Reason in the Public Square, Part II

When public discourse on moral issues is good for the culture and when it’s not

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.

Reason in the Public Square, Part I

When public discourse on moral issues is good for the culture and when it’s not

In a marvelous little book written twenty-three years ago entitled Amusing Ourselves to Death, writer, educator and communications theorist, Neil Postman theorized—on the very eve of the internet-based media and communications revolution—that Americans were (already) so overloaded with (televised) information “that the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense.”[1] A valid observation in many respects in 1985, it is even truer today. Toward the end of the book, Postman observes:

[Everyone] in America…is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different order from eighteenth or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tells us.

Those of us who like to read books like Postman’s are often wont to explain that what regularly passes for ‘opinion’ or ‘argument’ in the public square is little more than knee-jerk emotional reaction and the expression of blind personal preference. We often point to ‘emotivism’ or, more broadly ‘moral relativism’ as the root causes of these moral ailments.

I recently came across a pair of essays by Robert T. Miller, assistant professor at the Villanova University School of Law, which challenged this, perhaps, simplistic analysis. (You can read Miller’s article at the First Things blog ‘On the Square’ here: part I and part II).

Is the problem really that ‘relativism’ or ‘emotivism’ has occasioned the perceived dearth of reasoned discourse on moral matters in the public square? Miller makes the excellent point that commentators on cultural health of many stripes (he is off the mark, however, exclusively to fault “Catholic thinkers”) wrongly bundle many principled moral arguments into the category of “relativism”, arguments “none of which … involves a wholesale rejection of rational argumentation on normative issues.”[2]He rightly concludes by insisting:

Religious believers who are committed to participating in the public square need to understand these arguments and be prepared to answer them. They cannot escape this hard work by invoking the bogeyman of ethical relativism.

Miller makes the further valid observation when he notes that:

Generally speaking, our society is more concerned with producing and responding to arguments than probably any other in the history of the world. Whether the issue is abortion or gay rights, tax policy or the trade deficit, global warming or third-world debt, everyone seems ready to adduce arguments in support of some position or other. In learned periodicals like the Journal of Philosophy or the Harvard Law Review, on the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, in the rough-and-tumble opinion journalism of National Review and The Nation, in the postings of bloggers and the ramblings of barroom blowhards, we find nothing but arguments about morals and politics.

Postman was absolutely right when he foresaw that the TV sound-bite would in many ways disqualify television as a medium for the serious exchange of thought. He did not, however, foresee the advent of the blogosphere or other e-media that have actually enhanced, as Miller observes, our ability to engage in reasoned moral discourse.

One might, nevertheless, be tempted to infer from Miller’s sanguine account of things that, because there is plenty of argumentation going on in the public square, everything is fine and dandy with the state of our moral culture. Such a conclusion—I hope this is not Miller’s contention—would be breathtakingly naïve. True, our culture is awash in what passes for “argumentation” on pressing moral issues. But should we be so quick to discover here a putative sign of moral health? I think the matter requires much closer examination.

As Alasdair MacIntyre has cogently observed, today “on every substantive social and moral issue intellectuals appear on opposing sides.” And whether it comes in the form of formal argumentation, or the mere assertion of cultural convention, “there are too many rival conventions, too many conflicting anecdotes; and the repetition of assertions and denials does not constitute conversation.”[3] An abundance, that is, of argumentation in the public square, does not, in and of itself, assure or guarantee a healthy moral fabric for contemporary culture.

In fact our current overabundance of argumentation suffers from two endemic flaws which can be, over time, potentially lethal for Western liberal democracy as we know it. Both of these have been masterfully examined by MacIntyre. The first is that we encounter these arguments entirely untethered from the moral traditions which generated them. The second is that, given that we find them entirely out of their relevant contexts, history has suffered for centuries from our very evident inability to adjudicate between those rival arguments. Next week, I will explore these two flaws in greater detail, and examine how they give rise to another profound error, namely, the assurance that ‘public reason’ as it is sometimes called can give rise a viable public consensus on difficult and contested moral issues.

For now, let’s just say that even poor argumentation in the public square is preferable to none at all. We can never tire of promoting a form of civility which demands coherent argumentation, namely, that conclusions follow validly from principled premises. After all, western culture in the tradition of liberal democracy has, by and large, remained faithful to its roots in the democratic ideal born in Athens two and a half millennia ago, favoring moral discourse that employs reasoned argumentation over moral speak which simply gives utterance to emotional aversions or preferences. Would I be too naïve to think that most Americans still believe that moral converse in the public square should be based on the use of human reason? I hope not.

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[1] Postman’s thesis in this book and other essays is that the media we use to express ourselves in cultural contexts has an astounding impact on the contentlimits of what we are able to express. Writes Postman: and

For although culture is a creation of speech, it is recreated anew by every medium of communication—from painting to hieroglyphs to the alphabet to television. Each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility… But the forms of our media… are rather like metaphors, working by unobtrusive but powerful implication to enforce their special definitions of reality. Whether we are experiencing the world through the lens of speech or the printed word or the television camera, our media-metaphors classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for what the world is like.

[2]As one example, he points to a perceived tendency among Catholic moralists to lump the moral theory of Consequencialism into the broader category of “moral relativism.” Consequencialism is a moral theory which proposes to guide moral determinations based on our putative ability to perform a kind of moral calculus that would weigh potential negative vs. positive outcomes (consequences) of our actions. “Right” moral answers would be based on that calculus. Miller is quite correct to insist that “[Consequencialism], though mistaken, contains nothing that threatens the rational discussion of normative questions.” Though emerging from false premises, consequentialist arguments, and more broadly speaking, the entire set of theories, along with Consequencialism that fall under the umbrella term of Proportionalism, can be quite coherent. Proportionalism, in fact, began as a reaction against more subjectivist tendencies in moral theory and was motivated by the desire to get back to a kind of moral reasoning that was principled and objective.

[3] "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.

Just When You Thought You Understood

The American Lust for Knowledge in the Age of Mc-nihilism

Today is Super Tuesday.

After reading the morning newspapers, it strikes me that the current run for the White House has generated near-constant uncertainty about what voters think or want. Six months ago, it was inconceivable that this election would not be about Iraq. Six months hence, turns out the number-one issue is the economy.

Or was that just last week’s take on public opinion? According to a front page spread in today’s Wall Street Journal, the issue is now “character.” And—I am tempted to ask—what will it be next week?

The uncertainty about American public opinion on everything from what Americans want from a president, to what they want from Hollywood, to what they want from Microsoft is only one instance of our growing knowledge deficit. If you haven’t noticed, America is struggling with the growing awareness of just how little we know.

Is our economy in a nose dive or is it really just fine? Is America in decline as a superpower or are we still on top of our game? Is Iran building an a-bomb or not? Is global warming for real or is it ideology masquerading as science? Is the universe bounded or unbounded, expanding or collapsing? These are all valid questions, and we must certainly pursue answers; but it’s our groping in the dark and continuing uncertainty that we find more and more intolerable. As a result, our passion to be in the know, to possess the inside story, to have our finger on what’s really going on, to have the factoid at our fingertips, is an ever more prevalent, to not say dominant, psychological state.

This all unfolds, of course, in a cultural and academic milieu that treats agnosticism as enlightened and atheistic reductive materialism as sexy. The prophets of Mc-nihilism, like the late Richard Rorty, taught that we would do best to stop treating truth as something “out there” that we can grasp; that we should stop being so foolish as to believe that there is some over-arching and meaningful context in which to correctly understand our situation in the cosmos.

In such a milieu, and having absorbed these ideas since kindergarten, I would suggest that most Americans find something mildly therapeutic in their lust for factoids.

The problem is that, bereft of an overarching and meaningful account of ‘what-it’s-all-about’, such lusting after knowledge-chunks, the latest data, and the inside track, can be the very dynamic that perpetuates and aggravates the Mc-nihilism that is eating away the very core of our culture, and even our mental health.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that 1 in 10 American women are on an anti-depressant because they are uncertain whether the universe is expanding or collapsing. I am suggesting, however, that the lack of an over-arching and personally profoundly meaningful narrative into which we can fit both our abundance of knowledge-chunks and our lingering uncertainties can certainly be the root cause of everything from anxiety disorders to our growing dependence on anti-depressants. Knowledge—with its fits and starts, certainties and surprises, and open-ended-ness—lest it be the cause of growing unrest, agnosticism, and end in Mc-nihilism, needs the framework of an over-arching account of what it’s all about—an account which we deem to be true.

Enter here the role of religion in public life. Religion can provide that much needed narrative. Religion can offer us entry into another kind of knowing that surpasses the limitations and inherent uncertainty of all things empirical, and opens onto a grasp of broader realities.

In light of which, I find it much more than coincidental that Super Tuesday is followed, tomorrow, by Ash Wednesday—a welcome reminder of our need to transcend the world of factoids and pursue the bigger picture of what it’s all about.

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