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| Right and Wrong
Almost everyone wants to do what is right and avoid what is wrong. Most of those who know they are doing wrong, take steps to avoid being found out. A very few have little or no appreciation of the difference between right and wrong. We class them as psychopathic or sociopathic - that is, we acknowledge that something is malfunctioning in their mental and emotional makeup with regard to morality. They may learn that certain behaviours are disapproved of, but they are usually unable to really understand why that should be so. There is no emotional connection between act and consequence, no capacity to feel how others might feel if something is done to them - in short, the absence of empathy. This class of wrongdoing is not merely a matter of common sense. Rather, it has a basis in science. For example: About 1 in 3 000 men are born with an XYY set of chromosomes. This makes them extremely prone to aggressive behaviour. They are tall, strong and above average intelligence - at first sight good examples of the human male. But the question is whether or not such men can be held accountable in a moral sense for some of their more socially negative behaviours. Indeed, in October 1968 an XYY-chromosome man was acquitted of murder on the grounds that he was not in this case responsible for his action [1]. What few people recognise is that morality requires criteria [2]. In heated public debates about right and wrong on radio and television, the term "moral" is frequently used. But seldom does anyone attempt to say on what grounds they are claiming their "moral" stance. So, for example, a politician may be caught out in adultery and accused of "immoral" behaviour. In a society where adultery as such isn't legislated against, politicians may well assert that adultery isn't necessarily immoral. They might maintain that they should be held accountable not for sexual behaviour but for political performance - which is what they were elected to do. Their accusers will nevertheless trumpet the politicians "immorality", arguing ad hominem that sexual corruption of the man must also corrupt the politician. The question then arises, "From where do we get our criteria for right behaviour? On what basis do we judge that some behaviours are right and some wrong?" In other words, how are you and I to know the difference between a right action and a wrong one? Not surprisingly, the Christian tradition about morality is complex, if only because it has been built up over two millennia. Insofar as it's possible to boil it down to essentials, perhaps the following will do:
The efforts of Christians to get answers to moral problems has given rise to a discipline called Moral Theology. This quest for moral truths has used a number of approaches. Some have concentrated on answers from the Bible; others have offered traditional responses; yet others have taken a philosophical path. Early Christian thinkers about morality rested heavily on the Bible. They might quote Galatians 5.19-24, for example, condemning
Such lists were all the rage for quite a while. But they proved limited in scope, so Christians turned to what they thought was good moral advice wherever it could be found. Daniel Maguire says that they
For example, Ambrose used Cicero's De Officiis more or less as a blueprint for his own moral treatise, taking out only those aspects (like revenge) which were inconsistent with the New Testament. Augustine used Plato and Aristotle as his blueprint. He has since been widely criticised for his permissive teaching on war and for what now seems a negative attitude towards sex and women. The Christian penchant for lists of moral and immoral actions developed later into morality manuals of which penitential books were the most important. There was a focus on legalistic hairsplitting. So, for example, one book distinguished between twenty types of murder, each with its own appropriate penance. The founder of today's systematic Moral Theology was Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), a giant among philosophers. Part II of his great Summa Contra Gentiles - designed for Dominican missionaries to use in the field - focused on the foundations of morality. Aquinas thought that Christians are given moral guidance through God's grace. The Bible and Church teachings are secondary to God's illumination of the individual throughout his or her life. The Church's moral system was, like most of its other teaching, upset by the advent of the scientific age and the emergence of "free thinkers" who refused to be bound by tradition. From this work came a stream of moral guidance usually termed Utilitarian. It flowed into the main river of human morality in a decisive way, so that morality in the West today generally derives from it rather than from Christian precepts. Instead of focusing on God's revelation or on natural good, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and others decided that whether or not an action is right depends on its consequences or "utility". The goodness of an action is
This was quickly reduced to the slogan, "The greatest happiness for the greatest number." For those who adopt this approach, what is right is
The Utilitarian approach to right and wrong is widespread to this day, perhaps because it encourages independent, mature analysis of the pros and cons of any action. So if a country wants to overcome an energy shortage it may discuss whether or not nuclear power is "good" or "bad". The answer will ideally depend on an analysis of the outcomes of building nuclear power stations over against renewable sources of energy such as wind turbines and energy from the sea. However, it is generally recognised that Utilitarianism has its downfall in three areas:
In the nineteenth century, during a time of considerable confusion and great change about religious matters, many fell back on the ancient idea of "conscience" as the best arbiter of right and wrong. It derives from very early times. Homer's writings in ancient Greece speak of arête or "virtue" as those characteristics which enable a person to perform a praiseworthy role in society. The arête of a warrior, for example, are courage and strength, and of a woman faithfulness and modesty. Conscience was originally regarded as a separate faculty of the soul or mind by which human beings are able to decide matters of morality. Socrates claimed to have been guided by a daemon or conscience, and the idea was preserved in various forms in Christian theology. Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) said of the faculty of conscience that we can
This type of morality has remained current in popular usage, but has elsewhere fallen on hard times. This because we now understand better how we are brought up - or "socialised". As we develop in early childhood we all willy-nilly absorb to some degree the moral attitudes and behaviours of our parents and others. Those morals stay with us for life, though we may set them aside (usually with considerable difficulty) by personal choice when we mature. This partly explains the very different morals of various cultures. It implies that only if there is an absolute "right" which, for example, prohibits eating people can someone brought up as a cannibal be said to be "wrong". Thus the idea of conscience has been modified to represent an inner sense of what is right and wrong which is derived either from our culture or from personal choice. Morality today is increasingly being perceived as relative to the situation, rather than an absolute given by God. The battle between moral absolutes and moral relativity has been waged for many decades now. People still want to know if there is a set of rules or guidelines to what is right and wrong. If it turns out that there are no moral absolutes then it follows that they need instead to agonise about morality on the basis of evidence and the input of others. The ground has thus shifted from the discussion of morals themselves to a debate on the validity of religious laws which are taken by some as moral absolutes. Is it valid to assert, as many do, that the Bible or the Koran or some other source contain everything essential for us to decide moral questions? One thinker who caused a flutter among Christian pigeons in the 1960s was Joseph Fletcher. His approach was labelled "Situation Ethics" and was strongly condemned by all those who claimed a morality of divine command. Fletcher drove his cart and horses through the idea that it is viable to live by any moral rules. If we try that, he wrote, we are doomed to wallow helplessly in a marsh of casuistry.
He proposes instead that Christians - and others if they so choose - can rest with the Great Commandment from Jesus that we love one another.
This is in one sense a command morality, since Christians take it as an absolute because it is derived from none other than Jesus himself. But it turns out to be an apparent absolute which is broadly utilitarian. Our actions are to be determined by their outcomes. This is not a rule-based command, since the Great Commandment is actually one which directs that we use our brains and judgement to determine what is the greater good in any moral choice. In doing so, rules can be applied only as guidelines, not as legally binding. But it should be noted that Fletcher has in fact not answered the central question, "What is a right action?" A loving action requires the greater good of the other person. But what is the "good" for the other person? We can't know that absolutely. When a loving action is carefully weighed and calculated, it is done so on the basis of a judgement by the loving person about what is "the good" for the other. And that can't be an absolute science. One recent example of an attempt to reach the nirvana of right action is an attempt to turn the question around. Instead of asking, "What constitutes a right action?" the question has been framed as, "What does a healthy, fully functioning, self-realised person do?" This turns out to be a variation of morality derived from nature. The person who does "good" is the best person nature can produce. But who is to say that my definition of "well balanced" is better than yours? The basis of this approach still depends upon a value judgement. The idea is that if we look to various narratives from our cultures, we will find "stories" which encapsulate this kind of morality. The myths of ancient Greece or Rome might be an example for Westerners. In the East, accounts of the adventures of the Buddha might perform the same function. We might even discover moral criteria in a modern novel. For Christians, it is the gospel narratives about Jesus which provide an account of their preferred behavioural model. This approach doesn't resist examination for long, however. The relativity of morals remains. Who is to say that Jesus is a better model than Mohammed and on what absolute grounds? Narratives present in story form the social norms of various societies from time to time. That's not the same thing as providing criteria for right and wrong. An increasingly popular and viable variant of the above option is to be found in the view that morality isn't morality until it's freely chosen [8]. Each of us in the last resort must make his or her own choice as a fully autonomous being. The quality of this choice is important. If it rests even partially on external authority as such, it fails to be properly autonomous and therefore properly moral. Morality as fully autonomous, disinterested choice of what is a good action and what is a bad one obviously therefore excludes the authority of the Church - of its laws and pronouncements whether or not they are claimed to have been revealed by God to humanity. Morality demands radical freedom: the freedom to act as I choose, the freedom to impose freely chosen rules upon oneself, and the quality of freedom from external authority. One objection to the morality of autonomy has considerable power. If each of us is completely free to choose our own morality, what is to prevent substantial anarchy developing? For if societies are to exist and continue, they must be able to impose laws of behaviour upon their citizens. It is not sufficient to say, as Cupitt apparently does, that certain behaviours are intrinsically good and that therefore all good people will freely choose them. The fact is that moral behaviours differ widely from time to time and from culture to culture. If I am free to be moral when I eat other people, then there is no intrinsic reason to forbid me. To sum up: There seem to be four main types of approach to the question, "How do I distinguish a right action from a wrong one?" Theistic imperative Some say that a personal God has handed down moral precepts to humanity over time. If so, these are absolute, since they are derived from the "Absolute". Eating people is wrong because God said so. But the validity of this moral code depends upon a willingness to accept that God impacts our world in this way. An increasing number of people don't appear to need to draw this conclusion in their lives. They are content to live out their own moralities within the boundaries of social codes, rather than on the basis of some revealed absolute. Social imperative It may be that we invent our own morality. If so, our morals are not absolute. Rather, they derive from social norms. Sometimes these "just happen" - that is, they evolve slowly. Sometimes they are legislated by an authority. Such moral codes change constantly, depending on the circumstances. But they will always be the result of a social consensus. Eating people is wrong because society has passed a law against it or because there is an unspoken social norm which forbids it. This approach demands constant reflection on the utility of prevailing morals. Reasoned imperative Perhaps a moral code "exists" in the sense that it can be discovered by the process of reason, just as 2 + 2 = 4 has been "discovered" over time. If so, this type of moral would appear to be inherent in the nature of the universe. There may be parts of this morality which remain constant, and parts which change over time. At any rate, we can work our way through to reasoned moral criteria by knowing how the universe operates. Eating people is usually wrong, because people don't like being eaten and it tends to spread intense unrest amongst those who risk being eaten. But in some cases cannibalism might prove necessary, in which case it is regrettable and unpleasant - but not intrinsically wrong. Autonomous imperative It may be that the only way to decide what is right and what is wrong is to allow each person to make that decision with complete freedom. If this is true, then morality can truly be said to fail unless it is freely chosen without compulsion or undue pressure from authority of any kind. This is an attractive and compelling solution to the problem of morality. But the difficulty of finding criteria to decide what is moral remains. If there are no criteria, then it doesn't matter who chooses what morality and eating people might well come into fashion again. Conversely, if there are criteria then it is difficult to talk of a completely free and autonomous choice. Criteria for right and wrong prove to have been elusive for the entire history of humanity. It appears that this may always be true. One writer put the dilemma this way:
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