Moral and Spiritual Leadership in an Age of Plural Moralities

Hans Alma,Ina ter Avest

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351037600
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion, Politik & Staat

In crisis situations, such as terror attacks or societal tensions caused by migration, people tend to look for explicit moral and spiritual leadership and are often inclined to vote for so-called 'strong leaders'. Is there a way to resist the temptation of the simplistic solutions that these 'strong leader' offer, and instead encourage constructive engagement with the complex demands of our times? This volume utilises relational and dialogical perspectives to examine and address many of the issues surrounding the moral and spiritual guidance articulated in globalizing Western societies.

The essays in this collection focus on the concept of plural moralities, understood as divergent visions on what is a 'good life', both in an ethical, aesthetical, existential, and spiritual sense. They explore the political-cultural context and consequences of plural moralities as well as discussing challenges, possibilities, risks, and dangers from the perspective of two promising relational theories: social constructionism and dialogical self theory. The overarching argument is that it is possible to constructively put in nuanced moral and spiritual guidance into complex, plural societies.

By choosing a clear theoretical focus on relational approaches to societal challenges, this interdisciplinary book provides both a broad scope and a coherent argument. It will be of great interest to scholars of social and political psychology, leadership and organization, religious studies, and pedagogy.

Part I

Theoretical perspectives

1 Toward a relational ethic

Kenneth J.Gergen

Introduction

Several years ago I was having lunch with a philosopher friend, and described to her some of my theoretical work in social construction. The work focused on the way in which people together generate interpretations of what is real, rational, and good. As I explained, such ideas have been inspiring to many people, because they remove the rational grounds for any authority – whether secular or sacred – to dictate or determine what is true or good for all. A space is thus opened for the expression of all opinions. Yet, as I waxed enthusiastically about the implications of these views for science, education, and daily life, my companion grew quiet. When I paused for her reflections, I was met with a glowering silence. Finally, with clenched teeth, she let me know that she could no longer remain at the table with me. Dumbstruck, I pleaded to know the source of her irritation. As she explained, she had relatives who had died in the Holocaust, and the ideas I expressed offered no means of resisting Nazi atrocities. For constructionists, she reasoned, there was no commitment to an ethic that could stand in the way of such evil. This was intolerable.

We did work our way slowly through the entanglements of logic in such a way that we could complete the meal in relatively good terms. However, the experience was a powerful one, and its reverberations have continued to the present – now finding expression in the present offering. As I have now come to see it, we were caught that day within a tension of centuries’ duration, reaching its zenith in the late 20th century. One might say we were still toiling with the outcome of the Enlightenment, in which the forces of reason and observation were set against religious beliefs. In the early 20th century, this tension emerged as the struggle between a secular and largely materialistic orientation to life and deep investments in spirituality, human values, and traditions of the sacred. As the century grew on, the Enlightenment echoes could be located in various forms of pluralism as against various efforts to sustain foundational values on the other side.¹

Such dialogues continue, but now with a new and far more sinister edge. In my view, the emerging plethora of globe-spanning technologies of communication has radically intensified our differences. We have reached the point today at which values and beliefs have leaped from their geographical boundaries and are everywhere in conflict. Jet transportation enables one to relocate to virtually any other corner of the earth in less than 24 hours. By virtue of the World Wide Web, one may locate the like-minded in any geographical location, near or far. With email, one may remain in close contact with any acquaintance, no matter where they are. With smartphones we may instantly be in contact textually, auditorily, and visually. The result is that anyone seeking security in a tradition of value or belief can potentially locate around-the-clock support throughout the world. Communities of belief may thus engage in continuous reinforcement of their views, strengthening, intensifying, and expanding. With this solidification, all that is outside the wall of belief becomes alien, a potential threat. My luncheon colleague argued passionately, but hers is only one of myriad passions. As convictions spread and intensify, so the world becomes more deadly.

Paradoxically, however, these technologies that intensify a world of conflict also lend themselves to the deterioration of moral relevance. For large segments of Western culture, they undermine commitments to any belief or value whatsoever. Everywhere, individuals and organizations make strong claims to the moral high ground – in religion, politics, gender, race, and so on. All too often, such claims result in the demeaning, oppression, imprisonment, or murder of massive numbers of people. For those witnessing these effects, strong, passionate, or foundational claims to the good seem increasingly dangerous. Indeed, an inflexible commitment to any moral value seems childish or primitive.²

More problematically, a resistance to fundamentalism also lends itself to moral indifference.³ Righteous claims to the good pose a danger. And if every group can make claims to ‘the good’ in its own terms, then no one’s claims have commanding force – this includes the claims of government, the law, the church, one’s parents, and so on. Thus “whatever I declare as good, is as legitimate as any other.” Indeed, why should one bother inquiring into the good at all? Just live life as it comes, fulfill yourself, and don’t bother with the rest. This is a world in which public lying, embezzlement, profiteering, fraud, intimidation, money laundering, tax evasion, and the like are not particularly shameful. The only significant problem is getting caught. Such views – often equated with moral relativism – find little resistance in the culture. There are no strong arguments against them, save those of yet another foundationalist enclave. Because of their alliance with the Enlightenment, and their need to remain non-partisan, our schools offer few resources for moral deliberation. Slowly, the resources for an ethical consciousness are bled from society.

We thus enter a period of history in which value commitments are moving in diametrically opposing ways. On the one hand, such commitments are moving toward an intense and globally threatening pitch; in stark contrast, in many enclaves of the world, value commitments are ceasing to be regarded or relevant. How are we thus to proceed? We cannot easily fall back on any of the traditional religions for an answer, because their very claims to moral authority contribute to the situation at hand. Nor can we in the West dip into the repository of ethical positions – from Aristotelian virtues, Kantian imperatives, or human capabilities – to sustain a universal imperative. All are byproducts of Western culture, and thus suspicious for those outside that culture. And, on what grounds could they establish moral authority? Whose tradition would justify these grounds? More directly relevant to world conditions are ethical positions that favor generalized love or care for others – for example, a feminist ethics of care (Tronto, 2005), or a Levinasian entreaty to attend to “the face of the other” (Levinas, 2005). But even here we are left with enormous ambiguities in how an ethic of care for the other would play out if ‘the other’ wishes to restrict education to males, abandon a two-state solution, expel immigrants, or segregate the races.

In what follows, I will open a space for an alternative orientation to ethics, one that could blunt the attempts to impose ethics that would silence all others, but that could simultaneously rekindle a concern with ethical deliberation. More precisely, I wish to generate an ethical standpoint that honors all visions of what is good or moral in human activity. At the same time, I will make no foundational claims for this meta-ethical standpoint. As ungrounded grounds, the proposal functions not so much as an imperative but rather as an invitation. Where will this take us? How would it benefit humankind or life on the planet more generally? What are we asked to sacrifice? The invitation to deliberation is inclusive. Yet, I do not view such deliberations as primarily conceptual in nature. The challenge here is not conceptual justification or a scholarly adventure into abstraction. Rather, the attempt is to explore the ethical implications in ongoing action. This means that neither a foundational commitment nor a relativistic insouciance will allow escape. The challenge lies in the way in which our actions play out together from moment to moment.

To explore what I shall call a relational ethic, I will first consider the origins of all moral orientations. This will invite an appreciation of the multiple and conflicting visions of the good now circulating the globe. It will also illuminate the closely related ‘sources of evil.’ This discussion sets the stage for considering the significance of relational process in giving rise to all moral orientations. Valuing this source of value thus serves as a meta-ethic. I then take up four domains of action that may ground the more abstract logic of relational ethics. This will allow us to confront the twin challenges of foundationalism and relativism.

The relational origins of good and evil⁴

The range of what humans have come to value over the centuries is virtually boundless – from the love of gods, community, country, love, self-realization, and equality, on the more sweeping side; to family, gun ownership, privacy, and football on the more specific. One might even find values deeply insinuated into every movement of the day – from the hour of arising, to the choice of what one eats, to whom one speaks, to each of the websites visited as one traverses cyberspace. To be sure, we find many speculations about universal goods – for example, peace, benevolence, freedom, or sensual pleasure. But for any value that one identifies in such efforts, there are people in various conditions who will find war more desirable than peace, self-satisfaction more appealing than benevolence, control more helpful than promoting freedom, and asceticism more fulfilling than sensual pleasure. One is drawn, then, to the ineluctable conclusion that moral values are specific to various cultures or subcultures in various times and specific places.

Such a conclusion is no small matter because it reveals what may be viewed as the primary source of values: human relationships. Whether any activity is a good in itself – possessing intrinsic value – remains conjectural. However, there is virtually no activity that some people at some time have not resisted. The value of an activity does not emerge, then, from the activity in itself, but from the meaning it acquires in human interchange.⁵ In this sense, values acquire their meaning in the same way as language: participation in a social process. Virtually all relationships will generate at least rudimentary understandings of ‘what is good for us.’ They are essential to sustaining patterns of coordination. It should not be surprising, then, that the term ethics is derived from the Greek, ethos, or essentially, the customs of the people; or that the term morality draws from the Latin root, mos, or mores, thus equating morality with custom. Our constructions of reality walk hand in hand with our logics, and our moralities.

Let us view this movement from rudimentary coordination to value formation in terms of first-order morality. To function within any viable relationship will virtually require embracing, with or without articulation, the values inherent in its patterns. When I teach a class of students, for example, first-order morality is at work. We establish and perpetuate what has become the ‘good for us.’ There are no articulated rules in this case, no moral injunctions, no bill of rights for students and teachers. The rules are all implicit, but they touch virtually everything we do, from the tone and pitch of my voice, my posture, and the direction of my gaze to the intervals during which students may talk, the loudness of their voice, and the movement of lips, legs, feet, and hands. One false move and any of us becomes the target of scorn. In effect, morality of the first order is essentially being sensible within a way of life.⁶ In the same vein, most people do not deliberate about murdering their best friend, not because of some principle to which they were exposed in their early years, and not because it is illegal. It is virtually unthinkable. Similarly, it would be unthinkable to break out in a tap dance at a holy mass, or to destroy a colleague’s laboratory. To be sure, such ways of life may be solidified in our laws, sanctified by our religions, celebrated in our moral deliberations, and intensively articulated in ethical theory. We live our lives largely within the comfortable houses of first-order morality.

It is at this point that we also join hands with writings on moral or value pluralism. As often attributed to Isaiah Berlin (1991), we recognize the possibility of a range of fundamentally different, incommensurable, and potentially conflicting traditions of morality. And, while pluralist writings are often equated with political liberalism – standing against fascism or absolutism of any kind – less is said about ‘origins of evil.’ But consider: whenever people come into coordination, first-order morality is in the making. As we strive to find mutually satisfactory ways of going on together, we begin to establish a local good, “the way we do it.” Simultaneously, the emergence of ‘the good’ creates an alternative of the less than good. A range of actions are now featured as off limits, or forbidden – a door behind which lies mystery. All children know the joy of breaking the rules, whispering in class, laughing at a prank, stealing a cookie. And what is forbidden always invites the curiosity of “what if. . . .” Further, there is rebellion against the tyranny of the enforcer. “Why can’t I . . .?” “Who says I can’t . . .?” “I don’t take orders from you.”

The potential for immorality is furthered by the fact that most cultural traditions carry multiple values, variously important or emphasized depending on context. We place a value on working hard, and on playing; on freedom, and on responsibility; on obedience, and on disobedience; on fitting in, and on being unique; on pleasing others, and on autonomy; and so on. Thus the stage is set for choosing the good, and simultaneously being scorned or punished for being bad. One should care for one’s family, but may be jailed for stealing to fill their needs; women should have the right to abort, but be ostracized for doing so; a president should not lie, but will be protected by his colleagues if the lie enhances the power of their party. ‘Bad actions’ may always seem to be a ‘good idea at the moment.’ And, of course, we now confront the clashes of civilizations, as deeply entrenched traditions of the good come face to face, often finding a threatening evil in the other.

Relational process: the ethical invitation

As I am proposing, as people coordinate their actions, creating a way of life that will optimally be harmonious and nourishing, they are laying the groundwork for what we call moral action. In this sense, moral action is always under production, whether unstated and little regarded, or articulated and staunchly defended. This also leaves us with the following paradox: the very production of first-order moralities also establishes the conditions for immorality. But whatever is immoral for one may be valued by another. In this sense, conflicting goods will always be with us. The challenge is not to achieve a conflict-free existence, but to locate ways of approaching conflict that do not bend toward mutual extermination. Given the challenge of moral apathy, are there means of inspiring moral engagement without the demands of singular commitment?

It is just here that we can return to the original source of moral commitment, and indeed, meaning of any kind: coordinated action. The value of harmonious relationships is scarcely new to ethical inquiry. However, almost invariably the ethic has restated on a fundamental assumption of separation. The ethically informed person acts toward others in a way that harmony will ensue: “I do unto others,” “I am compassionate toward others,” “I am caring for others,” and so on. By focusing on the emergence of human meaning, we shift from this traditional concern with individuals to the more fundamental process of relating. Out of this process, the very idea of individuals is created. Human communication is essentially the outcome of coordination among persons. Like language, moral leanings are not the product of any single person. They depend on relational process. Without this process, we have no religion, science, political institutions, commerce, education, or organizations. There is nothing to care about or live for – big or small. Regardless of tradition – existing or in the making – the positive potentials of this process are vital. If we all draw life from this process, then it demands our collective attention. Here we may speak of what should be a universal concern, the grounding for a relational ethic.

Now consider the consequences of the paradoxical relation between ‘good and evil.’ Most typically, challenges to a moral order are met with resistance. As children we are encouraged to ‘be good’ through rewards, and our failures are met with irritation, lectures, correction, penalties, and physical punishment. In each case, a space of alienation emerges between the parties. Then there are the more heinous actions – robbery, extortion, rape, drug dealing, or murder. It is here we find a dangerous transformation in the quest for the good. In the case of these more threatening actions, an impulse toward elimination is often unleashed. This is typically accomplished through various forms of defense (surveillance, policing), curtailment (imprisonment, torture), or, more radically, through extermination (death penalty, invasion, bombs). This shift from alienation to elimination can be accompanied by a sense of deep virtue.

As we shift from a...