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WATCH: The Christian case against ‘morality’
My lecture at Sheffield University explored that uneasy relationship
In August it will be Happy Birthday to BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze, thirty years young. Some people love it, some shout at the radio. But, because it is often pretty combative stuff, usually people have a view about it. The idea is to stress test certain moral formulations about topical issues with robust debate. And panellists, past and present, have not been shy in expressing themselves. Michael Gove, Claire Fox, Michael Mansfield, Melanie Phillips, Andrew Doyle — most of us could start a fight in an empty room.
The way the programme is structured encourages the panellists to adopt sharply contrasting positions. That makes for livelier debate. But I often find myself ambivalent about many of the topics we discuss — and not because I do not know what I think, or that I am in two minds about it. No, I have come to realise that it is often because I have some basic issues with the very structure of what we call morality. And I suspect my ambivalence has something to do with the surprising ambivalence that Christianity — especially in its more Protestant formulations — has about morality.
Earlier in the year, I gave a lecture for the Sheffield University Prokhorov Centre that tried to press this question a little further. And it has just been uploaded onto YouTube.
Listening back to myself it stuck me that I have always been fascinated by the case against morality: From Augustine’s argument with Pelagius to Nietzsche’s accusation that morality is a form of sublimated anger (the subject of my PhD), to the sorts of things that I have been writing recently about Cancel Culture in this publication — like this, for instance:
It has taken me a while to work out the things that really bother me in life. And I think I am only just beginning to get it. I am bothered by the very institution of morality itself.
Morality as fashion makes fools of us all.
Morals seem to me a good thing, eg, to have courage, take care of your family, be responsible, helpful to your community etc, they are useful guides for humans to hold on to, they usually lead to more success, happiness and satisfaction, which is surely why they appear in all societies around the world.
But perhaps they need to be freely chosen, perhaps if they become a set of rules imposed on people in an authoritarian way, as morality, they lose their power for good.
I don’t know.
Yes, freely chosen. But that means morals need to be shown or taught first so that they can be chosen. So we need to decide what it is that should be included in that teaching and in example.
I agree Jennie, when I was a child and with my own children it was Aesops Fables, Fairy Tales, Bible Stories and the Greek Myths. The combination of psychological insight, morals and symbolism contained within those will give anyone a good start in life + a loving family.
Bible stories aren’t terribly moral , though, are they? They mainly seem to consist of ‘smiting’ – often smiting the children and grandchildren of those who have committed some imaginary offence against the prevailing morality of the times: such as eating shellfish or sleeping around a bit.
I suggest, next time you are in a bookshop or a library, picking up a book of Bible stories for children and glancing through it, this will give you some idea of the stories I am talking about, eg, the stories of The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son and The Wisdom of Solomon.
You never know you might learn something useful.
“I don’t know.”
With those words, you are now far above any so called “philosopher”. You can put out a well-thought opinion, but then admit uncertainty. I wish there were more people like you in the universities.
Thank you.
What on Earth is ‘the institution of morality ‘. Sorry, but the author sounds to me like he is indulging in a bit of Western elite navel gazing. Yes, sometimes morality is complex, conflicting and totally contextual/ relative but that hardly news. I kind of get bored thinking about this but what passes for morality in one culture ( to take extremes: public hangings and stoning , or less extreme – offering savings accounts with interest) is seen as totally immoral in another. Unfortunately, most people go with the flow, take the easy route even when, at the back of their mind, they might have an uneasy feeling.
I wish that the discussion which followed was not “UnHerd” by us. Profound as the lecture is, challenging as it places us before our own crises of capacity, there is yet the unexplored place for what the church has called sanctification. Perhaps this can be Lecture #2.
No, Lecture One was quite enough: my eyes were closing after the first ten minutes of this self-indulgent ramble.
I think morality is very simply summed up by the phrase “Do no harm to others”.
Although there is a caveat to that, if people are doing harm to you you can retaliate – an eye for an eye etc.
If you are quoting the last phrase from the Bible, it is actually a limitation on retaliation. We do not have to retaliate but, if we do, we must not take more than and eye for an eye etc
I am sure you are right on the phrase But the point I was trying to make was that, whilst I would not wish to initiate harm others, I do reserve the right to fight back, to defend myself, to retaliate etc.
I am unlikely at my age to actually try to use physical force, but in desperation I expect I would.
As I believe as a general moral principal that doing harm to other people is wrong, would I be morally wrong in doing harm to the attacker?
No, the attacker is intent on harming you. The issue is often the attacker justifies his violent attack on the basis of a philospphy or religion they considers moral.
Nice to be able to sum up morality in one neat phrase, but the very decent one you have stated begs the question what is “harm”.
Ah, there is the rub Jennie. But I am afraid I can not really help you with that.
Suffice to say, when somebody is doing harm to me, I have to make a quick decision on how to respond. Consulting a book to decide how harmful is the harm will not be much use.
That is why I try to keep things simple; it aides decision making. Whilst discussing ideas is fun, it normally complicates and elongates the time needed to make a decision, which is not generally beneficial.
Thanks Nick. I wasn’t advocating reading an entire book. Like you, I think I have a “feel” for what harm is although I know that many attempting to do good actually end up harming in the long term. Many of those harms keep coming to light decades later. In such instances some thinking outside the box is required, in particular by our dear leaders. My comment was more about this aspect.
Of course your example is a somewhat easier one: your reaction when you think you or your loved ones are being harmed.
The harder one philosophers have battled with is how to live a good life and do no harm, when the definition of harm is a question of ethics.
“It has taken me a while to work out the things that really bother me in life. And I think I am only just beginning to get it. I am bothered by the very institution of morality itself.”
I think I reached that point of understanding at the age of thirteen. But we all have a journey in life, sometime even the tortoise eventually ‘gets it’. Well done … it gets easier from here on in.
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