principle of non-exploitation in opposing slavery yet countenance the creation of “sibling saviours” for harvesting tissue. We deploy the language of innocence in relation to under-age sex, yet talk of a right to gratification with the passing of a birthday. Little surprise that we face confusing and apparently irresolvable conflicts.
How then to progress? It won’t be surprising if a professional philosopher suggests that the place to begin our search for ethical foundations is with philosophy, which can improve our grasp of issues by clarifying them. Philosophy involves the analysis of ideas, assumptions and arguments, thus helping to resolve ambiguities and confusions. For example, it is increasingly common in talking of “rights” to conflate liberties and entitlements. A clear instance of this is the argument that people have a claim to reproductive services, such as fertility treatment, based on article 16 of the Declaration of Human Rights which specifies “the right to marry and to found a family”. On analysis, however, it is clear that this refers to a right of non-interference from the state (a liberty) not a right to the provision by it of the means necessary to conceive and bear children (an entitlement). Again, in speaking of “acceptance” there is a tendency to confuse toleration with approbation. So while it may be reasonable to require secular humanists to tolerate public displays of religious devotion, or to require traditional Christians to tolerate public recognition of gay partnerships, it does not follow that it is reasonable to require either party to approve or support these. Tolerance is the public virtue of accepting what one does not approve.
The value of philosophical clarification could hardly be overstated, particularly for a culture that is generally mentally sloppy. Yet clarity is not enough: for a position can be lucidly distinct and still false. Beyond lucidity one needs truth. It is the business of philosophy to state truths about morality and the conduct of life. Judeo-Christian belief and practice in its mature forms was itself the embodiment of a philosophy of life; but with its decline no equivalently comprehensive account of human existence has emerged to take its place.
This matters, partly because without such an account we are threatened with the thought that human existence is absurd and pointless. That was the dread possibility explored by Albert Camus and the pessimistic existentialists in the 1940s and 1950s. For them it raised the question of whether, faced with meaninglessness, one would do better to kill oneself; and this prompts the question whether rising rates of self-harm and suicide among young people today may be connected to a similar sense of the absence of human meaning.
What the Christian philosophy offered was an overarching narrative, an account of human life from conception, through infancy and childhood into adulthood and old age and towards and beyond death. It also identified dignity in each phase of life. Within this scheme the value of childhood, and of old age, were accounted for. Similarly, the value of male and female, of parent and child, of labourer and adminstrator, and so on, were each understood in relation to their expression of divinely-gifted powers, and their contribution to the common good of society.
Such a narrative relates human beings not as separate, autonomous individuals but as socially-completed persons. The fuller religious narrative, or larger picture, is one that ennobles human life by seeing it as a sacred creation made for eternal joy.
None of this, of course, establishes the truth of the Judeo-Christian philosophy of life, but it helps to explain the original meaning of the moral ideas we are left with. However, it also reveals why in the absence of the narrative that gave them point, and which integrated them as parts of a larger account of human meaning, they no longer seem to guide us. Instead they leave us conflicted and confused.
Such is the case, for example, with “respect for life”, which is now invoked equally forcefully by opposing sides in debates about abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia; or again “material wealth”, which is one day denounced as an indulgence, and the next praised as an aspiration. Finally, it poses the challenge I mentioned earlier, for if ethics is ever again to make the kind of sense it did to generations past, it will have to be set within a broader philosophy of life. That is a challenge to secularists who have yet to provide a non-religious alternative, and to Christians who wield biblical passages as if they were swords provided for the striking down of unbelievers. For they, too, need to seek out the larger narrative.
Supposing then that both step up and meet the challenge, how might we tell which is true? The only possible answer, I think, is that we should favour that philosophy which best makes sense of human life including both its intimations of human transcendence and its demonstrations of human depravity. It is hard to see how such an account could be other than a religious one, at least to the extent of identifying something in humanity that transcends its material foundations and orients it towards some kind of spiritual fulfilment. Certainly there are intellectual challenges in recovering such an account, but there are also moral dangers in trying to live without one.
John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy in the University of St Andrews, which this week is hosting a a festival of public philosophy. His latest books are Practical Philosophy (2009) and Reasonable Faith (2010)
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/ceppa/festival.htm
