Moral philosophy is not to be taken as rigidified orthodoxy that we should either fully adopt or discard. Moral constructs should be valued as prior generations’ accumulated efforts to create meaning, and shape the experience of being human in the world. From an understanding of moral philosophy, we can learn how prior individuals and societies struggled to find the right way to flourish.

Topics below:
Moral Codes
Moral Relativism
Guiding Principles
Good, Right, Virtuous

Moral Codes
Moral codes are a type of collective human wisdom. They let us see into how other people, at other times and in other places, tried to answer the questions of how to live life best.

“Moral codes are crystallized forms of past creativity. They are passed on to the next generation as gifts of wisdom garnered by previous generations,” wrote Konstantin Kolenda.

Even when we discount prior attempts at creating guidance on how to live life, we are building on the hard fought efforts of those who came before us. Morality is a system of attempted solutions for sorting out the competing demands of life.

Moral theories can help us organize and understand the different ways that people have attempted to live life fully, and flourish. Moral theories are both subjective and objective. Although they are normatively developed out of human nature interacting with situational determinants, moral theories are objectively measured by their ability to aid in survival and adaptation to a changing world. However, there are many ways to survive and there are many types of moral theories, some more viable than others. Moral theories help or hinder survival. Some moral theories work as a way of living life, others do not.

Moral conceptualizations are a significant aspect of culture. Moral theory helps structure a culture and is simultaneously constrained by the circumstances of the times. In this way, moral constructs and human development are recursively determined. The evolving nature of man is reflected in the continual transformations of moral theory, which in turn shape human nature. An examination of moral theory is an examination of our articulated and evolving nature.

The pragmatic nature of truth challenges us to consider that morality created from the reciprocal exchange between human nature and the situation as given, is no less objective than any other conceptualizations of truth. Moral theories are the articulation of this subjective objectivity.

Moral Relativism
The overarching question for many people trying to understand moral theory is whether there is an absolute moral truth, and can humankind know this moral truth. Any answer to this question is itself a moral statement, whether you believe there is or is not a fundamental moral truth. In either case, you are asserting a moral belief. Asserting that no absolute moral truth exists is a form of asserting an objective moral truth. A less extreme assertion, that moral truth is relative and based on perspective, is also an assertion of a moral stance.

Perspectivism asserts that one’s moral principles depend on one’s point of view. Although perspectivism may appear, on the surface, to be a value-free assertion, it most definitely is not. The assertion that moral principles are based on perspective is itself a value-laden theoretical perspective. Perspectivism may or may not be true and might be of value in understanding morality, but in either case, perspectivism remains a moral assertion. The belief that morality and ethics depends on your perspective is a value-laden attitude.

Moral relativism asserts that whatever moral view a community or individual holds, emerges out of situational determinants. Relativism holds that there is not one true moral perspective, but many true perspectives, which are each uniquely determined by culture and history within a given context. Normative processes and the effects of culture and situational determinants are ways in which moral beliefs are inculcated and shaped. These processes of moral development are inherently relative as each culture or civilization confronts unique challenges. However, moral relativity does not assert that any consensual moral view is true, only those views that are viable and adaptive are considered true. This notion of truth is based on thinking developed in the field of pragmatic humanism.

Guiding Principles
The multiplicity of competing moral truths should not lead us to abandon the search for a viable moral stance for living life. The multiplicity of moral concepts speaks to the diversity of challenges and choices life brings forth. This complexity reflects the difficulty of living a well-lived life across the diversity of life situations. Resolving the struggle of finding a manner in which to live a satisfying life includes finding life-guiding principles, principles that reflect one’s resolution of adhering to the greater good.

The three guiding principles of self-responsible reason, the pursuit of happiness, and benevolence, are moral scaffolding that allows for the establishment of life-guiding principles, according to Charles Taylor. Being reasonable and benevolent, as well as pursuing personal happiness, provide scaffolding on which to develop a strategy for making moral choices that will resolve competing demands in a way that can lead to flourishing.

We also need to feel significant if we are to flourish morally. Our significance is not determined beforehand, but is derived from the fulfilled living of life. Charles Taylor asserts that one’s life needs to be taken as having significance and should not preclude theism and cosmic considerations. Perhaps to be fully human includes the capacity or perhaps even the need to adhere to an objective greater good. Iris Murdoch, in her profound treatise, The Sovereignty of Good, helps us begin to comprehend the possibility of Good without utilitarian or deistic definitional restrictions. We may need to believe there is an objective truth in order to live a fully human life, even if we understand that our objective truth is a creation of our nature and social milieu across time.

These considerations address perhaps the most fundamental aspect of the moral life of human beings – can there exist a viable moral structure without that structure being anchored in some fundamental truths. In some ways Socrates offers a hint towards an answer in his assertion that doing what we ought to do and what leads to the best-lived life are the same. Socrates presents the highest of moral pronouncements in this assertion that when a person pursues what is good, that is also that which leads to the best of all possible lives lived. Underlying this Socratic assertion is an assumption that inherent in our nature is a capacity to comprehend how to live life well and to flourish. The manifestation of our moral nature for flourishing is, however, hard to achieve. This achievement may require some understanding of the moral nature of humankind.

Good, Right, Virtuous
Good, Right, and Virtuous are primary concepts in moral thinking. This has led John Rawls to assert that moral theories can be divided into three basic forms, those that deal with the concept of right, those that deal with the concept of good, and those that deal with virtue, one’s moral worth. All three concepts are interlinked, but ethical theories prioritize them differently. The right is a morality based on duty being the fundamental guiding principle. The good is a utilitarian dictate asserting that moral is what results in the greatest benefits. Virtue is a morality based on one’s character.

Gary Watson, in his essay, On the Primacy of Character, calls these divisions the ethics of requirement, consequences, and character. This distinguishes between the moral demands most of us face in life, what is required of us, the consequences of our actions, and our motivations. A more distilled categorization according to Jerome Schneewind centers on the distinction between what we do and the type of person we are.

A morality based on virtue focuses on our character and not primarily on specific actions and outcomes. The requirements in duty-based deontological moral constraints as well as the consequences of a utilitarian moral perspective are both seen as secondary to our virtue. Virtue is held to be the attribute that allows us to act on our deontological or utilitarian principles. Without virtue, we may not be able to do the right thing even if we wish to do so. However, this linear approach to moral behavior is reductionistic because often our virtue is enhanced and developed in the context of following rules and trying to do Good.

Virtue, as an aspect of our character, is yoked to our disparate needs and desires. Depending solely on our subjective sense of what is virtuous may not be adequate for making viable moral decisions. Reliance on a subjective sense of passion or virtue in setting our moral criterion could open up the possibility for descent into rudderless subjectivity. It would not matter what one does as long as one feels virtuous and we might find ways to justify any moral choice. This self-defining virtue is an extreme simplification of what the possession of a virtue entails; nonetheless, there is the possibility that a sense of virtue disconnected from actions and consequences would become a solipsistic moral nihilism.

A virtue-based moral theory must be tied to a larger context than mere self-reference to a human attribute. Culture and history embed the given virtues in a context that allows for some measure of objective appraisal about the moral relevance of a given course of action. Normative restraints set parameters as to what character traits are considered virtuous. Without this normative context, the possibility exists that we might each develop narrow individual motivations to serve as a fully developed moral criterion. Such an individualistic sense of virtue is at the core of the moral theory put forth by Frederick Nietzsche. Nietzsche turns morality upside down where adherence to traditional virtues is taken as doing injustice to oneself. For Nietzsche, traditional virtues compromise our self–development, and anything that interferes with self-advancement is amoral. The virtue of power comes to supplant any other normative virtues especially those virtues like compassion and benevolence.

Nietzsche’s anathema for cultural mores leaves him without a foundation on which to build a moral theory. His focus for moral development is based in a view of historical moral development as an immoral subjugation of each individual’s life purpose. The higher purpose for Nietzsche was to fully self-actualize through the exercise of power and a striving for autonomous perfection. Nietzsche is right to assail the banality of the un-lived life, but rather than build on the existing scaffolding of culture and history, he demands that each of us start from our own internal striving. This demand prevents us from using the wisdom obtained by those before us who have struggled with self-actualization. We are each doomed to relearn all the wisdom required for flourishing on our own.

The use of virtue as a guiding moral principle without cultural contextualization will regress into solipsistic egoism. Such self-definition is not limited to the troubled characters of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. The difficulty in using autonomous self-actualization as a cardinal virtue is demonstrated in contemporary literature by the writings of Ayn Rand. Rand attempts to depict the essential human virtue of healthy egoism juxtaposed to banality and toxic co-dependency. Her characters actualize this egoism, but remain alienated and estranged in their world. The pursuit of context-free virtue may only hold the promise of alienation.

Personal individual virtue is an aspect of moral functioning, but character is always imbedded and supported by culture and history. These normative contexts can be used to help us create viable hierarchies of needs and to define virtuous from a pragmatic humanistic perspective. Determining what is virtuous cannot occur in the absence of looking at actions themselves. Establishing moral character must include the pragmatics of evaluating the benefits and consequences of our actions.

The argument in ethics has often been between utility and duty, principle-driven versus rule-driven moral guidelines. Virtue ethics has been viewed as superseding these two models and yet virtue ethics lacks any consistent precepts that shape and guide specific moral actions. Deontology and utilitarian consequentialism contextualize virtue ethics, allowing mature moral judgment to flourish.

The integration of virtue with deontology and consequentialism may hold out great promise for integrated moral theory. According to Robert Louden,

“No single reductive method can offer a realistic means of prioritizing these different values…for the resulting reductionist definitions of moral concepts are not true to the facts of moral experience. It is important now to see that ethics of virtue and the ethics of rules as adding up, rather than canceling each other out.”

The psychological development of moral intelligence allows for virtue and duty to guide our passions, leading to choices that benefit everyone, and allowing all of us the opportunity to flourish.