As I noted last week, our current overabundance of argumentation in the public square—on myriad topics—suffers from two endemic flaws, both of which have been masterfully scrutinized by the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. The first is that we too often encounter these arguments entirely untethered from the moral traditions which generated them. The second is that we too often find ourselves—as has been the case for the past three centuries in the west—unable to adjudicate between rival arguments as to which is right, overall, which wrong, overall, which true and which false in a universalizable sense.

I want first to unpack the meaning of these two flaws and then examine how they occasion a further flaw, namely, the assurance that ‘public reason’, as it is sometimes called, can give rise a viable public consensus on difficult and contested moral issues.

Arguments out of context

As Dr. MacIntyre has so cogently observed, the interminable nature of moral disputes occasioned by the plethora of arguments in the public square reveals how those engaged in moral “converse” are often not actually conversing at all, but simply enunciating to each other a series of premises entirely untethered from their respective—and often times quite diverse—moral traditions. Here there is not conversation really, no exchange of argument, but rather simultaneous moral monologues.

Living as we do in a culture which is generally at a loss to make sense out of competing moral claims, we would do well to point out the obvious, namely, that our opposing arguments are informed by starkly contrasting accounts of man and the moral life, starkly contrasting moral traditions. One person’s assertion of a ‘right to terminate pregnancy’ is based on a conception of rights as consisting of the free exercise of preferences within a radius of self-determination as established in law by a polity; my insistence on the ‘right to life of the unborn’ is based on a conception of right as a protection owed to an individual human being as a response to that individual’s intrinsic good, and for the flourishing of that human individual. When we fail to point out the de-contextualized nature of our arguments, our argumentation all too easily feeds the cultural trend of interpreting our exchange as merely the clash of legitimate, but opposing preferences (“You oppose abortion, I do not; so, keep your preferences to yourself”).

Moral argumentation untethered from an overarching conception of what constitutes right human living—normally only intelligible in light of a shared view of human flourishing—might give the impression of good health, but will in fact be intrinsically flawed, to not say decadent.

Which argument is the best?

That same plethora of arguments also reveals our inability to adjudicate between competing moral claims and theories in a meaningful and definitive way. This enduring malady of post-Enlightenment moral culture was the topic of MacIntyre’s now classic work After Virtue.1

The proliferation of argument without any socially dominant, reasonable and principled manner of adjudicating between competing arguments—especially in those arguments which endure and are protracted for decades on end—only reinforces the popular impression that moral speak is simply not susceptible to rational adjudication, that morals are not the stuff of rational consideration, but simply a matter of personal preference.

Can ‘public reason’ save the day? The myth of moral consensus

Attempts to save our culture from this state of affairs have turned up precious little in the realm of moral philosophy. As I noted in my January 30 column, some seek a solution in the notion of ‘public reason’.

Now, this notion is not an entirely bad foothold for nourishing the moral discourse which is essential to our democratic way of life. But as I noted in that column, confusion today over what type of assertions should be deemed “reasonable” and what should be admitted into public reason is at the very heart of our confusion about liberty and liberal democracy.

Moreover—and this is third flaw I mentioned at the outset—it is the notion of public reason that underlies a false and confused confidence in our presumed ability to arrive at “moral consensus” on difficult moral issues.

Let me illustrate. Sometimes a solution to moral disagreement is proposed—based again, on a supreme confidence that “public reason” holds the key to conflict resolution—which points us in the direction of identifying the “core values” each side holds in common and in regard to the disputed issue at hand. These putative “core” or “shared” values would then constitute a supposed set of moral maxims to which opposing sides could consent.

I would suggest, however, and following the thought of MacIntyre, that underlying those maxims we will all too often discover rival versions of morality, whose internal logic renders rival conclusions about how those maxims are to be applied; and these rival versions of morality derive, in turn, from very incommensurable traditions of moral enquiry, the incommensurability of which is locked into irreconcilable conceptions of ‘the good life.’ Of course, this is all too often overlooked when minds are swayed by the compelling, congenial and soothing language of “values.”2

In sum, yes, there is plenty of argumentation going on in the public square.3 But argument alone cannot make for a thriving moral culture. Our argumentation in the public square must go further, to show the moral tradition from within which our premises are drawn, and to show furthermore why that moral tradition, and the premises it supports is superior to competing arguments and accounts of morality. Arguments alone only feed public frustration and disgust over our (apparently) interminable moral dissonances. They further feed the confused notion that morality is simply a matter of sheer irrational preference.

Rev. Thomas V. Berg, L.C. is Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person.

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1 In an article written close to the time of publication of After Virtue, MacIntyre sums up the book’s central thesis in these terms:

Any particular piece of practical reasoning has rational force only for those who both have desires and dispositions ordered to some good and recognize that good as furthered by doing what that piece of practical reasoning bids… Such a community is rational only if the moral theory articulated in its institutionalized reason-giving is the best theory to emerge so far in its history. The best theory so far is that which transcends the limitation of the previous best theory by providing the best explanation of that previous theory’s failures and incoherence… and showing how to escape them.

In "Moral Arguments and Social Contexts: A Response to Rorty," Journal of Philosophy, 80 (1983), 590-91. Reprinted in Hermenteutics and Practice, Robert Hollinger, ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 296.

2 Those engaging in moral discourse, specialists as well as non-specialists, too often do so oblivious to the incommensurateness of the traditions of moral reflection and inquiry from within which their moral views are generated. Even holders of one and the same moral view are seldom aware that they can hold that view from any one of several incommensurate moral traditions. For example: Are the persons advocating marital commitment as enduring until the death of one of spouses aware that this view can be advocated from within Thomistic natural law, Kantian deontology, or even a Rawlsian neo-contractarianism? Agreement on the moral view is often accepted, heedless of the vast disagreement on the process of moral reasoning, particularly on the premises that generate the particular moral view in question.

3 To mention just one recent and provocative example, see the exchanges between Robert George, Christopher Tollefson and William Saletan over the moral status of the human embryo.

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