Moral Consensus

AQUINO, LIL ABNER Q. (2015-08861)       SOC SCI 2 F                                 AUGUST 31, 2016

A MORAL CONSENSUS

        In an honor’s theses by Kyle Brandon Anthony of the Bucknell University, a number of objections were raised which questioned whether or not Aristotle’s conception of ethics and politics still relates to our modern society (2010, 5). As a defense, he used MacIntyre’s emotivism argument and his belief that our society “does not share a common moral language” (Ibid). Moreover, in a related article by Donald J. Kochan, a Professor of Law in Chapman University, he stated that legislators will manipulate a “virtue-based rule for private gains” through masking techniques (n.d., 295). The paper focuses on the arguments of the presented articles and how the “rule of the virtuous” might no longer apply in its entirety.

        For Aristotle, an ideal state lives a life of complete virtue, also distinguished by men of complete virtue with a supply of material things requisite for its exercise (Ernest Barker 1959, 406). However, Anthony argued that there exists a difference in how morality is seen between our culture and Aristotle’s; making the implementation of Aristotle’s theory into a modern context difficult (2010, 68). He stated that differences in morality lie in Aristotle’s acceptance in slavery, women’s subordination in political affairs, and children and elderly people being excluded as citizens of the state. Moreover, he believes that Aristotle’s conception of the virtuous life and the overall picture of the polis (Reyes 1989, 38) cannot be applied to our modern world for an important reason: “today we do not all share the same moral language” (Anderson 2010, 69).

        As a result, MacIntyre argues that “there seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture” (1984, 6). Our present society lacks that sense of concord in morality to the point where we seem to talk past one another. Because of the disagreement on a conventional morality that will be identified by all cultures, Aristotle’s conception of a virtuous ruler cannot be wholly applied as MacIntyre identified a “conceptual incommensurability,” or the fact that “each premise employs some quite different normative or evaluative concept from the others, so that the claims made upon us are of quite different kinds” (Ibid, 8).

        MacIntyre propounded the argument of emotivism which is defined as, “the view that moral judgments do not function as statements of fact but rather as expressions of the speaker’s feelings” (Britannica Online n.d.). As an example, MacIntyre noticed how three characters can utilize their own background and act on the “sphere of their personal lives” (Anderson 2010, 72). This is given when he described the reaction of three characters if their daughter decided to undergo an abortion: the rich man would only concern himself with the reputation of the family; the manager decides if it is economical and efficient; while a therapist would seek out to transform her daughter into a well-adjusted person—each invoking their feelings toward the issue of abortion by appeals to their moral sphere (Ibid). A virtuous man or a group of persons will have difficulties in making decisions since we do not share a moral language; likewise, modern citizens will continue to speak from different own moral spheres resulting to the discussion of polemic issues such as abortion, euthanasia, sexuality, to remain in the same state or will take longer than it should to resolve them (Ibid, 43).

        In relation, Claeys contends that “the legal system does have, and may tolerate, a little virtue-centric regulation” (Kochan n.d., 350). According to him, there is a natural tendency to manipulate “virtue” for selfish ends (hence masking of virtue) if it becomes a metric in the domains of law and politics because “competing religious, ethnic, or partisan factions find it hard to resist the temptation to use virtue theory as an ideological tool, to establish hegemony over rival factions in their local communities” (Ibid).

        On another note, the “masking” of virtue happens to those things which were only done in the name of virtue as it is in any legislation and its purported purpose (Ibid, 338). Kochan further elaborated that the “assertions of fairness, the public interest, social justice, and equality thus are often perceived within the law and economics tradition as masks for the self-interest, as rhetorical dodges deflecting attention from the play of conflicting interests” (Ibid, 341). It might be that movement for social causes, or claims with “ideological purity” such as environmental groups, child labor laws, social welfare advocacies etc. can be a shield against real critiques or from its exposure to the true beneficiaries rooting from private interests (Ibid, 341 and 346).