Two Types of Morality: What Happens When One is Mistaken for the Other

There is a personal morality in which values such as honesty function. There is also a social morality in which values such as justice function. When personal morality takes the place of social morality, dictatorship or some other form of authoritarianism usually results. As an example, Plato does this when articulating his ideal state in the Republic. For Plato the highest good or value is knowledge. This is a personal value. States or other groups do not have knowledge; only individual humans do. As a result, when Socrates in this dialogue is asked who will guard the citizens from the guardians of the Republic , Socrates introduces the philosopher king, a wise dictator. Plato had no use for democracy so this result did not bother him. Because we use language so sloppily (and often pay the price) we sometimes attribute knowledge to society as when we talk about a "knowledge-based economy."

A second feature of personal morality is that its values in and of themselves are absolute. The problem with absolute values is that when they are applied to the real world, which is highly variable in its content, this results in either awkward modification of the absolute value or denial of the facts. This latter consequence is illustrated by the Catholic Church's banishment of Galileo for asserting that the Earth revolved around the sun and hence mankind was not the center of their deity's universe. Again, the value expressed in the imperative "Thou shalt not kill" is quickly modified when applied to the real world. Some forms of killing are less heinous than others, e.g. murder versus manslaughter or perfectly moral, e.g. self defense or killing in military combat. The fact that this value so quickly becomes inoperative unless its moral injunction is modified should teach humanity something about personal moral values, namely, they need to be thoroughly evaluated before being applied to the real world. The current conflict over abortion is another case in point. Despite the factual evidence that the fetus, at least in its earlier embryonic stages, is not human, e.g. it does not have the nervous system to be human, many people are prepared to assert that a woman must carry that fetus to term unless her life is threatened no matter what the consequences for the rest of her life. The same argument is made even when there is no fetus. Moral injunctions against birth control are premised on the wrongful interference with their deity's desire to create a new soul. Cases such as these show how morality, given free reign, can be so damaging because it is not subject to the same level of initial and ongoing evaluation that people often exercise in buying a home or a car.  

Social morality is concerned with what a society ought to be and do. Social morality appeared in the 18^th century as part of the Enlightenment. For instance, Immanuel Kant justified the moral injunction against lying not as a violation of God's law or a moral code, but as deleterious to society. His argument against lying was that if everybody did it society could not function. Again, Jeremy Bentham's measure of morality was "the greatest good for the greatest number."

Several things follow from Bentham's definition:

1) It leaves the "good" undefined thus giving it maximum applicability to many cultures and promoting a global ethic.

2) It is open to investigation and modifications as the human condition changes. In this it is much closer to the scientific method than the arbitrary injunctions of previous moral systems, which sometimes tried to apply millennia old tribal moral values to modern society.

3) This reality-based moral system is founded on intelligent inquiry not on the intellectual vacuity and untestability of faith. Unlike faith, testability is less manipulable by those who use "faith" for devious political and social purposes.

Finally, this approach to morality avoids the "dumbing down" of humanity at a time when its intelligence is most needed.

Our current value systems are killing large numbers of our species. They are endangering the future of our species and promoting increasing violence. They are doing this because they deal in absolutes rather than with the facts of human existence. As an example, the Catholic Church has long held that contraception is an evil because it interferes with God's will in procreation. In Genesis, an ancient tribal text, their deity commands them to "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…"  On a planet that now has 7 billion people and counting and is faced with rapidly diminishing resources, this injunction to an ancient small tribe seeking to insure its growth is creating havoc in the modern world. They also vigorously pursue an anti-abortion agenda even at the point of first cell division because they believe a soul is created at that point. Again, with no regard for future humans and the chaos and suffering they will experience. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. At the social level the unexamined value is not worth having and can be very dangerous.

Bob Newhard