No, I don't believe that. My point is two things. Just as a matter of fact, most modern (Western) moral and political thought is at least influenced by, and in many cases a conscious secular reworking of, Judeo-Christian beliefs. That is true of a lot of the so-called 'greats', and is true of our political culture more generally. In that sense, we can tranpose pre-modern beliefs into a modern framework, because we have.
The other point is that I don't think there is some kind of special philosophical condition of coherence characteristic of pre-modern, or specifically Aristotelian, philosophy, which has now been irretrievably lost. MacIntyre only thinks that because he
is an Aristoelian.
I personally think the search for an 'objective' basis for morality is philosophically wrongheaded, and that the belief that morality either is objective or entirely meaningless is complete nonsense.
Hans Sluga, Politics and the Search for the Common Good
Both are very sceptical of the attempt to formulate a general theory of how the world should be in the abstract. They have a different take on political theory.
Geuss also recently wrote a brilliant series of intellectual portraits of ten or so figures from the history of moral/political thought, which is extraordinarily incisive, but also very accessible. It's called Changing the Subject: Philosophy from Socrates to Adorno.
Evolutionary psychology and even game theory hint at the possibility that morality has objective qualities that are advantageous for (human) societies.
I mean, what does advantageous mean (and who gets to decide what advantageous means)?
The Chinese government was able to pull a ton of people out of poverty and into the middle class with a system of governance that most Westerners find, on balance, to be too costly to individual civil rights for the benefits it produces. Whatever side of the debate you are on you have to acknowledge that there are very real differences in foundational moral principals. While I don’t doubt that some moral principals can be derived from psychology, all things being equal, the problem is that our most fundamental moral disagreements are always very complicated and always involve placing valence on multiple projected outcomes.
I don’t understand how people so easily dismiss Nietzche’s central philosophical claims when a good chunk of modern philosophy and indeed the terrible history of the first half of the 20th century has largely vindicated him.
It’s not like it even matters as a point of debate though, as we will see who is right very soon.
Look around: objective morality indeed! We are generating the worst negative externalities we have ever generated as a species and we placate ourselves because we have democratized the blame.
If this is a moral generation then I would like to know whoever was immoral. We’re about to destroy each other at scales unheard of, but because it’s through the environment and not through war we have rendered ourselves inculpable.
At least pre-Modern Aristolean morality forced people to think of their obligations to their community.
That is very silly. How would a descriptive fact about the world (e.g. what is of evolutionary adaptive advantage for humans) ground an objective moral 'ought'?
What you are really saying, I'm guessing, is that humans have certain altruistic or moral capacities, and that there are certain game-theoretic principles that suggest how we might act in our collective self-interest.
Note that both of those things depend on false conditions: we are adapted to an environment which is not our present one; highly idealised game-theoretic situations tell us little about the complex realities of politics, history, economics, etc.
And what is valuable is not what is in our evolutionary advantage hundreds of thousands of years ago, or what is game-theoretically in our collective self-interest. And again, neither of these things can possibly ground an 'objective' basis to morality. You are confusing the descriptive sense of morality (as a feature of animal systems) with its normative sense.
> That is very silly. How would a descriptive fact about the world (e.g. what is of evolutionary adaptive advantage for humans) ground an objective moral 'ought'?
We are basically talking about different things although we use the same words (descriptive vs normative sense). It's basically defining words (like "ought" in the context of objectivity) and drawing conclusions. Calling my line of thinking "silly" shows me that there is a chance that I didn't specify the semantics in a way that they make sense for you in that context.
Parent asked
> Are you arguing we can root morality in objectivity?
And I hinted at the possibility that you could use certain scientific insights to build a framework which uses a certain kind of objectivity (which depends on your definition of objectivity - here I use it for scientific thinking).
If this fits someone who is scientific-minded (it certainly isn't enough for me to be a sound framework, so I agree with you that making descriptive facts a foundation for ones' morality is definitely lacking in some important qualities), this line of thinking can be used by that individual to say "I think morality has roots in objectivity".
I'm not stating my opinion here, it's more about arguments that could be used by individuals who want to have this kind of framework for themselves. I definitely see the limits in this (like you), but I was just trying to answer the question from a different angle.
Basically I was talking about people who could say things like "There is no god, we haven't seen him and the meaning of life is to reproduce" - scientific-minded people who elevate descriptive aspects so they become the foundation of their belief system. For them, there certainly can be morality in objectivity with those aspects (psychology, game theory) - although you and I don't have to agree with that because it may look one-dimensional to us.
edit: I found that perspective interesting because there are people who call themselves scientific-minded who dismiss the possibility that morality has roots in objectivity, so I found it worthwhile to show this angle.
I don't know that I agree with you here. Are you arguing we can root morality in objectivity?