The Philosophical and Theological Foundations of Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Theory and its Relation to Religious Belief

177 Pages·1992·9.446 MB·English

by  Peter Byrne (auth.)

THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
Also by Peter Byrne
ETHICS AND LAW IN HEALTH CARE AND RESEARCH (editor)
HEALTH, RIGHTS AND RESOURCES (editor)
MEDICINE IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY (editor)
MEDICINE, MEDICAL ETHICS AND THE VALUES OF LIFE (editor)
NATURAL RELIGION AND THE NATURE OF RELIGION
RELIGION DEFINED AND EXPLAINED (with Peter Clarke)
RIGHTS AND WRONGS IN MEDICINE (editor)
The Philosophical
and Theological
Foundations of Ethics
An Introduction to Moral Theory and
its Relation to Religious Belief
PETER BYRNE
Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion
King's College, London
M
St. Martin's Press
© Peter Byrne 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 997788--00--333333--5555449944--44
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First published in Great Britain 1992 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-39029-8 ISBN 978-0-230-37646-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230376465
First published in the United States of America 1992 by
Scholarly and Reference Division,
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
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ISBN 978-0-312-07937-6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Byrne, Peter, 1950-
The philosophical and theoloigical foundations of ethics: an
introduction to moral theory and its relation to religious belief I Peter Byrne.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
IISSBBNN 997788--00--331122--0077993377--66
1. Ethics. 2. Religion and ethics. I. Title.
BJ1012.B97 1992
170-dc20 91-44846
CIP
Contents
Preface vi
1 The Nature and Objectivity of Morality 1
2 Conscience, Moral Experience and Moral Theory 21
3 The Moral Structure of Action 40
4 Consequentialist Moral Theory 63
5 Deontological Moral Theory 86
6 Aretaic Moral Theory 108
7 Morality without Religion 129
8 Morality with Religion 145
Works Cited 163
Index 166
v
Preface
This book is intended as an introductory survey of moral philosophy
with a particular emphasis on the relationship between morality and
religious belief. The aim is to explain and discuss some of the major
issues in moral philosophy, tracing, as the account proceeds, their
implications for an understanding of how religion might bear on
ethics. The book is meant therefore to be of particular help to
students of moral theology and religious studies who need an
introduction to moral theory. One way in which such students
meet moral philosophy nowadays is in the context of practical
ethics. It has come to be assumed that in fields such as medical
ethics it is essential to know moral philosophy and moral theory
in order to discuss practical moral problems. Hence, we have the
coinage 'philosophical medical ethics' -used to characterise critical
thinking about the ethics of medical practice. I have written with
one eye on the notion that moral philosophy is the foundational
discipline in practical ethics. During the course of my argument I
shall suggest that there are grave limitations in this idea, arising
out of the nature of moral knowledge. But there are some lessons
to be learnt from moral philosophy for practical ethics, and I have
drawn them when appropriate.
Readers should be warned that this study is biased in certain
directions. Its interest in morality's relation to religion inclines it
to objectivism in ethics and to giving, from the start, an account of
moral knowledge and moral experience which will make dialogue
between secular and religious moral thinkers intelligible. Its lack
of neutrality is I hope compensated by the fact that it offers an
argument for a positive, distinctive view of the nature of moral
thought, so that at least those who disagree with this view will see
what has to be defended and attacked if it is to work at all. In the
interests of getting on with an uncluttered argument and exposition
I have kept references and textual notes to a minimum.
Before the rise of interest in practical ethics in philosophy depart
ments it was common to find moral philosophy characterised as a
purely formal, 'second-order' discipline. Some argue that it has no
concern with the content of moral judgement but merely with the
formal structure of moral argument and experience. It does not seek
vi
Preface vii
to know what is good but rather what the meaning of 'good' and
related words might be. Such a characterisation of the subject is sat
isfactory only in so far as there is an intelligible distinction between
form and content in morals. Moral philosophy has traditionally had
other tasks, notably the discovery and examination of the most basic
goods, virtues and moral principles. In the course of this 'first-order'
task moral philosophers past and present perforce offer comment
on the nature and distinguishing features of moral judgement but
they go beyond comment on the 'form' of ethics. There is every
reason to persevere with this second, older characterisation of the
moral philosopher's task. It is truer to the history of the subject
and reflects even contemporary practice better. Even the strictest
formalists in modem moral philosophy have found it hard to refrain
from drawing implications from their accounts of the meaning of
moral judgement for the nature of the most basic goods, virtues and
principles of right. There appears reason to expect that any account
of the form of morality will set limits upon, or suggest requirements
for, an acceptable content of morality.
The above registers the conviction that the distinction between
form and content in morality is a hazy one at best. Students should
be particularly wary, in my view, of the vision of the subject which
ties it to description of the special features of 'the language of
morals', as if moral philosophy's task were the tracking down of a
special type of meaning and a special type of vocabulary peculiar to
morals. While this might lead to a sharp distinction between second
and first-order reflections on morals, there is ground to question
whether there is any special form of meaning attaching to words in
moral contexts. Moreover, though there are terms characteristic of
moral judgement (such as the words for the human virtues), many
words used in moral discussion are equally at home outside it (see
Wertheimer 1972 for well-argued doubts about whether there is a
'language of morals').
Morality as conceived in this book is a body of knowledge about
how human beings ought to act. Moral philosophy has the task of
setting out the structure of this body of knowledge and outlining
its leading principles and ideas. Some might think that this begs
straightaway the question of whether an objectivist or subjectivist
account of moral thought is correct. The reasoning behind a subjec
tivist portrayal of morals will be discussed in Chapter 1. But we can
see at once that any thinker who takes the possibility of a religious
basis to ethics seriously has strong ground for assuming that such
viii Preface
reasoning is fallacious and that only the view that morality is a
branch genuine knowledge will do.
It cannot be denied that there are subjectivist accounts of morals
which try to establish an intelligible link between religion and ethics
(Braithwaite 1966 is a clear if simple example). Yet there will always
be a substantial cost to embracing subjectivism in ethics from within
a religious outlook. It will entail a corresponding subjectivism in
doctrine and related problems in the conception of the sacred. It
is one of humanity's key ideas about the sacred that it is worthy
of devotion or worship and is in some manner the source of moral
and other values. It is difficult to entertain the thought that value
is some form of human invention or projection and not draw the
consequence that divinity is likewise a humanly produced fiction.
If I take away from my conception of divinity all that contains
judgements of value, on the ground that such judgements are in
no real sense objectively true or known to be true, then what is
left will hardly be intelligible as a portrayal of the independently
sacred.ln consistency an account of the sacred as a human projection
must follow, and while such accounts can indeed be found they
are hard to reconcile with traditional belief or with the task of
doctrinal reflection (compare Cupitt 1980). Whether or not morality
is dependent on religion we shall discuss in Chapter 7 and 8, but
it certainly appears a~ if religion is dependent on morality to the
extent that if the idea of moral truth is an illusion, then so is that
of religious truth.
1
The Nature and Objectivity
of Morality
THE FORM OF MORALITY
One of the crucial tasks of moral philosophy appears to be that of
defining morality. This might be one early way in which reflection
on the form of morals suggests limits to its content. The customary
understanding of what morality is might indeed rule out various
modes of thought and action as options for ethics.
Though inviting, this method for quickly narrowing our sights
in the search for the fundamentals of ethics is open to objection.
It is evidently wrong to settle substantive questions on important
topics by definitional fiat or appeal to ordinary usage. Somehow we
must balance our proper search for an initial definition of morality
with the need not to beg important questions. It is right to look
to the definition of morality for hints in structuring enquiry into
the nature of moral knowledge, while seeing any principles that
definition yields as rebuttable and in need of independent justifica
tion should they prove controversial in later passages of argument.
For example, I shall indicate below how a certain conception of
morality's universality is implicit in its customary definition and
how this conception entails prima facie problems for the view that
moral knowledge depends on religious knowledge. This will not
settle questions about the relationship of religion to morality by
itself. But it will draw our attention to a range of human experience
which counts against some accounts of that relationship.
By 'morality' we do not mean in this study customary, established
thought about conduct and our enquiry into the relation between
religion and morality does not concern the historical or sociological
facts about the influence of religion on behaviour. It is assumed
here that within the history of customary moral ideas we can find
1