Moral Absolutism and Moral Relativism
Another alum writes:
“The funny thing is that you've campaigned for years the importance of absolute morality and frowned upon relative morality. However, numerous times when your opinion is asked on something such as homosexuality, abortion,etc. You state that such issues are too complicated to give a yes or no answer to. It's almost as though you are stating that one cannot see the world in black and white but shades of gray. That seems like moral relativism to me. Is there some key subtle point I've missed or am I drawing connections where none exist? Please elucidate.”
With pleasure, though not without difficulty:
You are missing a point, whose degree of subtlety to you depends, I suppose, on how easily you come to recognize it. You have got stuck on false meanings for the words “absolute” and “relative” when applied to morality. “Absolute morality” never meant totally clear black-and-white solutions to all particular moral problems. “Relative morality” never meant recognizing that sometimes the right moral path is not clear.
Belief in absolute morality means belief in certain fundamental principles that are universal and unquestionable, premises that cannot be proven and are not subject to discussion. Example: justice is good. There’s no gray there. Accept this premise, you are a moral absolutist, and then we can discuss how best to achieve justice in this or that situation. Reject it (justice is not good; justice is sometimes useful but may be irrelevant), you are a relativist, and then all discussion about how to behave justly in this or that situation becomes moot; without the shared underlying value, there are no grounds for proving one position superior to another.
Absolute values include justice, mercy, temperance, truth, fidelity, kindness, courage, wisdom, love, patience, humility, and similar universals. A moral absolutist believes these have value in all situations. To be moral is to try to apply each universal value in such a way that no other universal value is breached. This goal defines an ideal, perhaps impossible to achieve, but worth striving for. A moral relativist believes that there are no absolutes of this kind, therefore there is no ideal to strive for, therefore there is no point in arguing about which action would be better than another.
Thus, there is a huge difference between recognizing the complexity in applying the fundamental rules of absolute morality to particular situations and believing that all morality is relative. I am a moral absolutist only in the sense that I believe these universals are always values, no matter the culture or the age or the particular situation. This does not mean that I always live up to these ideals or always know how to do so. Perhaps no one does. But unlike the relativist, the absolutist believes the values exist as qualities toward which to strive.
The challenge of human life is how to apply these universals in particular situations without betraying any of them. This is why we need the Bible and the Talmud and the Summa Theologica and the English Common Law and the U.S. Constitution and the Divine Comedy and Hamlet and school rulebooks and many another human effort at clarification. That the application of the universal values to particular situations is difficult is not a sign that the universals don’t exist.
It is not moral relativism to recognize that one must not punish with identical penalties similar crimes committed by a small child and by a willfully bad adult. It is justice tempered with wisdom. It is not moral relativism to see a difference between helping the poor as best you can and impoverishing yourself and your family to do so. It is kindness tempered with prudence. To make such distinctions is not to say that morality is relative. It is to say that the proper application of universals to particular situations requires every bit of wisdom and knowledge we can muster. The relativist would say that there are no grounds even for using the word “proper” in the previous sentence.
How one may judge a case with both justice and mercy is a moral problem. How a government can courageously defeat its enemies without failing to recognize their humanity is another. If such questions had simple and absolute answers, there would be no need for the human mind to have to make choices, to figure out the right thing to do. And there would be no need for the thousands of years of moral and legal codes and revisions of codes and preserved historical precedents to try to apply absolutes to particular situations in ways consistent with the other absolutes. Absolutism about moral values means believing there is a meaningful difference between the better and the worse way of deciding such questions. It does not mean that finding the best way is always easy or clear.
There may be actual moral relativists who participate in the debates about abortion and about so-called gay marriage. But I would say that most people, on either side of each issue, are arguing for what they believe to be right, about which they would not claim to be relativists. This does not make the debates themselves easy. But it does make them valuable. If the opponents were true relativists, there would be no grounds for arguing at all. But most who support the freedom to choose abortion, like most who oppose them, believe in values: life, justice, and kindness. How to apply those values is the problem—hence the debate.
I personally believe (consistent with rabbinic tradition) that abortion is wrong except in cases where, in the opinion of a competent medical authority, the actual life of the mother is at stake—that is, until the head of the infant crowns during childbirth, whereupon the lives of mother and child are equal and both must be fought for equally. This may seem like a shade of gray. But it is not. Killing an innocent human being is bad in principle; saving a human life is good in principle. There is no argument there. These are absolutes. The question is what happens when the life of the fetus conflicts with the life of the mother? The rabbis’ resolution is an attempt to be true to both values at once. One might reasonably take a different position—arguing that abortion is proper even when only the health of the mother is at stake, or is improper even if her life is at stake—without being a moral relativist. Those positions may be different attempts to apply the same universal values. Even confessing uncertainty about where one ought to stand on the issue is not necessarily relativism. It may be an active embrace of the universal value of humility in the face of a moral problem too difficult for an individual alone to solve. It is people who deny the premises of the debate—the absolute universal value of human life—who are the relativists. With them no discussion is possible, for they reject the very grounds on which any moral argument must be based.
A similar point needs to be made about homosexuality. Rooted in the biblical tradition, in almost universal human cultural practice, and in the natural principle that only through the union of opposites is creation possible, Western civilization has enshrined the value of heterosexual marriage. Acceptance of this value means recognizing that homosexual behavior represents a departure from that ideal. It is not, in other words, a neutral “alternative life choice” of equal value. On the other hand, the same civilization has grown to enshrine individual liberty and equality as essential to justice and holds persecution, particularly for qualities over which an individual has no free choice (skin pigmentation, parentage, etc.) to be unjust. How then in the matter of homosexuality is a society to proceed? And what stand are individuals to take?
The society might try to define sexual orientation as a function of choice and forbid not only homosexual behavior but homosexual feelings; it might accept a person’s homosexual orientation but forbid homosexual behavior; it might countenance both orientation and behavior but forbid proselytizing against heterosexual marriage; or it might give up belief in the superior value of heterosexual marriage altogether (as the Roman aristocracy seems to have done at some point before Rome’s collapse). Individuals may range in behavior from persecution to laissez-faire disengagement.
The moral path here, which I believe is the middle path, is lit by the golden rule. We ought to do unto others as we would have others do unto us. We don’t want others to busy themselves pointing out our failures to live up to moral ideals. Neither do we want them to lie to us by pretending that we have lived up to them when we have not. One must therefore neither persecute one’s neighbor for being homosexual nor pretend that homosexual behavior is morally equivalent to marriage (any more than one ought to pretend that pre- or extra-marital heterosexual behavior is morally equivalent to marriage). One must treat every human being as one wants to be treated, with both kindness and truth as the situation may demand.
I am not a relativist just because I believe in the universal value of heterosexual marriage even while recognizing that many people cannot achieve it. I am not a relativist just because I maintain that gay marriage is not marriage even while accepting, in the name of justice and kindness, the validity of legal domestic partnerships for homosexuals. A relativist would say “Do what you want; it doesn’t matter.” The key here, as in so many modern American dilemmas, is to recognize that equality is not identity, that equal justice under the law cannot abolish nature. There is no good to come of proud condemnations of homosexuality. (Are heterosexuals attracted to the opposite sex because of virtue?) At the same time, a society that has given up on heterosexual marriage by failing to see the essential differences between it and homosexual relationships, like a society that has a 50% divorce rate, like a society that sees children as a time-drain and a cash-drain, like a society that performs millions of abortions each year, like a society that abandons its children to a poisonous entertainment industry or to the culture of the street gang—such a society is in love with death despite the universal moral value that commands us to love life.
I remain a moral absolutist in the sense that I believe in the absolute moral values. But no one in his right mind would claim to know infallibly how to apply those values to all particular situations. The moral life is not easy. We live in shades of gray, believing in the purity of the absolutes, striving to be guided by their light toward the Light.
“The funny thing is that you've campaigned for years the importance of absolute morality and frowned upon relative morality. However, numerous times when your opinion is asked on something such as homosexuality, abortion,etc. You state that such issues are too complicated to give a yes or no answer to. It's almost as though you are stating that one cannot see the world in black and white but shades of gray. That seems like moral relativism to me. Is there some key subtle point I've missed or am I drawing connections where none exist? Please elucidate.”
With pleasure, though not without difficulty:
You are missing a point, whose degree of subtlety to you depends, I suppose, on how easily you come to recognize it. You have got stuck on false meanings for the words “absolute” and “relative” when applied to morality. “Absolute morality” never meant totally clear black-and-white solutions to all particular moral problems. “Relative morality” never meant recognizing that sometimes the right moral path is not clear.
Belief in absolute morality means belief in certain fundamental principles that are universal and unquestionable, premises that cannot be proven and are not subject to discussion. Example: justice is good. There’s no gray there. Accept this premise, you are a moral absolutist, and then we can discuss how best to achieve justice in this or that situation. Reject it (justice is not good; justice is sometimes useful but may be irrelevant), you are a relativist, and then all discussion about how to behave justly in this or that situation becomes moot; without the shared underlying value, there are no grounds for proving one position superior to another.
Absolute values include justice, mercy, temperance, truth, fidelity, kindness, courage, wisdom, love, patience, humility, and similar universals. A moral absolutist believes these have value in all situations. To be moral is to try to apply each universal value in such a way that no other universal value is breached. This goal defines an ideal, perhaps impossible to achieve, but worth striving for. A moral relativist believes that there are no absolutes of this kind, therefore there is no ideal to strive for, therefore there is no point in arguing about which action would be better than another.
Thus, there is a huge difference between recognizing the complexity in applying the fundamental rules of absolute morality to particular situations and believing that all morality is relative. I am a moral absolutist only in the sense that I believe these universals are always values, no matter the culture or the age or the particular situation. This does not mean that I always live up to these ideals or always know how to do so. Perhaps no one does. But unlike the relativist, the absolutist believes the values exist as qualities toward which to strive.
The challenge of human life is how to apply these universals in particular situations without betraying any of them. This is why we need the Bible and the Talmud and the Summa Theologica and the English Common Law and the U.S. Constitution and the Divine Comedy and Hamlet and school rulebooks and many another human effort at clarification. That the application of the universal values to particular situations is difficult is not a sign that the universals don’t exist.
It is not moral relativism to recognize that one must not punish with identical penalties similar crimes committed by a small child and by a willfully bad adult. It is justice tempered with wisdom. It is not moral relativism to see a difference between helping the poor as best you can and impoverishing yourself and your family to do so. It is kindness tempered with prudence. To make such distinctions is not to say that morality is relative. It is to say that the proper application of universals to particular situations requires every bit of wisdom and knowledge we can muster. The relativist would say that there are no grounds even for using the word “proper” in the previous sentence.
How one may judge a case with both justice and mercy is a moral problem. How a government can courageously defeat its enemies without failing to recognize their humanity is another. If such questions had simple and absolute answers, there would be no need for the human mind to have to make choices, to figure out the right thing to do. And there would be no need for the thousands of years of moral and legal codes and revisions of codes and preserved historical precedents to try to apply absolutes to particular situations in ways consistent with the other absolutes. Absolutism about moral values means believing there is a meaningful difference between the better and the worse way of deciding such questions. It does not mean that finding the best way is always easy or clear.
There may be actual moral relativists who participate in the debates about abortion and about so-called gay marriage. But I would say that most people, on either side of each issue, are arguing for what they believe to be right, about which they would not claim to be relativists. This does not make the debates themselves easy. But it does make them valuable. If the opponents were true relativists, there would be no grounds for arguing at all. But most who support the freedom to choose abortion, like most who oppose them, believe in values: life, justice, and kindness. How to apply those values is the problem—hence the debate.
I personally believe (consistent with rabbinic tradition) that abortion is wrong except in cases where, in the opinion of a competent medical authority, the actual life of the mother is at stake—that is, until the head of the infant crowns during childbirth, whereupon the lives of mother and child are equal and both must be fought for equally. This may seem like a shade of gray. But it is not. Killing an innocent human being is bad in principle; saving a human life is good in principle. There is no argument there. These are absolutes. The question is what happens when the life of the fetus conflicts with the life of the mother? The rabbis’ resolution is an attempt to be true to both values at once. One might reasonably take a different position—arguing that abortion is proper even when only the health of the mother is at stake, or is improper even if her life is at stake—without being a moral relativist. Those positions may be different attempts to apply the same universal values. Even confessing uncertainty about where one ought to stand on the issue is not necessarily relativism. It may be an active embrace of the universal value of humility in the face of a moral problem too difficult for an individual alone to solve. It is people who deny the premises of the debate—the absolute universal value of human life—who are the relativists. With them no discussion is possible, for they reject the very grounds on which any moral argument must be based.
A similar point needs to be made about homosexuality. Rooted in the biblical tradition, in almost universal human cultural practice, and in the natural principle that only through the union of opposites is creation possible, Western civilization has enshrined the value of heterosexual marriage. Acceptance of this value means recognizing that homosexual behavior represents a departure from that ideal. It is not, in other words, a neutral “alternative life choice” of equal value. On the other hand, the same civilization has grown to enshrine individual liberty and equality as essential to justice and holds persecution, particularly for qualities over which an individual has no free choice (skin pigmentation, parentage, etc.) to be unjust. How then in the matter of homosexuality is a society to proceed? And what stand are individuals to take?
The society might try to define sexual orientation as a function of choice and forbid not only homosexual behavior but homosexual feelings; it might accept a person’s homosexual orientation but forbid homosexual behavior; it might countenance both orientation and behavior but forbid proselytizing against heterosexual marriage; or it might give up belief in the superior value of heterosexual marriage altogether (as the Roman aristocracy seems to have done at some point before Rome’s collapse). Individuals may range in behavior from persecution to laissez-faire disengagement.
The moral path here, which I believe is the middle path, is lit by the golden rule. We ought to do unto others as we would have others do unto us. We don’t want others to busy themselves pointing out our failures to live up to moral ideals. Neither do we want them to lie to us by pretending that we have lived up to them when we have not. One must therefore neither persecute one’s neighbor for being homosexual nor pretend that homosexual behavior is morally equivalent to marriage (any more than one ought to pretend that pre- or extra-marital heterosexual behavior is morally equivalent to marriage). One must treat every human being as one wants to be treated, with both kindness and truth as the situation may demand.
I am not a relativist just because I believe in the universal value of heterosexual marriage even while recognizing that many people cannot achieve it. I am not a relativist just because I maintain that gay marriage is not marriage even while accepting, in the name of justice and kindness, the validity of legal domestic partnerships for homosexuals. A relativist would say “Do what you want; it doesn’t matter.” The key here, as in so many modern American dilemmas, is to recognize that equality is not identity, that equal justice under the law cannot abolish nature. There is no good to come of proud condemnations of homosexuality. (Are heterosexuals attracted to the opposite sex because of virtue?) At the same time, a society that has given up on heterosexual marriage by failing to see the essential differences between it and homosexual relationships, like a society that has a 50% divorce rate, like a society that sees children as a time-drain and a cash-drain, like a society that performs millions of abortions each year, like a society that abandons its children to a poisonous entertainment industry or to the culture of the street gang—such a society is in love with death despite the universal moral value that commands us to love life.
I remain a moral absolutist in the sense that I believe in the absolute moral values. But no one in his right mind would claim to know infallibly how to apply those values to all particular situations. The moral life is not easy. We live in shades of gray, believing in the purity of the absolutes, striving to be guided by their light toward the Light.
posted by G.Rap | 12:21 PM
2 Comments:
I like this entry, and I think it has a lot to say. I have to express disagreement with these sentences:
"It is people who deny the premises of the debate—the absolute universal value of human life—who are the relativists."
I think it's possible to question the value of human life but retain belief in absolute truth. Therefore, I would choose a different means to define moral relativism.
It is possible to question the value of human life and retain belief in absolute truth. It is not possible to do so and retain belief in absolute value. If human life is not valuable, nothing human beings value is valuable, including the value of truth.
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