Jewish Philosophy in a Secular Age

6. Does Secular Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?

Chapter Six Does Secular Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? 1. Reason and Dogmatism Anyone familiar with the development of moral philosophy in the twentieth century will recognize at once that my title is adapted from a famous essay by H. A. Prichard: "Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?"! In one respect, the insertion of the word secular is superfluous: Prichard never mentions religious ethics, so that as far as his essay is concerned, moral philosophy and secular moral philosophy are identical. In another respect, however, it makes all the difference in the world, since the goals of secular philosophy are quite different from those of a philosophy which operates within a religious tradition. To understand that difference, we have only to look at the distinction between the content of a moral imperative and its source. The secular philosopher admits that some of the injunctions found in the Bible are valid but refuses to accept their validity on biblical authority. If it is true that we should not commit murder or bear false witness, secular philosophy must show this on the basis of a rational argument. Part of what is meant by rational is that one cannot take a text or interpretive tradition for granted. The reason one cannot is simple. It is a matter of historical fact whether a particular imperative is part of a book. But it is impossible to offer a historical fact as a reason for accepting a moral obligation. This is a variation on a well-worn theme: that one cannot deduce an "ought" from an "is." The fact that an imperative is part of a book cannot obligate me to do anything unless it can be shown by an independent argument that I ought to do everything the book enjoins. To show this, I would have to examine the concept of obligation by itself. To cite the book in defense of its own authority would be to beg the question in the most egregious fashion. In this way, secular moral philosophy is Kantian: it claims to substitute reasoned argument for dogmatic assertion. Instead of 145 146 JEWISH PHILOSOPHY IN A SECULAR AGE telling us that something is commanded it seeks to tell us why it is our duty to obey it. It views with suspicion anyone who claims that an imperative is binding merely because it has issued from a privileged source. Even if that source be God, the secular philosopher has no choice but to ask whether there is a reason to act as the imperative commands. But recall Allen Wood's observation that Kant is unable to conceive of the human situation except theistically. The underlying theme of the Critical Philosophy is that God is a necessary postulate of moral reason. Bracket any question of "privileged sources," and reason will discover God on its own. Thus Kant claims (Lectures, 110): Without God I would have to be either a visionary or a scoundrel . I would have to deny my own nature and its eternal moral laws. I would have to cease to be a rational man. Secular moral philosophy accepts Kant's desire to substitute reasoned argument for dogmatic assertion. But to the degree it insists on its secular prerogatives, it does not maintain that the idea of God is necessary. The question is: Can it get along without this idea? 2. Ethical Malaise Prichard begins his essay with the following observation: "Probably to most students of Moral Philosophy there comes a time when they feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the whole subject ." Although these words were written in 1912, they could just as easily have been written yesterday. Dissatisfaction with moral philosophy is still a popular theme-particularly if one means the moral philosophy we inherit from the Enlightenment.2 So I hope it will not seem presumptuous if I confess a certain amount of dissatisfaction as well. The question is not whether secular philosophy has found a justification for this or that belief-although it should be said that there are important areas of moral life for which it has hardly attempted one.3 Nor is it a question of rejecting secular philosophy in toto. If the choice is between a secular philosophy which strives for rigorous argument and a religious philosophy that relies heavily on the notion of "commanding presence," the former is clearly preferable. Rather, the question is whether moral philosophy can succeed without any religious commitments, that is, whether it can offer a defense...