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From: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Moral relativism and Mussolini
Message-ID: <509@mcnc.mcnc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Apr-85 09:49:49 EST
Article-I.D.: mcnc.509
Posted: Thu Apr 25 09:49:49 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Apr-85 04:18:34 EST
References: <901@wucs.UUCP>
Reply-To: bch@mcnc.UUCP (Byron Howes)
Organization: North Carolina Educational Computing Service
Lines: 86
Summary: 

In article <901@wucs.UUCP> pvt1047@wucec2.UUCP (Paul V. Torek) writes:

>Enough of such nonsense.  A lot of religious moralities are hardly any
>different from relativist moralities:  whereas Muffy says "whatever
>society says, is right", the fundamentalist says "whatever Allah says,
>is right".  Society, Allah -- what's the difference.  They both make
>the same mistake:  "they both confuse believing something with it's
>being true, and {society|Allah}'s power to enforce its laws with the
>correctness of the laws" (--Granny).

On the point that religious moralities are hardly different than relativist
moralities:  Exactly.  I would say that religious moralities *are*
relativist moralities parading in absolutist drag.  On the second point,
I would say it is not possible to determine the "correctness" of a law
(or norm) in any objective sense.  One must return to one's culture to
form any evaluation.

>Morality, we say, is a matter of the reasons for and against an action.
>Those, in turn, are determined by the benefits and harms it causes.
>Benefits and harms, in turn, can be learned of through experience and
>reason.  We must recognize, before harming anyone, that whatever worth
>and reality one's own well-being has, the well-being of others has
>exactly the same worth and reality and that whatever is right for
>one to do to them is, other things being equal, also right for them to
>do to oneself.

Benefits and harms are not absolutes.  In fact, we seldom get agreement
as to what is beneficial and what is harmful outside the context of the
social universe in which the action takes place.  What evidence do you
have in any objective way that your recasting of the Golden Rule is in
any sense a universal moral principle?  Recalling the Midianites, even
G-d seems to overlook it when convenient.  (Warning:  anyone who points
out that a Deity can do anything it wants because its ways are unknowable
to man has proven my point -- judgement of an action as moral or immoral
depends on who is acting and by whom they are being judged.)

As an aside, how does the golden rule apply to a Kamakazee pilot or the
driver of a truck bomb?  It seems to me that the golden rule is being
strictly observed here, but that few (in western countries) would consider
such actions to be "moral."

>Granny and I find no compelling reasons for regarding moral judgements
>as altogether different from ordinary factual judgements.  Few people
>would look at the variety of views on a factual subject like evolution
>and conclude that whether you evolved or were created is relative to
>your society or culture or subculture!  But for morality, the story
>changes, why?  Why not say, 'here are more examples of some people being
>right and others mistaken' -- or, more realistically, everybody being
>mistaken?

You must have a better line on omniscience than I do.  I often can't
tell whether an action is moral or immoral *within* the context of my
culture without considerable thought.  I can't imagine making sweeping
judgements like that.  Do you claim to be a Deity? :-)

>We would like to close by noting that there is a certain perverse logic
>to Muffy's description of Hitler's idea.  If society is the ultimate
>arbiter of right, the idea of getting rid of everyone who disagrees
>with you (and thus being right) is likely to seem attractive.  Perhaps
>it was that kind of thinking that inspired this quote:
>
>	"If relativism signifies the contempt for fixed 
>	categories ... then there is nothing more relativistic 
>	than Fascist attitudes and activity. ... From the fact 
>	that all ideologies are of equal value, that all 
>	ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist
>	infers that everybody has the right to create for 
>	himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it
>	with all the energy of which he is capable."*
>
>Benito Mussolini, you said it!
>	[ * Benito Mussolini, _Diuturna_, pp. 374-77.  Qouted from Helmut
>Kuhn, _Freedom Forgotten and Remembered_, Chapel Hill, N.C.: University
>of North Carolina Press, 1943, pp. 17-18. ]

This is an excellent statement of the moral absolutist straw man.  Where
it breaks down is that these "ideologies" are created an exist within a
larger cultural context which circumscribes their characteristics.  It
is interesting to speculate as to whether Hitler's Germany would have been
possible had there not been a complete social and economic breakdown in
Germany after W.W. I.  It seems to me that the anomic weakness of that post-
war culture provided fertile soil for that horror to grow.
-- 

						Byron C. Howes
				      ...!{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!bch