
Ethics is the study of moral philosophy.
Morality is the science of human action.
First comes metaphysics, then epistemology, and then ethics.
Those are the big three of philosophy. Of them, ethics is arguably the most complicated.
Metaphysics and epistemology have a direct and immediate bearing on our most fundamental ethical questions: namely, is there such a thing as morality at all, and if so what is it made of? Can we apprehend it?
For if we didn’t actually exist — or if we did exist but weren’t actually able to know anything — there could be no question of good or bad human behavior.
We must then ask next: what, if anything, within the human condition gives rise to good and bad behavior?
And why do we act at all? Is there some one phenomena we can pinpoint that unites all these things?
The answer is yes, there is something we can pinpoint, and that something is called life.
Life is the common denominator that unites existence (metaphysics), consciousness (epistemology), and human action (ethics).
Science defines life, in part, as “any kind of self-motivated, growth or development-directed behavior that is able to respond to stimuli.”
To maintain itself, life of every kind requires action.
Death, the opposite of life, is therefore the opposite of action as well: death is inertia.
Death gives life meaning in the sense that death is what life constantly strives against.
In order to live, humans must act. But not only that — humans must act in a certain way: specifically, a way that fosters life.
Quoting philosopher (and beekeeper) Richard Taylor:
“The things that nourish and give warmth and enhance life are deemed good, and those that frustrate and threaten are deemed bad.”
In this light, the moral is that which promotes one’s welfare; the immoral is that which is self-destructive.
Some philosophers, like the egregious Kurt Baier, do not approve of equating this viewpoint with morality and instead opt to call it something else: prudential.
The reason these philosophers oppose the idea of so-called prudential morality is that they all, without exception, start with a spectacularly false and deadly assumption: namely, they believe that morality must by definition be altruistic.
This assumption effectively puts happiness and well-being far out of reach and opens the doors wide for all manner of faith-based ethics and arbitrary decree, each one ultimately and equally unverifiable.
From my viewpoint, however (i.e. the prudential perspective), morality is only a means to an end: the individual and her well-being are primary, and morality is the standard by which she achieves well-being.
Thus, rather than saying “That action is immoral, or evil,” it’s more accurate to describe it this way: “That action will harm you over time.”
Such is the nature of prudential ethics.
Since the dawn of humankind, moral philosophy has been dominated by religion of one kind or another – so much so that the overwhelming preponderance of people in world history have been (mis)led into believing that morality cannot exist if God is dead.
It is a grim irony indeed, therefore, to discover after all these millennia that morality not only can exist if you kill God, but that morality can only exist if you kill God.
In the words of the late Walter G. Everett, philosopher:
Moral law is just as real as human nature, within which it has its existence. Strange, indeed, if man alone of all living beings could realize his highest welfare in disregard of the principles of his own nature! And this nature, we must remember, is what it is — is always concrete and definite. Indeed the sceptic nowhere else assumes the absence of principles through obedience to which the highest form of life can be attained. He does not assume that a lily, which requires abundant moisture and rich soil, could grow on and arid rock, nor that a polar bear could flourish in a tropical jungle. No less certain than would be the failure of such attempts, must be the failure of man to realize, in disregard of the laws of his being, the values of which he is capable. The structure of man’s nature, as conscious and spiritual, grounds laws just as real as those of his physical life, and just as truly objective (Walter G. Everett, Moral Values, 1918).
Man is the rational animal. Humans are the ethical primate, the reasoning brain the thing that distinguishes the human essence. As such, human life requires very specific things, not all of which — fulfillment and joy, for instance — are material (like food and water).
These “things” are what philosophers call values.
A value, by definition, is a thing that you want, or a thing that want to hold onto.
“When we speak of values we do so under the inspiration and from the perspective of life,” said Nietzsche.
So. Life requires values — whether shelter, love, sex, transportation, medicine, money, laughter, literature, food, drink, or anything else — and these, in turn, to obtain and maintain require action.
Thus, life requires action.
That is our first ethical crux.
As you can see, it is a crux that derives from the nature of human life here on earth, without any reference whatsoever to God.
Aristotle asked:
“What is the good?” (in his language agathon).
That to him was the foundational question of all ethics.
And in his meticulously reasoned treatise on the subject — Nicomachean Ethics — he answers in no uncertain terms:
“We may define agathon as that for the sake of which everything else is done.”
The good, then, is the end object of an action; the good is the goal.
And here we come to our second ethical crux:
The locus of the good is found in goal-directed behavior, the pursuit of values.
In philosophical terms, goal-directed behavior is also known as teleology.
And that is why certain ethical systems, like those of Mr. Aristotle and Mr. Spinoza, among others, are sometimes described as “thoroughly teleological.”
It is a term that refers to the goal-directed nature of all life, and here specifically to the fact that human good and human evil reside in the very nature of goal-directed action (or in the case of evil, its lack), which in turn resides in the nature of human survival.
Life requires action, yes, but to be more precise, life requires action that is directed toward certain life-sustaining values, which we know as goals.
All entities, sentient or insentient, have a specific essence, or nature. Only living beings, however, can pursue values, and they do so for one reason alone: staying alive.
So. The pursuit of life is teleological action. Life is goal-directed behavior.
That formulation is entirely Aristotelian, yet it can easily be validated without any reference at all to Aristotle: for we can see all around us in nature, and in ourselves, that life requires goal-directed action.
Indeed, as mentioned previously, science defines life as, in part, “goal-directed behavior.”
The essence (or identity) of a living thing determines how that particular thing must behave in order to maintain its life.
“In this way, a good X is that X which fulfills its nature.”
This is also a thoroughly Aristotelian formulation.
It is also why it is not inappropriate to say, for instance: “That sturdy cottonwood is a good tree.”
Or: “That fast greyhound is a good greyhound.”
And conversely: “That lame horse is a bad horse.”
The cottonwood and the greyhound are good because they have fulfilled their nature; the lame horse is bad because it has not.
These, though, are not moral pronouncements, not quite.
There is in them, however, a close connection to morality, and for this reason I believe that even a religious person can glimpse here, at last, how it is that good and evil are indeed secular and rooted exclusively in life on earth.
The final component required for demonstrating morality as a human gauge by which we live in this natural world is the faculty of choice.
There can be no good or evil if there is no choice.
Life requires action: crux one.
The good is that which fulfills its nature: crux two.
Humans (a species that lives primarily by its reasoning brain) must choose to fulfill its nature: crux three.
And that is why humans, the rational animal, are also the ethical animal.
Choice is the sine-qua-non of moral philosophy because chosen action is the exact opposite of automatic action, and automatic action is neither moral nor immoral but amoral: blame or praise can only belong to an act that is willed.
Reason must be willed.
As a matter of fact, the very locus of choice is in the uniquely human faculty of reason.
“Reason,” said John Milton, “is also choice.”
And:
“You have been given reason, which can distinguish between bad and good.”
Said Dante.
Reason does not operate instinctively. We choose to activate it, or not, and that choice determines all our others.
When we analyze will with all the tools that modern psychology brings us, we shall find ourselves pushed back to the level of attention or inattention as the seat of will. The effort which goes into the exercise of will is really effort of attention; the strain in willing is the effort to keep the consciousness clear, i.e. the strain of keeping attention focused (Rollo May, Love and Will, 1969).
And that, finally, is the answer the overwhelming question: “How can there be good and evil without God?”
Because whether God exists or doesn’t, the human brain does not operate instinctively. It needs a standard, a guide.
Which is precisely what morality provides.
Thought precedes action; action sustains life; and life, as Goethe taught us, is a process of valuing.
The process of valuing is the thing that grounds morality in this world, here and now.
Morality is required by the nature of the human brain itself.
Quoting G.H. von Wright:
The attributes, which go along with meaningful use of the phrase the good of ‘x’, may be called biological in a broad sense. They are used as attributes of being, of whom it is meaningful to say that they have life.