There is No Universal Morality

Morality and Intuitions

Many people assume that there are at least some moral truths which any reasonable person can (or at least should) recognize, regardless of their particular worldview.  Some moral truths, it is often assumed, can and should be known regardless of a person’s religious or metaphysical beliefs, or lack thereof. However, this assumption is quite simply false.

At its simplest, the idea of universal morality is expressed in the idea that there are moral truths about what human beings should and should not do that can be directly accessed through our intuitions.  On this account, at least certain laws of morality are self-evident to any reasonable human mind, just as the laws of mathematics are self-evident to any reasonable human mind. The problem with this idea is that the moral intuitions of different people often tell them very different things.  This is apparent when we consider the highly controversial status of many moral issues in our own society today, but it becomes far more apparent when we compare the moral beliefs of people across different times, places, and cultures. There have been societies that have existed for thousands of years in which almost no one would agree with certain moral beliefs that most people in our society would regard as “self-evident” (Consider, for example, the issue of slavery).  Human moral intuitions are not universal; they are very much historically contingent.

To demonstrate this further, let us examine the moral belief that most people would regard as the most self-evident and universally-acknowledged moral truth of all: murder is wrong. In fact, not everyone agrees that there are cases when killing another human being is wrong, but, for argument’s sake, let us assume that the moral belief “murder is wrong” is universally acknowledged.  Does this demonstrate that there is a self-evident moral truth that all reasonable people can agree upon? No, it does not. The definition of murder is “wrongful killing.” Thus, to say “murder is wrong” is the same thing as saying “wrongful killing is wrong”; it is a circular statement that does not really say anything meaningful about reality.  

The question we really need to ask is: when is killing wrong and when is it not wrong?  On this question, there is no consensus among individuals in our society, and certainly not among individuals in various times, places, and cultures.  Pacifists believe all killing in war is murder. Just war theorists believe that killing in war is justified as long as it within the bounds of the rules of a “just war.”  Many others believe that even the killing of civilians in war is justified. Some believe that capital punishment and the use of lethal violence by police is murder; others believe these are legitimate forms of violence.  Some believe that abortion is murder. Others believe abortion is morally acceptable. Still others believe that even killing infants after they are born is morally acceptable. In many cultures, people believed that killing someone in a formal duel was morally acceptable.  If someone killed another person in a formal duel in our society today, they would be tried for murder. So we see that, even about a moral issue as basic as murder, there is no consensus among reasonable human beings; our intuitions tell us very different things.

At this point, someone might object, “Yes, but surely there are some forms of violence which any reasonable person can agree are murder.  For example, surely everyone can agree that acts of genocide like the Holocaust are morally wrong.” However, the assumption that the Nazis must have, deep down, known that the Holocaust was wrong is naive and narrow-minded. Historical evidence demonstrates that at least some of the Nazis sincerely believed that the Holocaust was good and right; that is what their intuitions told them. There are certainly cases where people act hypocritically and do things which they themselves know to be wrong. However, the great majority of evil throughout history has been carried about by people who sincerely believed that what they were doing was good and right.  Human moral intuitions show a great diversity, and there are none that are universal.

Morality and History

Some may argue that, even if individuals disagree about morality, there is still a consensus in our society about certain moral issues, and this indicates that there is in fact some kind of universal morality which all reasonable people at least ought to recognize.  There are two problems with this argument. First, the moral consensus of our society has changed over time. Second, there are other societies that have very different consensuses about important moral issues. One can then push it back a step further and argue that, even if there are some societies that have an incorrect consensus about important moral issues, when we look at humanity as a whole, there are at least some moral issues on which there is usually a broad consensus even across various societies.  However, the moral consensus of humanity as a whole has also changed over time; for example, virtually no one in the ancient world believed slavery was wrong.

A way of dealing with the fact that the moral consensus of humanity has changed over time is to ascribe to the theory of moral progress, a very popular idea in our society today.  According to the theory of moral progress, humanity is becoming more and more moral throughout history.  This theory has the strange implication that our morally superior descendants will look back and condemn our own beliefs and actions, which we believe to be moral, as immoral; therefore, we can never reasonably be confident that any of our own actions are in fact moral.  The real problem with this theory, though, is that it is demonstrably false historically. Social and political changes may involve moral progress, but very often they involve the opposite: moral regress. For example, in ancient Europe, slavery was accepted without question. Under the influence of Christianity, it died out, only to be resurrected centuries later in the time of colonialism.  Later, abolitionist activists then had to exert tremendous effort in order to end legalized slavery in Western Civilization. And who is to say that slavery will not become socially and legally accepted once again in the future?

Humanity is not progressing morally. During the previous century, the twentieth century, more evil was perpetrated than during any other century in human history. The theory of moral progress is not just false; it is dangerous. It is dangerous because it blinds us to the fact that new social movements that describe themselves as “progressive” may in fact be morally regressive.  Any moral progress that a society makes can often be very fragile, and it cannot be taken for granted that it will continue.^[1]For example, we are only beginning to see the devastating social effects our society’s recent abandonment of the centuries-old tradition of marital fidelity will have on our society.

Conclusion

So if there is no universal morality, no self-evident morality, where does that leave us?  It leaves us with a variety of particular moralities. Particular religions, worldviews, ideologies, communities, and traditions each have their own particular values and understandings of what is good, which in turn give rise to their particular moralities.  These particular moralities agree or disagree with one another to varying extents. Regarding different moral issues, there are differing degrees of consensus across various worldviews and communities. On some moral issues, there may be sharp disagreement between different worldviews, which give rise to serious moral conflict.  On other moral issues, there may be relatively broad (but never universal) agreement across multiple worldviews.^[2]At the practical level, people are usually under the influence of multiple worldviews, ideologies, and religions, often in ways that they themselves are not consciously aware of; their moral beliefs … Continue reading In every society, there are certain moral beliefs that enjoy broad enough consensus that, practically speaking, people can take them for granted in their conversations about moral issues. But this does not mean that these moral beliefs are in fact universal or self-evident, only that they are generally agreed upon in this particular historical context.

Assuming that moral truth is universal and self-evident is not only unreasonable; it is dangerous.  It is dangerous because it blinds us to the fact that our own moral beliefs are debatable and historically contingent; this can prevent us from subjecting our own moral beliefs to critical scrutiny.  Such an uncritical attitude towards one’s own moral beliefs leads to a failure to understand that people with different moral beliefs from our own may have, from their own perspective, good reasons for those beliefs.  The end result can be a narrow-mindedness about our moral beliefs that leads us to act with illegitimate intolerance towards others who sincerely hold to different moral beliefs.