Tuesday, January 17, 2012
"Justice Without Foundations"
Robert Kraynak, in The New Atlantis, makes a point (HT: First Things) with which I'm sympathetic that I have tried to make myself, in (too) many MOJ posts:
What is so strange about our age is that demands for respecting human rights and human dignity are increasing even as the foundations for those demands are disappearing. In particular, beliefs in man as a creature made in the image of God, or an animal with a rational soul, are being replaced by a scientific materialism that undermines what is noble and special about man, and by doctrines of relativism that deny the objective morality required to undergird human dignity. How do we account for the widening gap between metaphysics and morals today? How do we explain “justice without foundations” — a virtue that seems to exist like a table without legs, suspended in mid-air? What is holding up the central moral beliefs of our times?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/01/justice-without-foundations.html
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Rick- do you think relativism is becoming more common? That's certainly not obvious to me. Sometimes people who favor strict moral codes that apply to many or most aspects of life think that moral codes that think most aspects of life are morally neutral are "relativist", but that's just a confusion. (Gerald Gauss has an excellent discussion of some of these issues in his book, _The Order of Public Reason_, if you're interested.) Or, one might think, on utilitarian grounds, that regulations in many areas of life do more harm than good, but it's just a confusion to think that a utilitarian is a relativist. When I see discussions like this, it usually seems to me that "relativist" is a sort of ad hominem or indicates the person making the charge doesn't really want to think hard. But I see no evidence that relativism is increasing, and what's often taken for it is more properly seen as a sort of pluralism about good lives, a view that's quite distinct from relativism. So, I'd be interested to know if you think relativism is really increasing.
(I should add that I think the idea that scientific materialism undermines human rights also seems to me to be complete mistake, too, but I'm less interested in that than whether you think relativism is increasing, and what leads you to think so.)