A Philosophy of Christian Morals for Today

Robert Corkey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415822121
• eBook ISBN: 9781135975920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Philosophers have been sharply divided in attempts to reconcile the validity of the moral distinctions essential to social well-being with the apparent ethical neutrality of the factual world. The failure to find an agreed solution to this problem produced the popular theory of Logical Empiricism, according to which ethical statements are meaningless. This and other kindred doctrines of ethical relativism that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century, are obviously fatal to the Christian belief that there is 'down here below' a recognisable Kingdom of God that men were born to serve.

In this book, originally published in 1961, the author offer a complete analysis of the nature of ethical perception to show how the two factors in moral decisions – a sense of moral obligation, and recognisable objective ethical values – can both be brought into a single coherent system of truth. He isolates the unique and ultimate element common to all our ethical and moral concepts and presents a clear view that the basic values recognised in a reasonable humanistic morality are embraced in the wider ideals of Christian Love. The purpose is to present a coherent system of moral truth that will, in this scientific age, commend itself to thoughtful people without offending their intelligence.

CHAPTER 1

ETHICAL RELATIVISM

We are all in the habit from time to time of making moral judgments about the conduct of other people, and sometimes about our own. In making such judgments we take it for granted, unless we have been philosophically ‘conditioned’, that our statements describe real objective characteristics of the situation to which we refer, and of the behaviour which brought it about.¹ If we say that an act is bad, we mean that it is really bad, and we intend our statements about it and its outcome to be accepted as true. We feel perfectly sure that any person, who was as fully aware of the facts as we are, would endorse our opinions. Here, for example, is a report of a bank robbery that appeared recently in The Times: ‘Two men employed by the American Express Company were attacked and robbed of about £12,000 in notes yesterday morning after leaving the local branch of the National Provincial Bank. … The two employees were taken to hospital and treated for head injuries. … They had been attacked by two men with coshes …and had been knocked about quite a lot.’ I venture to think that any average man, if asked to give his opinion about the incident, would without hesitation say it was a bad business. He would describe the motive prompting the deed as ‘sordid’, and he would probably add that the injuries inflicted on the two messengers were outrageous, not to mention the wrong done to their employers. Anyone who attempted to vindicate the deed and to exonerate the robbers from blame would be regarded as merely perverse, or as mentally deranged.

One of the most important problems in Moral Philosophy arises from just this fact, that when we pass judgment on the morality of an act of conduct, or on the ethical character of its results, we take it for granted that our statement describes a real, objective (though not literally ‘factual’) characteristic both of the act as such and of the consequences referred to; just as we do when we talk about the colours of the rainbow, or mention the time of day. This assumption is usually referred to as belief in the objectivity of ethical and moral judgments.¹

Now there are very few people who would not agree that, in their opinion, an act of brutal robbery was very wrong. In every period of the history of philosophy, however, there have been seriously minded people who, while personally condemning such a deed, would have denied that this condemnation indicated anything more than their own subjective opinion about it, and perhaps the similar opinions of most people in their community. They would have denied that the terms used, such as ‘bad’, ‘wicked’, etc., described any real, or objective, feature in the situation to which they seemed to refer. The condemnation had its origin, not in any insight into the nature of the objective situation, but in a purely subjective emotion, or wish, or desire, evoked in the mind of anyone who witnessed the deed. Moral judgments, these writers held, had no objective reference.

One of the most notable of our early English philosophers, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), states this opinion with classical clarity. ‘Whatever is the object of a man’s appetite or desire,’ he wrote, ‘that it is which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil: for these words good and evil are ever used with relation to the person who useth them, there being nothing simply or absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves’.¹ The same point of view was adopted by another writer of much greater distinction and discernment, David Hume (1711–1776). Summarizing his general argument, Hume writes as follows: ‘We have already observed that moral distinctions depend entirely upon certain peculiar sentiments of pain and pleasure, and that whatever mental quality in ourselves or others gives us a satisfaction, by the survey or reflection, is of course virtuous; as everything of this nature that gives us uneasiness, is vicious’.² It will be apparent from these brief quotations that, in the opinion of both these writers, any knowledge we may be supposed to have about the moral quality of acts of conduct, or about the goodness or badness of human situations, is not derived from any direct insight into the objective facts themselves, but is based on purely subjective feelings awakened in individuals who perceive the outward and obvious features of these situations.

This doctrine, however, which may be called Absolute Ethical Relativism, is not by any means a mere bygone theory. Several very well-known modern philosophers have expressed similar opinions. Bertrand Russell, for example, in an article on ‘Religion and Science’, bluntly makes this affirmation about ethical judgments: ‘The statement “This is good” makes no assertion, but expresses a wish’. This obviously means that the ultimate ground for the assertion is to be sought, not in any characteristic of objective reality, but in the subjective likes and dislikes of the person who makes the assertion. Similarly, Professor C. L. Stevenson in his much publicized book, Ethics and Language, says, ‘“This is good” means “I approve of this, do so as well”’.¹ An ethical judgment is thus, in his view, merely the expression of a personal opinion, thrown into impressive propaganda terminology, and is intended, not to make any statement about the real character of the object referred to, but merely to persuade others to adopt our personal opinion about it. A similar relativistic doctrine was advanced by Professor A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic,² where he said, ‘Ethical judgments have no objective validity whatever’.

The question at issue between those who hold that ethical judgments are objective in their reference, and those who accept the doctrine of absolute ethical relativism, is one of tremendous importance. The latter theory, in the end, boils down to this: that ethical opinions are mere matters of taste. When a boy smacks his lips and says that the sour apple he is munching is ‘good’, his real intention is not to describe the apple but merely to state that he likes it. Now the familiar and significant fact about the boy’s statement is that no one can reasonably dispute his opinion. If he says that he likes it, that ends the matter. He knows his own likes and dislikes, and no information about the qualities of the apple itself would have any bearing on the question of the truth of his statement. It had long been recognized that in matters of taste there can be no profitable dispute.

Now if we accept in bitter earnest the theory that all differences of opinion about what is morally good and morally evil are merely differences of personal taste, we shall find ourselves driven to the unhappy conclusion that it is impossible to justify on rational grounds the conviction that any particular form of conduct is really any better than any other, however apparently barbarous that other may be. Further, we shall be unable to offer any rational defence for our own national or international policies, when they conflict with the purely aggressive policies of leaders like Hitler or Stalin. In the final resort this would seem to imply that conflicting policies that arise from such differences of opinion can only be settled by an appeal to force, however reasonable the contestants may seem to be, or however ready and anxious they may really be to resolve the dispute by peaceful diplomacy. In short, we seem to be driven to accept the motto of all dictators, ‘Might is Right’. There are very few who will be prepared to accept such a conclusion with an easy mind. John Laird gave forceful expression to this opinion. ‘There are very few,’ he said, ‘who deny the reality of justice and equity. … Yet how could there be equity without insight into value? Justice, in one of its branches, is the equitable apportionment of good and evil …and there is no sense in apportioning we know not what. … Therefore,’ he concludes, ‘it is illegitimate to believe in the reality of rational justice and yet to doubt the reality of rational values.’¹

Before we can come to a satisfying conclusion, however, regarding the question of the objectivity of moral judgments, it is desirable that we should try to understand what precisely we mean by ‘objective truth’, and endeavour also to reach a clearer conception of the nature of these ethical values, of which, it is assumed, we can have real knowledge. Unless we can find reasonable grounds for believing in the objective reality of the distinctions we make between determinate states of human affairs that are truly good and others that are obviously very bad, our Christian moral principles will soon come to be regarded as mere make-believe.

¹ This and similar statements in Chapters 1–2 are meant to be merely provisional accounts of what we directly apprehend in ethical perception. The notion that ethical values are purely factual qualities, though seldom immediately misleading in practice, is not theoretically adequate. In that respect it is comparable to the plain man’s mistaken idea that the sun literally ‘rises’ in the east every morning. Mistaken ethical theories, however, may ultimately be very mischievous in their practical implications.

¹ I may indicate here the restricted sense in which I shall use the terms ‘ethical’ and ‘moral’. I shall speak of an object, or state of affairs, as ethically good if it is worthy of choice purely on its own account. I shall reserve the term moral goodness to indicate the worth that belongs to the act, or will, or person who chooses such an object for its own sake. This distinction accords with much common usage, though in speaking of ‘moral goodness’ writers often append the qualifying phrase, ‘in the strict sense of the term’. The lack of an agreed terminology to indicate the distinction is unfortunate.

¹ The Leviathan, Chap. 6.

² Tretise, Selby-Bigge’s edn., p. 574.

¹ Ethics and Language, p. 21.

² p. 161.

¹ The Idea of Value, p. 319.

CHAPTER 2

KNOWLEDGE OF FACTUAL TRUTH

We come to a knowledge of the nature of our environment primarily by making use of our five natural sense organs. When we stand on a hill-top and gaze at the panorama of nature stretching out for miles in front of us, we immediately become possessors of a great deal of correct information about the landscape presented to us. We become aware that there are green slopes, wooded valleys and homesteads in the nearer distance; we can discern the contour of the mountains on the horizon, and through a gap in this rampart we seem to catch a glimpse of the blue waters of the far-off sea. Our eyes have made us aware of this many-coloured show of things.

In a somewhat analogous fashion, through the medium of our other sense organs, revelations are made to us of various other characteristics of our environment. Our ears intimate to us that a lark is soaring and singing overhead, and possibly, if the spectator happens to be on Ulster soil, ‘in the season of the year’, he may become aware, through his sense of smell, that a flax-dam is in the vicinity, and may be told that ‘the shamrocks are in bloom’ !

There are two important preliminary observations worth making about this information that comes to us through our senses. Both of them are very relevant to the subject I have in hand.

First, though our eyes occasionally deceive us, in the sense that we draw wrong conclusions from what is directly presented to us,¹ it is impossible to repudiate rationally the reality of all the facts of which we are made aware by our natural senses. The blue waters, for example, which our spectator took to be the sea, may not in reality have been the sea at all. What he saw may have been reflections from the waters of an inland lake, of the existence of which he had not been previously aware. Even in the case of this deception, however, there were elements of truth in his misinterpretation of the facts. He could not by any form of logical reasoning have been persuaded that the colour he saw reflected from the surface of the water was not blue, and that the water itself, whether it were sea or lake, was at a considerable distance from him. Any argument purporting to show the untrustworthiness in toto of the information given to us by our natural senses would obviously be vitiated by the fact that the evidence for such radical relativism could only be based on other sense-observations, no more trustworthy than the information the argument sought to discredit. The absolute relativist would thus be compelled, if he were honest, to keep his absolute scepticism to himself.

It is not necessary for my purpose to probe further, at this point, into the processes of sense observation, or to indicate the degree of reliance we may put on the various sorts of information it conveys to us. It must suffice to say that in any act of perception there are some basic elements such as colours and spacial relations of which we are directly and immediately made aware, i.e. of which we have an intuitive¹ apprehension, and of which our knowledge is incorrigible. It is on the basis of the disclosures of such immediately apprehended data that, by repeated experiences, and by co-ordinating the information gained from our other sense faculties, and in particular, by relying on the dependability of certain a priori principles of rational thinking (of which I shall have more to say later), we build up the body of truth we eventually come to possess about the material world.

I ought perhaps to indicate at this point that, while the intricate physical mechanism of our sense organs is an indispensable condition of our acquiring true information, this mechanism does not explain or illuminate in the very least the mystery that enshrouds the final link in this chain of physical preconditions of vision. We do not understand how material vibrations in a brain cell are transmuted into a coloured and extended vision of the external world. A recognized authority on the matter says, ‘We are very ignorant of the physiological mechanism whereby a stimulus becomes converted into a physiological process, and completely ignorant of the mechanism by which sensory activity becomes sublimated into consciousness.’¹

The second observation I wish to make is that, however keen may be our sense of vision, there is always more in the objects presented to us than ‘catches the eye’ at a first glance. Charlotte Brontë, after reading Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture, said to a friend, This book has given me eyes’. There can be little doubt that, long before reading Ruskin, she had seen many noble buildings and admired them, but she felt that his insight had given her clues to much of the beauty in fine architecture of which she had hitherto been quite oblivious. It is sometimes said, more perhaps in jest than in earnest, that beauty has its being ‘in the eye of the beholder’.² In spite of some questionable evidence to the contrary, I venture to think that the beauty of a fin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• 1. ETHICAL RELATIVISM
• 2. KNOWLEDGE OF FACTUAL TRUTH
• 3. ETHICAL PERCEPTION
• 4. THE GREATEST COMMANDMENT
• 5. THE SPECIFIC BASIC ETHICAL VALUES
• 6. THE VALUE OF THE INDIVIDUAL
• 7. BENEVOLENCE AND JUSTICE: AS EQUALLY ESSENTIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL
• 8. CO-ORDINATING ETHICAL IDEAS 1. PERSONAL DUTIES
• 9. CO-ORDINATING ETHICAL IDEAS 2. CHRISTIAN VIRTUES
• 10. CO-ORDINATING ETHICAL IDEAS 3. RIGHTS
• 11. THE CHRISTIAN ATTITUDE TO THE STATE
• 12. MORALITY AND RELIGION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX