MORAL RELATIVISM vs. ABSOLUTISM,
MORAL SUBJECTIVISM vs. OBJECTIVISM,
AND THE WILL OF GOD

William A. Wisdom

Think about moral principles. Some people might say that basic moral principles are valid only for some individuals or for some geographical regions or for some cultures or for some periods in history, but not for others: different and even incompatible principles are equally valid for other people or regions or cultures or eras . This view is called relativism, because the validity of moral principles is said to be relative to the particular individual or region or culture or era for which the principle holds. "To be a relativist about [moral] value is to maintain that there are no universal standards of good and bad, right and wrong." [Antony Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd ed.), 1984, p. 303.]

On this position, nothing is morally right or good absolutely, independent of who holds the moral principles, and when, and where. Moral principles are like codes of etiquette: on which side does the bread plate go? Such a view would make the categorical disapproval of someone else's moral rules impossible, just as the categorical disapproval of their rules of etiquette is impossible (or if not impossible, then certainly silly).

At most we could say that the other's moral code differs from ours. Human sacrifice was right-for-the-Aztecs, but is wrong-for-us. We may personally find human sacrifice distasteful, but we are obliged by relativism to say that, for the Aztecs, it was the morally correct thing to do--and if we were Aztecs, we ought to morally approve human sacrifice.

If the majority of Germans in the 1930s and '40s thought that it was morally permissible and perhaps even morally obligatory to exterminate all Jews, the relativist would be obliged to say that, although "the final solution" was morally repugnant from her point of view, it was morally admirable from the point of view of the Nazis and their sympathizers.

Closely related to, but distinguishable from, moral relativism is moral subjectivism, according to which moral judgments reflect not moral facts about the world, valid independent of our opinions, but merely reflect the judger's moral feelings or preferences. Moral judgments express matters of personal taste. There are several versions of this view. On one, to say "cannibalism is wrong" unpacks as "I find cannibalism distasteful. I wouldn't engage in it myself, and I wish you wouldn't." Understood in this way, moral judgments are either true or false, since it's either true or false that I have the desires and preferences that I (tacitly) claim to have when propounding a moral principle. But then two incompatible moral judgments can both be true, since it might be true both that you find cannibalism distasteful and that I don't.

On a second version of moral subjectivism, my moral judgments are not reports of my feelings--statements about my feelings--but they "express" or "air" or "vent" my feelings. "Cannibalism is wrong" unpacks as something like "Cannibalism! Bah! Revolting! Don't do it! Shun cannibals!" On this account, moral judgments do not even purport to be propositions, despite their appearance, and hence are neither true nor false. But then, again, conflicting moral judgments are only apparently though not really incompatible.

While subjectivism of any sort is a kind of relativism (it being impossible for a subjectivist rationally to maintain that there are universally valid moral principles), a relativist need not be a subjectivist since he can be a relativist on other grounds, without holding that moral judgments are about our feelings or tastes or personal preferences. What such grounds might be is irrelevant here.

I take a brief detour to address the issue of moral disagreement, and whether it might be rationally resolved. For example, can appeals to logic and observation resolve moral disagreements, just as we think that factual disagreements can be rationally resolved?

This is not a straightforward question. We have to distinguish between basic and derivative moral judgments. You and I might have a moral disagreement about Harry Truman's moral worth. I say that he's a bad man, because he was exclusively responsible for the infliction of great pain and death on well over 100,000 innocent Japanese. You might agree that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did cause a lot of innocent suffering and death, and agree that these are wrong, but insist that Truman had no responsibility for the decision to drop the atomic bomb. What had originally looked like a moral disagreement turns out to be a disagreement about a matter of fact, which presumably could be resolved in the ordinary (scientific) ways.

But if there are derivative or "compound" moral judgments that blend moral and factual issues (and there surely are), then there have to be basic moral judgments unalloyed with any factual components--the pure, rock-bottom moral principles. Candidates for this status might be principles like: "It is wrong to inflict pointless pain on innocent children", or "All people deserve an equal opportunity to fulfill their potential." The question about whether moral disagreements can be rationally resolved should be understood to be the question of whether basic moral disagreements can be rationally resolved.

Both moral relativists and moral subjectivists have to hold, for somewhat different reasons, that there are no objective, mind-independent moral absolutes that are universally binding on all people at all times and in all places, regardless of people's beliefs or feelings or desires.

It seems to be a matter of psychological fact, however, that most people feel that their basic moral principles are objectively true and universally binding. They feel that there is an important difference in kind between "You should take I-76 (because it's the shortest route)" and "You should protect the innocent (because it's morally right)." The former has "prudential" value--it's the prudent thing to do for the sake of some other goal. But the second has intrinsic moral value--it should be done for its own sake, and not for the sake of some other goal of ours. The second, and many principles like it, are experienced as if they were objective, mind-independent moral absolutes that are universally binding on all people at all times and in all places.

If these intuitions about moral principles were correct, we might well hope that we could determine, in some objective fashion that could persuade someone with whom we have a moral disagreement, what the moral truths are.

Perhaps the most common defense against moral relativism and subjectivism in the Western world goes something like this: "What is right or wrong, good or bad, is determined by the will of God. Morally, we should do what God commands, and we should not do what God forbids. Moral principles are thus universally valid, binding on all people at all times and places, independent of their feelings or preferences. We learn God's will by studying His Word, the Holy Bible, or perhaps by hearing His voice in our hearts."

Someone holding this position might challenge the non-believer thus: "What authority do moral principles have if they're not laid down or endorsed by God? Moral judgments seem to be absolute and objective: you grant this. How can you avoid moral relativism and/or subjectivism? In the absence of divine authority, how can you rationally prefer your ethical principles to Hitler's?" In fact, a Christian acquaintance of mine did recently challenge me on just those grounds: "Why bother behaving morally? Without a belief in absolutes, I’m sure moral relativism plays high on your list."

There are two classes of response to this. Briefly, (1) appeal to the will of God is of no value in establishing that there are moral absolutes, and if so what they are. And (2) a non-believer can go a considerable way, if not the whole way, toward justifying belief in universally valid moral principles. I'll address these in turn.

(1) Ironically, appeal to God's will is itself a sort of subjectivism: that behavior is good or right which God prefers. But why should we care any more about God's moral preferences than about those of our neighbor, or about those of Hitler? Presumably it's because God's moral preferences are always correct. But how can this be established? If it's not by sheer faith--irrelevant when we're talking about the rational resolution of moral disagreement--it must be by comparison to some independent standard of goodness that God always satisfies. But then the ultimate justification of moral principles is not the will of God after all, but some other criterion, which itself stands in need of independent justification.

If, on the other hand, one wants to insist that anything willed by God is morally right, then we have to say that if God were to will the slaughter of innocent children, that would be morally right. You say that He wouldn't do so? Why not? Presumably because it is wrong on independent grounds.

Up to this point I've had appeal to scripture in mind as the source for our knowledge of God's will. But some people might claim that God talks directly to them, communicating His will in a private revelation. All the problems attending appeals to scripture plague appeals to personal experience. How are we to know that the voice is God's rather than Satan's? And beyond that, one's private experiences are even less authoritative in an effort to resolve moral disagreement than is the Bible, which is at least publicly available.

So far we have assumed, for the sake of the argument, that there is a God Who has a will. But the fact of the case is that there is no God. Therefore any appeal to God's will is pointless.

(2) The question, remember, is how an atheist can resolve moral disagreement rationally. Is he not doomed to moral relativism and/or subjectivism, which makes the definitive resolution of moral disagreement impossible, despite the fact that we experience moral imperatives as universally and objectively binding? How much of the universally and objectively binding character of moral imperatives can the atheist justify rationally?

This is a very complicated issue that has been explored in one form or another by all the great moral philosophers ever since the pre-Socratic period around the fifth century B.C.E. So I'm not going to be able to resolve this problem easily or briefly here. But I can sketch the rough outlines of an answer that may give the reader some satisfaction--some inkling of how the challenge might be met.

Say that someone who regards all people as having equal rights--who assumes an obligation to treat everyone fairly--has adopted the moral point of view or the moral stance. Of course one need not adopt this stance. But there are a number of good reasons for adopting it, though none of them are moral reasons, since valid moral principles will ultimately be justified from, or within, the moral point of view.

(a) One reason I might adopt the moral point of view is that I feel that, as a human being, I have no more and no less rights than anyone else, and that everybody else is just like me in this respect. I can think of nothing that essentially or intrinsically distinguishes me from anyone else so far as rights and obligations go, even if I am stronger or smarter or richer or taller or whiter than some other people.

(b) Another and quite different motive I might have to adopt the moral point of view is self-interest. If I can persuade everyone, or at least a large majority of my fellow human beings, to adopt the same moral stance, then we'll all be better off: safer, better-fed, longer-lived, and so on. A community of mutually dependent equals serves the interests of all its members better than a world of hermits or isolated savages, whose life, Hobbes reminds us in one of philosophy's most colorful phrases, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

[Of course, a particularly rich and powerful individual might figure that he personally would be better off going it alone, dominating and terrorizing whoever interferes with the satisfaction of his desires, thus relinquishing the benefits of cooperation. Such a tyrant must live in constant fear of rebellion or assassination. But this life is possible. All that means is that he rejects the moral point of view.]

(c) There are no doubt other good reasons one might give for adopting the moral point of view. As an exercise, you might try to think of what they might be.

This much should suggest what I mean by "the moral stance" or "the moral point of view". What follows from its adoption? There follow virtually all of the most widely recognized basic moral principles, which come down to the general principles of fairness, decency, mutual respect, honesty, altruism, support for the weak and helpless, and so on and on. One cannot consistently hold the moral point of view and still justify malicious gossip, rampant thuggery, sadism, and so on and on.

The shared background of the moral point of view provides the basis for rational discussion and (hopefully) resolution of moral disagreement over even basic principles. The stance provides an overarching guide to moral behavior. Again, this stance is neither universally binding nor morally obligatory. Efforts to justify it on moral grounds must be circular. What are universally binding and morally obligatory for those holding the moral point of view are the moral principles that follow from the agreement to treat all people as equals in the sense sketched above.

Copyright © 2004, William A. Wisdom