Certified_Heterosexual
The Falklands are Serbian, you cowards.
Let's talk about morality.
All of us have moral intuitions. Our sense of right and wrong feels like something bigger than us, something outside our own heads, more fundamental than any single person's preference. As we all know, however, there is big problem, most succinctly rendered by Hume's “is-ought” dilemma—there is no way to go from describing what something is to what it ought to be. This is why all claims of moral realism are unavoidably circular. The art of constructing an ethical system lies in playing a shell game with yourself. You start with three shells, and under one of them is the proposition you're secretly assuming from the start. You spin them around and spin them around until you are dizzy, and shout, “wait, how did that get there?”
There is only one way to win the shell game of is and ought: you can transmute is into ought if you frame it in the context of a goal. Since I want to accomplish Goal X, I ought to do Thing Y.
We can combine the observation that goals create oughts with a belief in an eternal omnipotent god. In this way, and only this way, can we justify a morality that is absolute and transcendent. A transcendent being has transcendent goals, and transcendent goals create transcendent oughts, binding on everything. This is said to “ground” morality. Morality is grounded when it is justified, an ought incarnated as as an is.
So that was theological morality. How else could we ground morality? Well, you can try the humanistic strategy: perhaps morality flows from some idealized conception of human desire. The greatest good for the greatest number. This falls into contradiction when we attempt to find a definition of “good.” How are we supposed to rank human desires? By means of some other desire? What about people with contradictory desires? Does the intensity of a desire affect its priority? If so, why? If not, why not? Any attempt to square this circle is another variant of the shell game: you're smuggling something in here, some axiom that doesn't belong.
And yet it still feels wrong to believe that things like rape and betrayal are only evil in a relative, limited way, doesn't it? Will your conscience allow this? When someone takes sexual advantage of a child, it is only bad because you personally think it's bad? Yet this is the bullet all seculars must bite.
But there is another way, a third place to look for the grounding of morality. This way is the Nietzschean way. It is unique among all moral arguments because it justifies itself—because Nietzsche, upon climbing the mountain and finding no god there, looks within. And what does he see? He sees only his own will, and he realizes that the grounding of morality is neither a theological nor a categorical imperative. He sees that in a godless world, there can be no Thou Shalt, there can only be I Will.
All this is to say morality is grounded in the will of the powerful, for the powerful man actualizes his will. His judgement and his good taste become for him the arbiters of all existence, which the world either matches or falls short. And if two men should disagree on morality? Then it is strength which will prevail.
And if a powerful man wills evil? Does it become good? In his own mind, yes; but there is no need for us to submit to his evil. The student asks, "if there is no god, then who decides what is evil?" The teacher replies, "you should." This answer was not flippant. Would you be shocked and scandalized to learn that I am a Christian? It is possible to be a theist and a Nietzschean, if you want. It's actually really simple—as the most powerful being, morality flows directly from God's will-to-power.
Believe in God or don't, even as a Christian I'm not offended. Though I will note that all rational arguments for God, like rational arguments for morality, are another variation on the shell game. Nietzsche's self-justifying morality is modeled on Christian faith, which also justifies itself. If you have a rational reason for your faith, then it's not really faith and you are missing the point. As with morality, faith in God flows ultimately from the power of your will; that is the only justification.
All of us have moral intuitions. Our sense of right and wrong feels like something bigger than us, something outside our own heads, more fundamental than any single person's preference. As we all know, however, there is big problem, most succinctly rendered by Hume's “is-ought” dilemma—there is no way to go from describing what something is to what it ought to be. This is why all claims of moral realism are unavoidably circular. The art of constructing an ethical system lies in playing a shell game with yourself. You start with three shells, and under one of them is the proposition you're secretly assuming from the start. You spin them around and spin them around until you are dizzy, and shout, “wait, how did that get there?”
There is only one way to win the shell game of is and ought: you can transmute is into ought if you frame it in the context of a goal. Since I want to accomplish Goal X, I ought to do Thing Y.
We can combine the observation that goals create oughts with a belief in an eternal omnipotent god. In this way, and only this way, can we justify a morality that is absolute and transcendent. A transcendent being has transcendent goals, and transcendent goals create transcendent oughts, binding on everything. This is said to “ground” morality. Morality is grounded when it is justified, an ought incarnated as as an is.
So that was theological morality. How else could we ground morality? Well, you can try the humanistic strategy: perhaps morality flows from some idealized conception of human desire. The greatest good for the greatest number. This falls into contradiction when we attempt to find a definition of “good.” How are we supposed to rank human desires? By means of some other desire? What about people with contradictory desires? Does the intensity of a desire affect its priority? If so, why? If not, why not? Any attempt to square this circle is another variant of the shell game: you're smuggling something in here, some axiom that doesn't belong.
And yet it still feels wrong to believe that things like rape and betrayal are only evil in a relative, limited way, doesn't it? Will your conscience allow this? When someone takes sexual advantage of a child, it is only bad because you personally think it's bad? Yet this is the bullet all seculars must bite.
But there is another way, a third place to look for the grounding of morality. This way is the Nietzschean way. It is unique among all moral arguments because it justifies itself—because Nietzsche, upon climbing the mountain and finding no god there, looks within. And what does he see? He sees only his own will, and he realizes that the grounding of morality is neither a theological nor a categorical imperative. He sees that in a godless world, there can be no Thou Shalt, there can only be I Will.
All this is to say morality is grounded in the will of the powerful, for the powerful man actualizes his will. His judgement and his good taste become for him the arbiters of all existence, which the world either matches or falls short. And if two men should disagree on morality? Then it is strength which will prevail.
And if a powerful man wills evil? Does it become good? In his own mind, yes; but there is no need for us to submit to his evil. The student asks, "if there is no god, then who decides what is evil?" The teacher replies, "you should." This answer was not flippant. Would you be shocked and scandalized to learn that I am a Christian? It is possible to be a theist and a Nietzschean, if you want. It's actually really simple—as the most powerful being, morality flows directly from God's will-to-power.
Believe in God or don't, even as a Christian I'm not offended. Though I will note that all rational arguments for God, like rational arguments for morality, are another variation on the shell game. Nietzsche's self-justifying morality is modeled on Christian faith, which also justifies itself. If you have a rational reason for your faith, then it's not really faith and you are missing the point. As with morality, faith in God flows ultimately from the power of your will; that is the only justification.