Part II: The Ethics of the Early Life Issues
1. What is “Ethics”?
This section[1] can serve as a mini-course in some basic ideas in the philosophy of ethics, developments that have led to the current situation in the life issues, and terminology.
The situation around the world that became apparent with the advent of legalized abortion did not occur randomly but was the logical outcome of certain trends in philosophy that began, some contend, as far back as 17th century France, Germany and England. The replacement of traditional, Natural Law-based philosophies and ethics with a new, subjective[2] and relativistic model of ethics began recognizably with the advent of the humanist movement in the 17th century.
The clash between the traditional system of thought and the new is the basis of a state of philosophical and social instability, often referred to as “the Culture Wars,” of which the life issues form perhaps the most significant front. The split in this war is, loosely described, between “liberals” who want greater relaxation of traditional legal restraints on sexual and other behavior, and “conservatives” who believe that society has a right and a duty to maintain laws restricting the private behavior of citizens.
But more profoundly, the true philosophical and ethical split of the Culture War is that between traditional objective[3] moral laws, and the imposition of the new subjectivism as the criterion for morality. The difference is between “I ought,” and “I would prefer.”
Establishing what is and is not ethical is not so straightforward in our current state of vast philosophical flux. There are a number of different schools of thought – of philosophical presuppositions[4] – currently in vogue and they, naturally, produce a different set of conclusions in ethical questions. It stands to reason, therefore, that our ethical situation is chaotic.
A basic familiarity with these ideas is absolutely crucial for making a coherent argument for the pro-life position on abortion, embryonic research, cloning and NRT’s.
Ethics vs. Morality
In the minds of most people, ethics and morality are, if not interchangeable terms, deeply dependent upon each other. An ethical system that is not based on generally accepted moral norms is one that most people would have difficulty grasping. The assumption that “ethicists” are working from the same moral framework as that of the general public has allowed a host of practices that would traditionally be regarded as grossly immoral, to become shielded and championed by professional ethicists. A distinction must be made, therefore, between ethics and morality if the current problems are to be understood, since in contemporary professional ethics circles the moral principles upon which decisions are being made are vastly divergent from what is traditionally understood by most as “moral”.
Ethics, strictly understood in philosophy, is the application of any given philosophical system to answer moral questions, i.e.: May we do a given act? Is the act in question acceptable?
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (CDP), gives the following definition of ethics[5]: “The philosophical study of morality… Ethics, along with logic[6], metaphysics[7] and epistemology[8] is one of the main branches of philosophy…Its principal, substantive questions are what ends we ought, as fully rational beings, to choose and pursue and what moral principles should govern our choices and pursuits.”
“Morality” is given as “an informal public system applying to all rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, having the lessening of evil or harm as its goal, and including what are commonly known as the moral rules, moral ideals, and moral virtues.[9]”
Ethics and the Natural Law
The Natural Law philosophy, upon which Judeo-Christian moral laws are based, asserts that knowledge of an objectively immutable and rational moral law is possible within human nature and that, therefore, only those ethical choices that conform to that immutable law are rational and good and in conformity to human nature.
The CDP defines the Natural Law as, “in moral and political philosophy, an objective norm or set of objective norms governing human behavior, similar to the positive laws of a human ruler, but binding on all people alike and usually understood as involving a superhuman legislator [God].[10]”
The Natural Law philosophy is not limited to Christian culture and does not necessarily require a belief in a divine legislator. In fact, the legal principles upon which the universal prohibition against, for example, murder, were laid down by Roman jurispridence well before the birth of Christ, and were themselves based on earlier philosophical developments by the Greeks as early as the 5th century BC.
[11]“Ancient Greek and Roman thought, particularly Stoicism,[12] introduced ideas of eternal laws directing the actions of all rational beings and built into the very structure of the universe. Roman lawyers developed a doctrine of a law that all civilized peoples would recognize, and made some effort to explain it in terms of a natural law common to animals and humans.
The most influential forms of natural law theory, however, arose from later efforts to use Stoic and legal language to work out a Christian theory of morality and politics. The aim was to show that the principles of morals could be known by reason alone, without revelation[13], so that the whole human race could know how to live properly.”
When a person holds, or assumes unconsciously, these classical philosophical positions, the question: “Is it wrong to take an innocent human life?” poses no difficulty. But since the advent of the new philosophical systems, which will be described below, the question becomes a matter for deliberations in applied ethics.
A danger arises when it is assumed by those making the pro-life case that “ethical” and “moral” are synonymous according to the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding. In our time, what is called “ethical” is frequently entirely unrelated to the objective moral norms familiar to most people. This failure to understand the radical difference in thought between the traditional Natural Law philosophies and the new theories has been a major obstacle to communicating our ideas.
Western society has experienced a huge transition in the last hundred years in which the objective norms of the Natural Law have largely been supplanted as the accepted philosophical foundation in our public institutions by a system of subjective, relativistic ideas.
The confusion in the ethics surrounding the early life issues, comes from this rapidly widening gulf that has grown between what most adult people – still largely unconsciously functioning on the previous objective moral assumptions – understand to be “moral” and what academia, the medical community, media and governments, assert is “ethical.”
That it has become necessary for the last four decades to reassert the traditional answer to the question: “Is it wrong to take an innocent human life?” shows that this confusion is profound indeed.
This gulf has been the cause of much confusion in the public mind about the moral nature of the new reproductive technologies. Hospitals, legislatures, government regulators, and distributors of public funds for research often do not operate on the same philosophical foundation for answering the ethical questions as most of the general public. When these institutions, as they often do, assure the public that the research approved for public funding has passed the examination of the “ethics experts,” the result is often something profoundly at odds with what most people, if they understood what was being proposed, would approve.
For example, when the “average person” is asked whether abortion ought to be restricted in some way, public opinion polls invariably show that he almost always answers from his foundational assumptions about right and wrong: yes. But in Canada, this opinion of the common man is largely ignored by our country’s governing elites as an outmoded system of thought. The result is that abortion has no legal restrictions and this situation is approved by academic experts in ethics but is vastly disapproved by the public.
Under the “new dispensation” of widely accepted – but often not openly acknowledged – subjective philosophical norms, unrestricted legal abortion, as well as experimental human cloning, in vitro fertilisation and embryonic stem cell research et al, are “ethical” even while they clash radically with the generally accepted moral law.
[1]Much of this section is based on the relevant entries in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (CDP), 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 1999
[2] Subjectivity: belonging to, of, due to the consciousness of thinking or perceiving subject or ego. As opposed to real or external things; giving prominence to or depending on personal idiosyncrasy or individual point of view.
[3] Objectivity: external to the mind, real; dealing with outward things and not with thoughts or feelings, exhibiting actual facts uncoloured by exhibitor’s feelings or opinions. (Concise Oxford Dictionary, 3rd edition. Oxford University Press, 1938)
[4] See Part II section 2. “The New Subjectivism – Some Examples”
[5] CDP p. 284, “Ethics”
[6] Logic: the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. Logic is the basic unit of rational thought and the means by which ideas are made to conform to objective reality. As a formal science, logic investigates and classifies the structure of statements and arguments, both through the study of formal systems of inference and through the study of arguments in natural language.
[7] Metaphysics: the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world.
[8] Epistemology: theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature, methods, limitations, and validity of knowledge and belief.
[9] CDP p. 586, “Morality”
[10] CDP: p. 599. “Natural Law”.
[11] CDP: p. 599. “Natural Law”.
[12] Stoicism: a school of Hellenistic (Ancient Greek) philosophy, that teaches the development of self-control, fortitude and detachment from distracting emotions, sometimes interpreted as an indifference to pleasure or pain, allowing one to become a clear thinker, level-headed and unbiased.
[13] “revelation”: direct intervention in human knowledge by God or a supernatural being.
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