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INVENTING MORALITY (1 of 4)
Whatever influence presses upon our thinking, our morality is our decision. It is a matter of drawing a line across which we do not want to go -- which we may cross anyway out of impulse, followed by regret.
Our decisions are ours despite being social creatures and our minds being to some extent cultural creations. In small, ancient tribal societies, people were more uniform in their attitudes than they are in today's huge and diverse societies of millions. Today we choose whether to adhere to the faith of our parents or some other faith or no faith at all. And we have a greater freedom to be different than have peoples of numerous centuries past. Neighbors tend to leave neighbors to their religious and other preferences so long as it does not intrude on their lives.
In early authoritarian societies community absolutes were established regarding sexual acts, property and religious worship. Property owners wanted their ownership protected. Women were the property of men. And monotheists contributed to enforcing the moral certainties of their faith. In ancient times adultery was punished by stoning to death. It still exists in some tribal Islamic societies where what they know of Western freedoms are derided as godlessness. During the Middle Ages in Europe, authoritarianism gave rise to the burning of people at the stake and the murderous crusades against heretics. It gave rise to Ferdinand and Isabella and their Inquisitor General, Torquemada, and it gave rise to the Dominican priest of Florence Italy, Savonarola. And all of this was the morality of that time.
In modern societies are cultural traditions that outline what is ethical and what is not. These cultural traditions give to some of us a vision of morality as a means to personal salvation. Some of us believe that it is not proper for a man and woman to live together without having been married by their Church, or the state. Some of us believe that it is not proper for a married person to have sexual relations other than with one's spouse -- a view that was not common among Europe's aristocracy, including its kings, or presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy.
Into the 21st century some people complain of what they call permissiveness. But even parents they consider permissive want their daughters to be happy and treated well as children and into adulthood. And with morality being about how people are treated, despite the new attitudes toward sexuality, people attached to other people maintain moral concerns.
The individual in a "permissive" environment becomes the artist of her own life with her ability to make choices. The choices she makes becomes her morality and not the business of her neighbors -- while some who would want to choose for her might call this moral relativism. And the choices she makes depend upon what she has learned about people and from her mistakes.
Some of us believe in the "good nature" of our children. Some of us believe, as the ancient Taoists did, that we can rely on our good nature and allow our impulses to run. But for all of us, impulses [note] are not always self-serving. Life is a series of choices sometimes made in an instant. We have all seen or heard of examples of devoutly religious people letting themselves go astray. Some excuse their behavior on being human. But being human excuses nothing. Because we can choose, we are responsible for what we do. Some people of faith are well aware of the dangers of impulse and try to protect themselves from it by a more intense faith. Some of us believe that believing in impulse adds to its dangers and that we can better protect ourselves from it by awareness and education.
The French philosopher, Henri Bergson, believed that the way to reality was through intuition rather than reason. He criticized the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Kant believed that our wills are autonomous and that we ought to act in accordance with what is good for society. Our behavior, he held, ought to rise from a moral foundation of reason. Bergson believed -- intuitively perhaps -- that Kant was naive about the human psyche. Bergson wrote about two kinds of morality that are a part of a life force (élan vital): morality based on unchanging religion and morality that is dynamc, both of them the product of this life force. Bergson believed that we experience psychic tensions if we deviate from fundamental morality and that we can return to that fundamental morality -- love -- effortlessly.
Some described as postmodernists see Bergson's view as metaphysical nonsense, and some pity philosophy students having to wade through and make sense of his writings. Postmodern ethicists are closer to John Dewey (also not an easy read). Dewey wrote of humanity advancing its moral choices by learning through experience what is beneficial and what is harmful -- moral pragmatism. We achieve moral progress and maturity, wrote Dewey, when we reflect upon our own value judgments in regard to what we and humanity in general are doing.
Copyright © 2010 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.