MORAL OBJECTIVITY
By Nicholas Rescher
The aim of this essay is to set out an argument for moral objectivity. A
brief sketch of the considerations at issue should help make it possible to
keep sight of the forest amid the profusion of trees. Overall, then, the line
of thought that is being set out here runs as follows:
- • To validate moral objectivity, it must be shown that an impersonal
matter of fact (rather than a personal opinion or feeling) is at issue.
• A key step in this direction emerges from the consideration that
morality is a functional enterprise whose aim is to channel people’s actions toward realizing the best interests of everyone.
• This makes morality into something quite different from mere
mores geared toward communal uniformity and predictability.
(After all, morality is not a matter of anthropology; it addresses
what people should do rather than what they actually do.)
• The inherent generality of moral principles means that they operate at a level of universality that transcends the limits of societal
variation.
• This circumstance militates decisively against moral relativism.
• Nevertheless, general moral principles can (and should) lend some
degree of support to the characteristic (and potentially idiosyncratic) claims of our own community.
• In consequence, morality is rooted in the very nature of rationality
and thereby provides the moral enterprise with an objectively cogent
rationale.
So much for the general line of
What, then, of moral objectivity? Let us go back to basics.
What is it that makes something objective?
The
objectivity of an issue lies in its being a matter of fact that, in principle, can be determined to be so by anyone, because what is at issue is not a matter of opinion or of custom but rather obtains impersonally, independently of what individual people may think
or prefer.
Objective matters do no lie in the eyes of the beholder but pivot on the actual facts.
This being so, consider the salient question that arises in regard to morality:
Would the prevalence of such-and-such a way of behaving among
the members of the community at large effectively conduce to people’s best interests in making their lives more secure, more pleasant,
and/or more rewarding and satisfying?
The matter at issue here is not a matter of what I like or what would
please me; it is not my attitude or my reaction or my own personal
interests that are at issue—or indeed yours or anybody’s. The question is
inherently general, relating to the reaction of people at large, and it relates
not to what they want but rather to what makes them better off by way
of being conducive to their well-being. The question concerns the condition of people in general, not on the basis of what you or I or some group
or other do think about this, but on the basis of what people should, and
sensible people would, think. Specifically, it is a question of what makes
someone better off in terms of their real or true interest—what conduces
to their health and well-being, their security and safety, their opportunities for self-development and self-expression. All these issues, and others
like them, are substantially matters of objective fact.
Accordingly, what renders morality objective is the fact that moral
evaluations can—and should—be validated as cogent through consideration of how the practices being evaluated advance the aims of the enterprise for whose sake morality is instantiated in human affairs. Morality as
such consists in the pursuit, through variable and context-relative means,
of invariant and objectively implementable ends that are rooted in a
commitment to the best interests of people in general. To claim that someone ought (or ought not) to act in a certain way is thereby to commit
oneself to the availability of a good reason why one should or should not
408 NICHOLAS RESCHER
do so—and a reason that is not only good but good in a certain mode, the
moral mode, in showing that this sort of action is bound up with due care
for the interests of others. Whether an action exhibits due care for the
interests of others is something open to general view, something that can
be investigated by other people as readily as by the agent himself. Since
people’s (real or true) interests are rooted in their needs, the morally
crucial circumstance that certain modes of action are conducive (and
others harmful) to the best interests of people is something that can be
investigated and sensibly assessed by the standards generally prevalent
in rational discussion. These matters are not questions of feeling or taste,
but represent something objective about which one can deliberate and
argue in a sensible way on the basis of reasons whose cogency is, or
should be, accessible to anyone. The modes of behavior of people that
render life in their communities “nasty, brutish, and short” (or even merely
more difficult and less pleasant than need be) generally admit of straightforward and unproblematic discernment.
The fact that thievery, vandalism, boorishness, arrogance, and rudeness
are ethically inappropriate is not rooted in some individual’s or group’s
dislike of such things, but rather in the (perfectly objective) fact that such
modes of behavior will, as they become more prevalent, increasingly
degrade the quality of life of the community by creating circumstances in
which the pursuit by individuals of their life-plans and objectives becomes
increasingly difficult.