We, as a people, are anxious. Our concern is that the disappearance of a basic minimal moral code sustained by a general consensus, threatens the very existence of our civilization
BOYS IN THE HOOD, Woody Allen's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS, Maplethorpe's art, murderous rap, Savings and Loans, water sports, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.
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. . . "For we liberals, the crusade of the 60s was clearly believed to be virtuous. Racism was and is despicable, and our hatred of it was rooted, hopefully, in a deeper love of justice, and the liberation of blacks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Sexism split our complementary diversity, and left us, as men, dwarfed by "machismo," and as women, urged on toward hatred of men. But our intention, as liberals, was only that woman be liberated from tyranny. Our intentions were benign.
"Greed is good" was the '80s analogue to the '60s "Do your own thing.". . . Many of the icons of the Reagan boom are now morally bankrupt. . .Their most visible legacy is the $4 trillion national debt that stands as a metaphor for the moral deficit, symbolized in turn by the names of Milken, Boesky, Trump, Keating, and the whole gang of silk suited pillars of society that stand behind the Savings and Loan disaster.
I delight in my Smith-Corona stock which is booming because the cost of production is cut 80% by transferring the plant to Mexico. My mutual fund has gained 138% over the last five years! The law is that capital pursues abundant cheap labor, and we must not interfer with the holy laws of profit making!
Yes, Mr. Vice President, dysfunctional sexual values are corrupting our lives, but they are not, by any means, the whole story.
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Conclusion:
We seem caught up in twin idolatries of undisciplined freedom, and predatory greed obsessed with commercial freedom to the point of pillage. The firmament of our lives as citizens seems filled with stars gone wild, crashing into each other with anarchic power.
It seems to me that I can hear the common person of our residually decent society say: "Enough is enough! We must come back to a concensus about what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable behavior, that will allow us to become a community once more."
While almost all of us are agreed about
the need for certain basic moral truths,
what these truths are, or even if such truths exist, is a very different issue.
Listen to the level and quality of our public dialogue!
(This is from Joe Klein in the Newsweek of June 8th.)
e.g. Molly Brown and the "family values" political card is played back and forth among the candidates.
But we agree on this: some kind of moral concensus must be reached by us, as a people, or we will tear our communities apart . . . .Again, Klein says: "We face a nauseating buffet of dysfunctions:.". . .an explosion of child abuse, . . . crime, . . . .worker safety that is the worst in the industrialized world,. . . . inability to provide primary health care,. . . . learning disabilities clearly tied to divorce, . . .the absence of nurturing men called fathers, . . .a variety of dehumanizing addictions related to food, or booze, or drugs, or sexual impulses . . . .name your pathology! . . .Indeed, enough is enough!
When, in ancient Greece, Plato witnessed a similar corrupting cultural moment, he said of his contemporaries: "They know not what to abhor, what to relish."
III
"THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND" Allen Bloom
(note here that in a moment of crisis it is normal for a civilized people to look to its most learned members for enlightenment [SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, E.F. Schumacher], and that, in general, we, as Americans, consider ourselves to be relatively "open minded" about moral issues. . . .)
Bloom's contention is that our brightest people have become, in the name of "open mindedness," not so much closed minded, as empty headed.)
A.-Bloom's Thesis:
Our society is moving downward on a steep and slippery slope toward moral illiteracy, and that the source of this motion is to be found at the highest level of academic life.
B.-Bloom's argument:
We have, perhaps unconsciously, accepted an underlying philosophical principle holding that morals are merely a matter of personal taste, or cultural preference.
This position implicitly holds that while there are true and false judgments in the areas of math and science, there cannot be any true or false judgments in moral matters because they are essentially subjective.
The ancients rightly insisted that intelligent people would never argue about matters of taste. Indeed: ". . .de gustibus non est disputandum". . . e.g. catsup, blondes, public breast feeding. . .vanilla or strawberry. . . . Being essentially subjective, judgments about matters of personal or collective tastes, are not statements of truth or falsehood but merely of subjective preference. If then, we classify all moral judgments as merely matters of taste, or personal preference, it follows that nothing is good or evil but that the preference of the individual or of the culture makes it so. Therefore it is impossible for us to be wrong!!!!!
Bloom's "Ad Hominem" arguments that this denial of any moral truth is pervasively accepted at the highest level of our academic community; that it has been so for very many years; and that it has now sifted down to corrupt the moral judgment of us, the common people. I'll give you three anecdotal instances, one of which is fictional.
1.- "At Harvard University in November, there was yet another of those meetings where university folk discuss how to 'reform' higher education. There, Cornell University President Frank H.T. Rhodes suggested it was time for universities to pay 'real and sustained attention to students' intellectual and moral well-being.'
This elicited gasps and even catcalls from the audience of professors and students. One indignant student rose to challenge Rhodes. 'Who is going to do the moral instructing?' he demanded. "Whose morality are we going to follow? The audience applauded thunderously, believing that the student had settled the issue and shut Rhodes up simply by posing these (supposedly) unanswerable questions.
2.- Bloom poses the following problems,involving human sacrifice, to stimulate the thought of his freshman classes at The University of Chicago. We should here note the academic quality of the Chicago student is excellant. e.g. The distinguished Hindu citizen. We can add the case of the Aztec maiden. . . . . . . . .If, indeed, there are no moral judgments that are either true or false, but the thinking of the individual, or the collectivity makes it so, then it would follow that a culture cannot mistakingly mandate what is morally wrong, or taboo what is morally right. . . . . .Yet we know, that being merely human, cultures frequently are mistaken in what they judge to be morally right, or morally wrong. e.g. absurd taboos.
3.- But the best example of this intellectual virus that I have ever read, took place in the late '30s during a dinner conversation that Dr. Mortimer Adler was having with three internationally famous Jewish intellectuals, while teaching at the University of Chicago. They were discussing the process going on in Germany at that time, and which we call The Holocaust.
A.----Adler made the statement that not only did he feel an intense hatred for the political system of the Third Reich, but that he could reason logically from true principle to the conclusion that the slaughtering of innocents was morally evil.
B.----His companions insisted that while they too despised the political system, it was impossible to show intellectually that it was morally evil precisely because of the subjectivity of all moral judgments.
C.----While granting that there are true and false judgments in both math and the empirical sciences, they insisted that there is no such thing as true and false moral judgments.
Concluding comments following upon Bloom's thought
A.- Today, this brand of moral relativism has become the dominant mode of ethical thought in the American university. "There is no good or evil, but thinking (of the individual, or the collectivity) makes it so.
B.- From this initial judgment it follows logically that all discussions of moral issues are useless because of their subjectivity.
1.-With the closing off of all intellectual discussion of moral issues, the American mind closes itself to the possibility of moral truth, and is left with its feelings as the criterion of its moral judgments. If you feel, sincerely, that your action is morally right, then, for you, it becomes right!
2.-e.g. The atomic weight of iron is 53.
Incest is evil.
a.-Many intellectuals would, following the strong contemporary position of what is called "Emotivist Ethics," would say that the first judgment is true because it is subject to empirical verification. Then they would say that the word "is" is used equivocally in the second judgment, and that its true meaning is that "I, or my group, feel that incest is evil."
b.-Finally, the conclusion is drawn that if I don't feel that way about incest, then it ceases to be wrong.
Please read with me the citation from the work LANGUAGE, TRUTH AND LOGIC, by Alfred Jules Ayer, written in 1936 by this renowned British philosopher
The argument in favor of there being moral judgments that are true for every consciously reflecting and freely choosing person, in every age, and in every culture.