By JOHN YOUNG
According to British philosopher Bertrand Russell disagreements about moral values are really about differences of taste. If one person says oysters are good and another says they are bad, each is expressing his personal taste. “The chief ground for adopting this view is the complete impossibility of finding any arguments to prove this or that has intrinsic value” (Religion and Science, p. 238).
That subjective view of values is very prevalent today, at least implicitly. And closely associated with it is Epicureanism, named after the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. He held that pleasure is the highest good and that “…it is with reference to it that we begin every choice and avoidance” (Quoted by Diogenes Laertes, X, 139).
If we accept Russell’s position that values are subjective, and if we accept Epicurus, we are guided by pleasure seeking. Clearly those two views are accepted, at least implicitly, by multitudes of people today. What I see as morally good you may regard as morally bad, while my pleasures will differ from yours, with no objective criteria to evaluate them.
It follows that if I condemn your values I am trying to impose my values on you, just as if I were to condemn your liking for oysters I would be trying to impose my dislike of oysters on you.
The subjective view of moral values is particularly evident in conflicting views about sexual morality, with almost any type of behavior approved, and people condemned as judgmental and narrow-minded if they defend values based on the very nature of men and women.
In sharp contrast with subjectivism is the objective system of morality based on the nature of man: natural law morality applicable to all human beings at all times, and knowable by the human intellect even without Divine Revelation. That system is referred to by Aristotle in his Rhetoric, and is expounded beautifully by the Roman philosopher Cicero.
Aristotle says: “Universal law is the law of nature. For there really is, as everyone to some extent divines, a natural justice and injustice that is binding on all men” (Rhetoric, 1373 b, 7).
Cicero says this. “True law is right reason in accordance with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting….It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by Senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it.
“And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for He is the author of this law; its promulgator and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment”(On The Republic, book 3).
Cicero did not arrive at this position through Divine Revelation, but by studying human nature. Today, unfortunately, the very idea of a fixed nature possessed by all human beings is rejected, irrationally, by many philosophers, and their influence has spread through society.
Cicero says, rightly, that the author and enforcer of this law is God. But that too must be rejected by atheists, and at least seriously doubted by agnostics, which leaves them with no firm foundation for morality.
St. Paul refers to this law when he says that the pagans without God’s Revelation have the moral law written in their hearts (Romans 2:15). This is true today and in every age, but that moral law is obscured in the hearts of those who reject God. Instead the theory of evolution is accepted as providing the fundamental explanation for the apparent intelligent order in the universe, including moral order.
Hence the prevalent outlook today. Blind evolution is assumed to be the basic explanation, with human life having no ultimate meaning. There is no objective moral law by which our actions should be guided, so the default position is to choose what is pleasant, as Epicurus taught.
The prevalence of this outlook makes it easier to understand the acceptance of absurdities, such as the claim that there are many sexes. Nor can abortion be seen as intrinsically evil, but may be the sensible solution to a problem that is threatening human happiness.
The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume has strongly influenced philosophical thinking, and followed the Epicurean doctrine about pleasure. He says bluntly: “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them” (A Treatise of Human Nature, book II, part 3, section 3).
In reality the only way to true happiness is through obedience to the natural moral law, for the natural law is the blueprint of the way life should be lived. So when we depart from it, individually or as a society, we are damaging our nature, just as in regard to the health of the body we will become ill if we disobey the laws of bodily health.
But nature rebels, as shown in the uneasy consciences of people who know deep down that they are doing wrong. It is seen also by contrasting the expressions of the people in a pro-life rally with the expressions of those of pro-abortionists confronting them. Hence the ever-increasing efforts to shut down people who tell the truth, to even criminalize truth telling.
Cicero sums it up well in the final sentence of the above quote. The person who is disobedient to the natural moral law is denying his human nature and will suffer accordingly.
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