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Truth in ethics and natural law
Introduction: moral claims and truth.
What is truth? said a doubting Pilate. But what did he doubt? There are a number of
possible candidates.
He was interviewing an alleged political dissident in one of the many of the interminable
and violent rifts which seemed to characterize Jewish affairs. Did he doubt that in the
shifting world of Palestinian politics he would ever come to know the truth? That is an
historical or political doubt to be answered, if at all, by cunning in Realpolitik.
He was engaged in a profound conversation about this world and the next and what really
counts in human life. Did he doubt that any human being could ever know the truth about
such things? Jesus had said that he had come to bear witness to the truth and so this last is
possibly the closest to the mark but, for sure, he did not have the doubt that we find in
contemporary philosophy which, simply stated is that truth does not apply to ethical
claims. This doubt, at first pass, looks a little odd.
The first thing we must do in this pass is to dismiss the idea that ethics consists only in a
set of commandments. Ethics, we might more accurately say, is the reasoned study of
good and bad, right and wrong. Once we look at it in that way, we seem to be surrounded
by straightforward claims that seem to be either true or false and that are clearly ethical in
that they paint a picture of what we might call “a life well-lived” by commenting on the
human condition in ways that seem highly relevant to the values guiding how one ought
to live.
(i) No greater love has any of us than this than that he or she should lay down life for the
sake of friends. (John 15.13)
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(ii) It is no profit to a person to gain the world and lose his or her own soul.
(iii) You should love your neighbour as you love yourself
(iv) It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you but
your failure to appreciate theirs (Analects of Confucius I.16).
(v) In choosing for myself I choose for all humanity … I am responsible for myself and
for all humanity …In fashioning myself, I fashion humanity JPS Existentialism is a
humanism 396
(vi) You are responsible for your own birth even though you did not ask to be born
In each of these remarks we are offered a profound thought about human beings, their
worth and the values that should inform our behaviour even though none of these things
straightforwardly or flat-footedly commands us to do anything. We are therefore brought
face to face with the idea that ethics is not a discussion that aims at truth and falsity but
that it is a discussion elaborating our tendency to go “Boo!” Or “Hurrah!” at our peers it
is a reflection or expression of our approval rather than a reasoned inquiry into something
that can be discovered to be thus and so for instance God’s commands about how human
beings ought to behave – the basis of what is called natural law theory in theology.
The status of moral claims
Before we start we should be clear what follows from establishing that there are universal
moral truths. It follows that a person ought to do this or that in a given situation no matter
what that person feels inclined to do because moral claims are absolute – they do not
depend on how you feel they are just baldly true or unconditionally true. This is reflected
in the way we talk as can be seen in the following example.
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Sally knocks over a cyclist when she is driving. She ought to stop and help or at least see
if the cyclist needs help. Now, if Sally were to say, “Why ought I to do that?” we would
most likely say something categorical like, “Well, you just ought, because it is the right
thing to do!” We might appeal to Sally herself by saying “Well how would you feel if it
happened to you; would you like to be left lying on the road?” In the second case we are
implicitly appealing to the golden rule: Do as you would be done by but we are appealing
to it as something absolute or unconditional. If somebody persists and says “Why should
I?” then we might go further and say, “What kind of world would it be if everyone had
that attitude?” but more likely we would just throw up our hands and say something like
“Honestly, some people!”
Our response indicates that we think there is something wrong with Sally, and that she
ought to behave differently and, if she says she does not care and that she will act as she
pleases, we think that she ought to care. But where does this absolute, categorical,
“ought” come from? And how can we ever say to another human being “No matter what
you think, you ought to X.”
If truth does apply to claims in ethics, then we are on just as solid ground as if somebody
said, of John Howard, “I don’t believe he is a political animal, he is just a nice man” and
you replied, “Hello!” or “Get real!” This is the right kind of unconditional remark about
the right view of a situation and it is either true or false (Howard is or is not a political
animal). It is subject to arguments for and against which may indicate a conclusion one
way or another. Notice two things about this opinion of John Howard:
First, it is a judgment about a person; and
Second; it relies on a certain kind of facility or experience in human interactions.
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Arguments against ethical truth
The idea that ethical or moral claims could not be straightforwardly true or false is a
product of a dominant school of Western philosophy called empiricism. Empiricist
scepticism about truth in ethics is built on three arguments.
Argument 1. There is no moral Perception
1.1 You can perceive that something is true or false by using your senses.
1.2 You cannot perceive goodness and badness by using your senses.
1.3 That something is good or bad is neither true nor false.
The senses in premise 1.1 are those involved in a thought like “that orange is green”,
“that smells rotten”, or “that feels rough” where you use one of your senses to tell you
whether something is true or false. This might involve training and complex skills as
when, for instance, you look down the microscope and observe “that is a colony of
staphylococci”. But there are also statements that are straightforwardly true or false that
do not depend on the classic five senses, or at least not in any simplistic way. “I think we
are all getting very tense about this and I wonder why” might tell us a lot about a meeting
between friends. “If you can’t see that her father is being cruel and abusive then you just
do not understand what it is like to be a teenage girl” might depend on understanding
family relationships in a way that some people don’t. The same applies if, for instance, a
friend asks “What is wrong with dumping your girlfriend by email” and we go “Duh!”
In each case something is going on which somebody just cannot see (in a clear meaning
of that term). It is interesting that what is going on has to do with relationships and the
way human beings feel and the way they treat each other in a related way to the John
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Howard case. Both cases concern the type of knowledge you develop in social and
personal life. Which brings us to the next argument.
Argument 2. Truth informs you but does not move you.
2.1 No truth about the world moves a person to act; a wish or desire is also needed.
2.2 Moral claims should move you to act or feel a certain way. therefore …
2.3a Moral truths are not like other truths
2.3a is not the only possible conclusion to the argument, we could round it off by adding
the following premise:
2.3b Moral claims intrinsically engage somehow with our wishes or desires.
And then concluding:
2.4 Moral claims move us to act.
But can we defend 2.3b?
When we launch from the idea that ethical understanding (reflective understanding of
moral life) arises from what in social and personal life means something (Williams) it
starts to look plausible that moral claims are intrinsically the kind of thing that we care
about or that engages with our wishes and desires in a way that moves us. We might then
assimilate the response to a moral claim to the response to a missile hurtling towards your
head – the correct response is unquestionably to duck. “But”, one might say, “not if you
want to die.” Of course that is true but we tend to take it for granted that avoiding death is
the normal response of a well-adjusted human being unless there are certain extreme and
unusual circumstances. This example suggests that we might look for a quality close to
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truth but also closely related to health or well being that attaches to the moral claims that
we ought to respect and use to structure our adjustment to the world and other people.
When we look at the remarks with which we began we see that many of these have that
quality and it can be brought out by explaining just why we might say that they are true.
You should love your neighbour as you love yourself is true in the sense that we are social
creatures who depend on each other for the support and cooperation that gets us through
life. Relationships with others can, however, be undermined by people who hate
themselves and take out their bitterness on others. It is therefore true that, in order for life
to go well, you should love your neighbour as you love yourself. This is absolute in the
sense that if someone says “But why should I want my life to go well?” we ought to reply
“Get real” or even, at a pinch, “Hello!”
It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you but your
failure to appreciate theirs There is a huge amount of human desperation, resentment,
and suffering caused by people who have convinced themselves that nobody truly
appreciates them and that they are going to teach the world to take notice of them. This
saying therefore captures a very important truth about the kind of attitudes to self and
others that allow a person to benefit from associating with others and fashion good lives
without a dysfunctional ego getting in the way. To not incorporate this truth into your life
is a sign of stupidity rather than a smart move in the social and personal domain.
Argument 3. People make different moral decisions about the same facts.
3.1 Evidence about the facts determines a decision about what is true or false.
3.2 Faced with the same facts people make different moral judgments. Or
3.2’ Different cultures make different moral judgments about the same facts.
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3.3 Moral claims, unlike decisions about facts, are not true or false.
These arguments depend on the idea that the facts declare themselves to everybody in the
same way but moral judgments are individual (or group) judgments about a situation.
Thus, it is argued, different people can come to different moral conclusions and not
contradict one another. But at least one famous philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, has
noted that morality and ethical inquiry involve a certain way of looking at the world (as
do religious beliefs). Throwing the world in a moral light brings to the fore certain
features which are closely related to the ways that we act and the relationships we form.
Think of two examples. Some people, particularly doctors, can see the human body as a
complex machine which may need to be adjusted so that it works smoothly. This
scientific gaze can obscure the fact that the human body is a person’s body such that the
person involved looks at us, speaks with us, feels things based on what we say and do.
Realising these things engages us ethically with the person concerned not as an object
requiring certain adjustments. At that point the way we respond to the body in front of us
changes and becomes infused with an awareness of that person’s life story and
relationships and we realise that our actions are part of that life story.
In fact some of the things we say about people are, taken literally, quite untrue but
nevertheless they tell us a lot about the person concerned.
He is a predator and the wounds he inflicts on young hearts and minds sometimes cause
scars which last for years.
This comment may tell us a lot abut the person concerned but a cardiac surgeon would
search in vain for those scars. Ethical truths, we could say, tell us about our ways of
relating to each other and the effects of those interactions on us. What is more they frame
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those relationships and interactions in the light of what makes life go well for critters like
us. But this is the thrust of a view of ethics with a long history and a clear position on
truth in ethics.
What is goodness
I have noted that moral theorists with religious convictions often derive systems of ethics
from natural law. By this they mean law arising from basic values laid out in writings that
are believed to capture God’s intentions for humankind. Most such writers are intellectual
descendents of Aristotle through St Thomas Aquinas. On this view human moral choices
are justly subject to praise and blame because they are the responsibility of the agent who
makes them and they either do or do not promote human well-being in the most complete
sense.
Therefore theistic thinkers generate recommendations or commandments based on God’s
plan for human life (which is that it should be full of goodness or fulfil its potential).
Naturalistic thinkers like Aristotle do the same thing on the basis of what tends to make
life go well (but they claim no divine inspiration for their knowledge of what makes life
go well). It is not surprising that both theistic and naturalistic thinkers agree about what
made for a good life given that (ex hypothesi) for the theists, God equips us with a mind
that responds to truth and goodness and can chart a rational path for life in the world.
One major division in theology concerns whether the human mind can glimpse God’s
truth unaided by God’s explicit revelation in scripture or whether it is incurably fallen and
a misleading guide. I am with Saints Paul and Thomas on that one in that the human mind
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is not sufficient to understand the truth of God’s creation and redemption but can point us
in the right direction in a number of ways.
If that is right, we can see what makes for true goodness and a fulfilled human life by
using our minds to think critically about the human condition (even though attaining a
good life requires grace and depends both on the reality of your spiritual life and the
sincerity with which you express that life in your doings with others). In fact there are two
claims which can be shared by moral thinkers whatever their theology.
(i)
Human beings have natural capacities that show us what it is to live a good
human life.
(ii)
A person showing excellence in these capacities is living a good human life.
(There are further questions about whether anybody can do that unaided by grace and
whether the goodness of a natural human life is other than that of an eternal life.)
Taken together these two claims allow us to conclude that there are laws of a more or less
general nature that describe human beings and that these laws yield substantive theses
about well-being and virtue. That is all that a plausible natural law approach to human
ethics and jurisprudence requires. The truths, we might say, governing our ethical lives,
are truths that are derived from a correct view of what it is to be a well functioning human
being who unlocks the spirit of joy with which each of us is potentially indwelt.
I would argue that this orientation focused on what it is to be truly human in all its
fullness leads us to a pair of underpinning values that should guide our conduct. They are
the values of belonging and the value of individual integrity and, I will argue, they are not
separable. The dyad often appear in Western moral and political philosophy as the
contrast between communitarian and individual/liberal conceptions of justice but to make
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the case that they should not stand opposed to one another, I will examine an apparent
difference between two approaches to ethics that of pakeha and Maori as it appears in
New Zealand debates.
As gross generalisations we might baldly state that Pakeha values are those of an
individualistic, metallic, and post-agricultural society. Maori values are relational, premetallic, and hunter-gatherer society. These are fundamentally different in that Pakeha
values focus on individuals who make their own decisions, seek their own satisfactions,
control their environment by using technology, and carve off bits of that environment for
private or exclusive use. Maori values, on the other hand, focus on a human group whose
needs and survival are tied to the fate of the group, whose relation to their environment is
more a matter of working with it than just imposing on it mechanisms of production that
give reliable results. In the former case we achieve best by attuning life to the balances in
that environment and enjoying it. The other set involves commodification rather than
stewardship or partnership. There is, therefore, a certain affinity between the first set of
values and the implicit humility of Theistic values that place us as participating cocreators with God and instruments of grace in our dealings with the world and each other.
We can usefully deepen our understanding by exploring two Maori concept clusters –
Whanau/Whenua and rangitiratanga.
The first of these concerns the aspect of belonging or relationship that gives each of us
the launching pad for life by nurturing us and providing us with a place in the world. The
two terms are interesting. Whanau is family or the support group provided by your
extended family and significant figures that have contributed to the context of your
growth and development. Whenua means both the land of your origin and the placenta
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which nourished you as you were formed. Together these aspects of belonging provide
the sources of your being, the stories, gestures, shared memories, relationships, images,
and names that mean something or resonate within you as part of who you are. Here are
your inspirations, the motifs of your dreams, and the places your mind returns to in order
to ground itself.
The second dimension of our ethical being is that of self rule and individual identity. The
standing on your own feet that no-one can do for you, the strength for which is sourced in
the sources of your being. As a person you need to know who you are but that is not just
an individual thing rather it is a matter of loving your father and mother and drawing
strength and joy from who they are and from your differences from them. These two
clusters of values are inextricably tied together and a balance must be struck in which
each aspect of out being is cultivated for the worth it contributes to a good life.
The result is a liveable life story. A story that will sustain you and give meaning to what
you are doing and how you conduct yourself. This way of looking at the good for human
beings does not and can not be boiled down to a set of approved and legitimated acts but
is a more fluid, dynamic, and interactive thing on which God can look and see that it is
good. What is more, the simplification from a way of being to a set of rules about what to
do does not work because life itself is complex. Consider, for instance, three stories and
the misleading results that can arise from turning them into rules for action.
Jephthah was a leader of the Jewish people who promised that if God granted him victory
over the Ammonites he would sacrifice the first thing that came to meet him on his return
home. When he returned victorious, his daughter ran out to meet him. She urged him to
keep his promise and he did so. Now, should we look at this in the light of Jesus’ remark
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that whomsoever loves mother and father or son or daughter more than me is not fit to be
my disciple or in the light of Jesus’ injunction not to make vows in Matthew 5?
The women caught in adultery is a further problematic story. Does Jesus demonstrate that
adultery is not so bad or that strict adherence to the commands of the Old Testament is
not what is important in our moral lives? Neither seems quite right nor to do justice to the
story. We might suggest that she meditate on her behaviour in the light of “In choosing
for myself I choose for all humanity … I am responsible for myself and for all humanity
…In fashioning myself, I fashion humanity” and ask her what kind of person she is
fashioning herself into in her relationships and whether that is a story that she can live
out. Perhaps the parable of the prodigal might profitably be used here.
Elisha and the boys is an even more problematic story. After his anointing with the power
of Elijah, Elisha is going from Jericho to Bethel when some boys mock him calling him
“baldy”. He curses the boys in the name of the Lord and two she bears come out of the
woods and kill 42 of them. Should we interpret this as a more barbaric version of Jesus’
cleansing of the temple or in light of the fact that “the son of man did not come to destroy
but to save”(Luke 9.56). In the latter passage, Christ himself forges a link with the Elijah/
Elisha cycles so perhaps that is a clue.
In each of these stories we are taught something about social and personal life and
rightness of being but what we are taught is not transparently obvious. The mind (and
arguably the inspiration of the Comforter) must be brought to bear to discern the moral
lesson. So now we are poised to offer an answer to the question about truth in ethics in
terms of the good life that we enjoy and the dimensions of goodness that human life can
instance and offer it in a way that accounts for people developing different opinions on
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rightness and wrongness. In fact we can fill out that truth by focusing on some of the
sayings above.
It is no profit to a person to gain the world and lose his or her own soul. This is self
evidently true if we accept that a person’s being is in the activities of the soul – the lively
and engaged production of a life story which, should it be lost, wrenches the heart out of
one’s being-in-the-world. What story are you creating to inform the rest of your life? One
might ask, and in asking encourage you to reflect in a way likely to lead to a sense of
balance about who you are becoming.
You should love your neighbour as you love yourself. Notice the two-fold command here,
if you love yourself you have a life story that empowers you to reach out to others.
It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you but your
failure to appreciate theirs (Analects of Confucius I.16). Notice that although we should
appreciate our own strengths we should not have so high an opinion of them that we
become vain and insensitive to the value and beauty of others. What is more, as we see
value in others we discover good things to incorporate into and enrich our own lives.
In choosing for myself I choose for all humanity … I am responsible for myself and for all
humanity …In fashioning myself, I fashion humanity. This is true because when I choose
to do something I have made it true that a human being has done that thing and must take
on board the fact that I am prepared for human beings to act like that. Your actions make
it true that someone of your race, your community, your family, from your school, or
whatever, has done that thing so that we are all represent or stand for “our folk” and we
must bear the associated responsibility. Inevitably this spotlights our actions in a way that
tends to make our own self-pleading excuses for them pale into insignificance.
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You are responsible for your own birth even though you did not ask to be born. This
looks ridiculous but the more you look at it the truer it gets. If you are the person you are
now, then you have become that way, in part, through choices you have made in relation
to the forces on you and the positions in which you have found (or sometimes lost)
yourself. A different set of choices would have made you a different person so it would
not be true that you - the person you now are - would have been born when that baby who
has become you was born.
These are truths that make Christians examine themselves in the light of scripture, the
witness of the spirit, and the witness of the saints and the Church, the body of Christ on
earth. They should also make atheists examine themselves in the light of their
relationships to others and their own development as people. In either case the
perspective goes beyond the individual concerned and one’s life is framed by a set of
values that implicitly throws your actions into a certain light. In either case it can either be
true or false that the values and actions concerned measure up to the evaluative measures
that are applied to them. It should be no surprise that the kinds of things that make life go
well do not greatly differ depending on whether you are a believer or not.