After Virtue: Morality in the Modern Dark Age

Imagine a society in the aftermath of a great disruption that no longer recognises its own traditions or culture. Where little remains but fragments of vital knowledge. Where words describe concepts no longer properly understood.

Alisdair MacIntyre imagined such a society in After Virtue - one where only the superficial elements of science - its terms and theories - remain to be recovered from charred books by would-be scientists.

What if something very similar happened in our own world, though instead of science, it was our framework of morality which was dismantled and later revived in a form unrecognisable to those who created and practised it?

Contentious moral questions are now more difficult to resolve because contemporary debates draw upon incompatible concepts and views, such as the conflict between individual rights and utility (the good of the many). Judgements are subjective and evaluations appear arbitrary. We talk past each other using language salvaged from books with missing pages. A unifying basis for agreement is unthought of; even unthinkable by those who do our thinking. We have arrived at a state of recognisable anomie – a breakdown in social norms that leads to cultural disorder.

Anomie: cultural instability resulting from a breakdown in social norms that causes unpredictable or abnormal behaviour harmful to the social order. In such a state, societal values are no longer integrated or aligned with individual aspirations; what is valued by society is no longer achievable or desirable for its citizens. A condition that in individuals can lead to despair, loss of purpose, and maladaptive behaviour.

If what MacIntyre says is true, we can no longer understand the moral language of our ancestors, particularly regarding the virtues, what unites them: a belief in human purpose once accepted in the classical and medieval worlds.

Decline of the classical worldview

The classical worldview of morality was greatly influenced by Aristotle. Aristotle wrote, in his Ethics, that all activities aim at a particular ‘good’. Money, for example, is useful because as it helps us achieve an end beyond itself; we pursue wealth to acquire something with it. Almost everything we do has such a purpose. The exception for Aristotle was Eudaimonia (which means something like happiness). Happiness is pursued for its own sake, and for no other purpose. It is the highest good.

Life also has a good, and there is a path towards it. There is an aim, or end, to human life (its telos) that implies how we should behave; our nature inclines or impels us towards certain outcomes and there are virtues (habits or practices) that help us achieve them. With this understanding, the purpose of ethics is to encourage virtues that align with the inherent aim of human life.

Êthikos (ethics): relating to character; a man’s fixed dispositions, customs, or habits.

But during the late middle-ages and early modern period, there was a rejection of the classical worldview, and eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophers in northern Europe explored new ideas about morality; ones that better suited a new, more rational, society. Thomas Hobbes, an early Enlightenment philosopher and materialist, for example, did not believe in a greatest good of the type Aristotle imagined. For him, individual happiness involves a ‘continual progress of the desire, from one object to another’; he believed fear of deprivation to be the force behind our ceaseless efforts for more:

“there is no such Finis Ultimus, (utmost ayme) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest good) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers.” (Hobbes, Leviathan)

Immanuel Kant believed in universal moral principles binding upon all rational beings:

“I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” (Korsgaard, et al: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals)

Such ideas were the product of a time and place, argues MacIntyre. They took for granted cultural attitudes and beliefs, and this contributed to their failure to provide a universal rational basis for morality. One significant result of their efforts was, however, that traditional moral beliefs no longer seemed justified in the increasingly secular European societies, and with no real basis for the resolution of disputes or dilemmas - such as a telos - debates of moral issues from this point became, in hindsight, increasingly futile.

Modern morality

Today, popular morality is opinion. The right and wrong way to live is subjective. Without belief in a purpose towards which we naturally move as human beings, the entire framework of morality becomes difficult to interpret. Why should we behave in one way and not another? What makes one ethical framework more convincing than another? We have lost our moral compass.

Part of this confusion stems from the separation of fact - how things are - from evaluation - judgements we make about how things are. David Hume, a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, questioned the validity of deriving a conclusion for what ought to be from what is. He argued that the way something, or someone, is does not imply or entail what it, or they, should do. Accordingly, societal roles (man or woman, for example) do not determine duties or rights, unless specified under laws which have replaced any kind of shared morality.

But can we really not judge what is good or bad from facts about the world? What about a watch that does not tell the time? A fireman who cannot fight fires? A farmer who produces better crops than other farmers? What is the function of a watch, a fireman, or a farmer, and can we judge them based on these functions? What about man? If man does not have a definable nature, a purpose, or a function (as a member of a family or as a citizen, perhaps), how do we determine who is a good man? Against which criteria can we judge him? If the idea of a human function or purpose is discarded, such moral judgements can no longer be factual (that is, implied by how things objectively are).

Today, there is no non-natural property of ‘good’. It exists subjectively, or contingently, for individuals; “it depends”, we might say with a shrug. The philosophical name for this attitude is ‘emotivism’: the idea that moral positions express only personal preferences, attitudes, and emotions. The modern view is that there are many human goods that are incompatible or conflicting. The diversity of human goods means that the pursuit of the good cannot be confined to one social or moral order, such as those that may have existed in classical or medieval societies. Any attempt to create such an order would, it is believed, surely become oppressive.

Now, instead of teleology, or commonly agreed principles for life, we have rules. Rules that encompass all aspects of our lives. Today, a moral - or good - person is one who follows the rules prescribed by an authority; one is ‘virtuous’ if they are obedient and compliant. For Aristotle, virtues that promote the Good of man come before, and inform, rules: virtues promote positive goods; rules merely prohibit negative goods. Without the context of a shared sense of the good that informs the virtues, rules are simply the preferences of the powerful; arbitrary expedients.

The failure of the Enlightenment to provide a rational, secular, and objective basis for morality invited Friedrick Nietzsche to condemn moral judgements with contempt as a disguise for the will to power of those who express them. For MacIntyre, Nietzsche offers merely another form of individualism derived from the loss of a true understanding of the way in which morality is practised – as part of social communities seeking a common good.

Cardinal virtues: justice, courage, prudence, temperance.

Theological virtues: faith, hope, charity.

The heroic society: a story of virtue

In ‘heroic’ societies (such as those conceived by Homer and other ancient writers), a man and his actions were inseparable; a man was what he does. To judge a man’s character was to judge his actions. His personal character was not - and could not be - private or hidden; it was observable and public. The basic values of society were given, and so were the privileges and duties that followed from a man’s status in it; he understood who he was and what was expected of him. He and his community worked together to achieve common goals with a common purpose. There was an order to the universe; a man respected and did not violate that order.

The virtues were qualities that allowed a man to perform his societal role, and morality existed in a social and relational context; it was not subjective, but subject to a common understanding of the world and our place in it. In the epic tales of the heroic age, the virtues gave men the chance to succeed along their journey, while vice caused them to falter.

A new society of virtue

MacIntyre argues that virtues are a means to a common good and essential to the good life of an individual. And it is only by agreement upon what constitutes the community’s Good that the bond which forms the polis, or state – and that represents true friendship between its citizens - can be formed. True friendship is not just affection, but a common allegiance and a pursuit of commonly agreed goods. A society cannot exist without such friendship.

Our own polis is a place where conflict is played out; where individuals meet to pursue their individual goals separately. Our friendships are private, and lesser, goods often with no purpose other than personal enjoyment. The closest we come to a common good might be the idea of exceptionalism, or the pursuit of progress; both of which prioritise individuality over unity.

A new society based on the virtues might be possible if we adopt them in our daily lives through certain types of activities, or ‘practices’ as MacIntyre calls them. He argues that indirect, ‘internal’ goods are achieved while engaging in activities such as football, chess, and painting, when the virtues inherent in the practices are practised for their own sakes. Even those who do not play chess or paint well are enriched and improved by virtuous participation.

After virtue

MacIntyre argues that a coherent narrative for life begins to break down without a shared conception of the whole human experience. If what we are does not inform how we should live, then our life stories become tales we tell ourselves about ourselves. The answers to questions such as who am I? or who are you? are whatever we choose when we are liberated from - or deprived of - the constraints, hierarchies, and bonds necessary for the integration of the virtues into society. We might, because of such a breakdown, end up living in a society that MacIntyre describes as ‘a collection of strangers’, where each person seeks only to pursue their own interests with minimal interference; each for himself and to his own.

In this type of society, work undertaken does not, and cannot, produce internal goods. Work done to sustain a household or local community has clear social and cultural benefits, but production has long since moved outside of the household. Where there are no internal goods on offer, virtuous behaviour becomes unintelligible because the virtues are a means used to achieve the internal, or indirect, goods of a practice. With no internal goods or greater good to guide behaviour, how do we understand what constitutes virtue or vice? The concept of the good is now found only in rules, or ‘codes of conduct’.

Conclusion

In the modern world, there is no agreement on what constitutes virtue or vice. No agreed societal goals. No friendship of the type that Aristotle viewed as integral to any type of social or political unity. There is instead a society that values external goods and competition above all else; where morality amounts to rules, and virtue to obedience.

Thomas Jefferson, says MacIntyre, believed that the virtues could only thrive in a society comprised of small-scale farmers. In such a society, positive goods are encouraged and onerous rules are unnecessary. In any case, it seems unlikely that a society reliant upon compulsion and lacking in virtue can sustain itself in the long-term.

As the authors of our own lives, we might ask ourselves: what kind of story are we telling? If we fail to create our own narrative, we may be destined to become minor characters in someone else’s; one who does have a purpose for us.

References

Alisdair MacIntyre. After Virtue, A Study in Moral Theory. University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.

Robert K. Merton. Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review, Oct., 1938, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 672-682. American Sociological Association, 1938.