OWK, I see our conversation has seriously bogged down. I gather this may have something to do with my ridiculous assertion (from the point of view I impute to you, after long experience that is) that reason, unaided, hasn't got the power to construct a binding moral code.
For what it's worth, basically my argument boils down to a particular understanding of the nature of reason itself. On my view, reason -- ratio -- involves the idea of some kind of empirical experience being tested against a measure that reason itself did not construct for this purpose. Fundamentally, from the moral standpoint, the purpose of the test is to elucidate the basis of justice in human life, personal and social.
Basically, I suggest there cannot be a moral code unless it is founded in the idea of justice. Reason, however, generally cannot obtain from its own observations and experiences (such being mainly confined to "objectively" sensed phenomena) any idea of justice. And justice seems to be the very thing that Nature (not to mention human experience) so often seems to refute in daily practice.
And yet justice -- paradoxically both metaphysical and "abstract," and yet urgently, keenly, directly necessary to personal human existence everywhere, at all times -- conceptually cannot find its causal principle "in empirics."
Precisely this question was raised and engaged a long time ago, in 4th-century Athens, by Plato -- in Republic VI. Glaukon's speech hits our problem directly on the head. As Eric Voegelin wrote (in Vol. III of Order and History: Plato and Aristotle):
| "Originally"... men say, to do injustice was good, while to suffer injustice was bad. Then it turned out that evil was greater than the good; when men had tasted of both and found themselves unable to flee the one and do the other, they were ready to agree on laws and mutual covenants; and they called just and lawful what was ordained by the laws. This is the origin and nature [suggests Glaukon] of justice, as a mean between the best (to do injustice without punishment) and the worst (to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation). Justice, therefore, is not loved as a good in itself, but honored because of a man's infirmity [that disposes him] to act unjustly. The strong, the real man would never enter into such an agreement; he would be demented if he did. This is the commonly received view of origin and nature...of justice. |
Voegelin's further reflection on this passage:
| [Thus] justice is exposed to misinterpretation in more than one respect. In the [passage,] justice is explained genetically as the result of weighing the advantages and disadvantages of unregulated action; after due consideration justice will be pragmatically honored as the more profitable course. In order to indulge in the utilitarian calculus, however, man must already "know" what justice is, in the sense that the word "justice" occurs in the environment of the calculating opiner and is accepted by him in a conventional sense. The explanation of a calculated decision for just conduct is not an inquiry into the nature of justice. Hence, one cannot find in the passage a theory of either the nature of law or the law of nature. |
Both of which considerations, it seems to me, have direct bearing on human life at all levels. For both constitute what we call "morality." Voegelin has demonstrated that reason cannot bear the weight of the moral code by itself, unaided.
So, where is the aid to come from?
Do you recognize the answer to that question can only be perfectly "subjective," OWK? (Nothing could be more personal than a question like that.) <p>
And, if you recognize the legitimacy of the question, can you still believe unaided reason can answer it, all by itself?
However, I suspect the thinking behind a "reasoned" moral code - in the eyes of a metaphysical naturalist - is that for them "reality" is only that which exists in nature, thus any bar to establish a ratio is, to them, a mere arbitrary abstraction. With that worldview, the best that can be hoped for is a negotiation.
That makes me quite sad because what they see as an abstraction, I know to be real.