CAN THERE BE MORALITY WITHOUT RULES?

E. La B. Cherbonnier

This lecture was delivered within the Student Senate Lecture Series,

Trinity College, Hartford, on December 14, 1964. It was later cited by Joseph Fletcher in his classic Situation Ethics (Westminster, 1966), page 28.

The Death of the Old Morality

    The Old Morality can be expressed in many different ways. Perhaps the most familiar are the theological conception of natural law and the philosophical conception of a categorical imperative, enunciated by Immanuel Kant. Though they may vary in detail, these ethical systems reduce morality to a book of rules. Certain actions are wrong all the time, such as divorce, or murder, or withholding the truth. Certain other actions are always right, such as chastity, or self-sacrifice, or going to church.

    We are accustomed to dismiss all this rather loftily, as a relic of out-worn superstition. But let us at least recognize the standing challenge which the Old Morality makes to every critic. The challenge is this: can you abandon a morality of rules without abandoning morality all together? Is there any way to establish a firm, objective standard of goodness without appealing to inflexible laws? This is the Old Morality’s last-ditch argument, and it is a strong one. It defies anyone to abandon the Old Morality without abandoning morality all together.

The New Morality

    The prophets of the New Morality have not paid serious attention to this challenge. Instead, they have busied themselves with a trenchant and often indignant criticism of the Old Morality. Their indictment is impressive. They can show that a rule-book morality makes a virtue of submission and self-denial. These in turn produce destructive psychological consequences, such as guilt feelings, super ego, and an authoritarian personality. Furthermore, since the Old Morality measures goodness simply in terms of external conformity to law, it ignores motives and thereby encourages hypocrisy. It is a psychological fact that the dedicated legalist tends to be un-self-critical, self-righteousness, and often even cruel.

    There is one further objection to the Old Morality which is especially to the point. You can always imagine a situation in which to follow the law does more harm than to ignore it. The classic example, of course, is Immanuel Kant himself. Kant was asked what he would do if a known murderer demanded to know the whereabouts of his intended victim. Kant replied that the law against lying is absolute; one exception is enough to invalidate it. He therefore had no qualms about turning informer. In the name of truth, he was willing to become an accessory to murder.

    In the face of all these criticisms, the Old Morality is now in full retreat. Its critics, however, have seldom proposed a genuine substitute. In celebration of their new freedom from the old restrictions, they seem content to dance upon the wave of the Old Morality. Their pronouncements are often hasty and ill-considered, and seldom illumine the moral issue at stake. The result his been not only to dismay the older generation, but to confuse the young.

    I have in mind the recently reported statement by the chaplain of a girls’ college, who had assured students that illicit sexual behavior, far from being undesirable, could be a deeply enriching experience. As it stands, this statement is irresponsible in the extreme. It is like telling someone that the way to get rich is to play the stock market, without also telling him that it is a very dangerous game, even for those who spend a life-time studying it. It is equally reckless to encourage people to engage in random sexual adventures without warning them that the consequences are usually resentment and disillusionment. Anyone who gives such advice owes his listeners some hard-headed, practical advice about how to distinguish the rare case of “enriching adultery” from the vast majority, which lead not to fulfillment, but to misery and disillusionment.

    Another Christian spokesman has said that the act of adultery could become a kind of holy communion. When Christians talk in this way, one suspects that their primary concern is not for their listeners, but for themselves. They want to clear themselves of any guilt-by-association with the Old Morality. In establishing their own broad-mindedness, however, they are playing fast and loose with those who look to them for guidance. They are like the pharmacist who neglects to label a drug which may be taken safely only under very special circumstances. The prophet of the New Morality omits the label because he has none. It is difficult, if not impossible to spell out in advance the conditions in which adultery might not prove destructive.

    The New Morality thus consists largely in a criticism of the Old. And until it can provide some new standard of goodness, it is not really a morality at all, but a kind of anti-morality. It is, in effect, a, doctrine that anything goes. It has failed to provide an alternative to a morality based upon rules.

A Third Alternative

    We have now defined the problem: the problem is to conceive goodness without appealing to laws and rules. We can solve the problem, I suggest, by considering the function of rules in any game or sport. I do not mean those rules which the referee enforces, like “ten yards to a first down.” I mean rules which any experienced player learns — like “punt on fourth down ” or “take a pitch when the count is three balls.” These rules are part of the wise player’s know-how, and distinguish him from the novice. But they are not unbreakable. The best players are those who know when to ignore them. In the game of bridge, for example, there is a useful rule which says, “second hand low.” But have you ever played with anyone who followed this rule slavishly? You say to him (in exasperation), “Partner, why didn’t you play your ace? We could have set the hand.” And he replies, unperturbed, “Second hand low!”

    What is wrong? The same thing that was wrong when Kant gave information to the murderer. He forgot the purpose of the game. He let the rule, which is there to help and guide him, become his taskmaster. He no longer thought of winning the hand, but of being able to justify himself by invoking the rule.

    I suggest that in this respect there is no difference between life itself and a sporting match. In both cases, actions are judged good or bad in terms of a purpose. In football, a good play is one which advances the ball. Where morality is concerned, a good act is likewise one which promotes the purpose of life itself. This is an answer to the challenge of the Old Morality, a perfectly clear and objective standard of goodness which makes no reference to rules.

    The obvious objection is that there are as many purposes as there are people, and that the result will be chaos. The point, however, is not what our purposes are, but what they should be. It is possible for people to join in a common effort – like the members of a football team. There is no reason why life itself may not have a purpose. If it does, then we live more wisely when we join it. We may not yet agree on what that purpose is. But we have established that if we ask the question, “What is good?” This is where the answer lies. No other kind of answer seems possible.

    There are other objections which will no doubt come out in the discussion. For example, what do we do when people disagree about life’s purpose? Or, does the end justify the mans? Or, most urgently, what is the purpose of life, and how do you prove it?

     I am not going to try to prove my own answer in the time available (though I think there are strong arguments in its favor), but, for your subsequent target practice, I will say what I think it is: the purpose of life is that everyone should love you as much as he loves himself. Anything which promotes that end is good, and whatever obstructs it is bad. If a person tells a lie, the act is not bad in itself, but only if (as it usually does) it involves a breach of trust and so destroys friendship. Conversely, if a murderer asks Immanuel Kant where the victim is, it is Kant’s duty not to tell him.

    In conclusion, I offer some reflections about the status of rules in such a moral system. In the first place, rules are indispensable, just as they are to the sportsman, or even to the scientist in the laboratory. Without rules as guides, we are reduced to trial and error. Human activity becomes intelligent the more it eliminates trial and error by discovering rules. This applies to morality as well as to other kinds of activity.

    Secondly, the rules are only mans to an end. No action is intrinsically wrong, unless it could be shown that it necessarily and in every case destroyed the preconditions of friendship. These conditions would include such things as trust, respect, and human dignity.

    Thirdly, moral rules like the rules which any experienced sportsman knows, are the result of experience. They are an attempt to formulate the moral experience of the human race. In that sense, they are a kind of collective wisdom.

    Fourthly, a good many of the rules associated with the Old Morality do in fact embody such wisdom. If we look at traditional morality, not as a series of expressive tabus, but as an accumulation of wisdom which can spare us the embarrassment of finding out the hard way, they have much to teach us. Practically every week someone writes to Ann Landers with the same, sad message: ”Please warn your readers not to repeat my foolish mistake. I was bored with my humdrum 1ife, and thought I saw a chance for happiness in an adulterous relationship. Take it from me, it has brought nothing but misery.”

     Before we abandon traditional rules, we would do well to remember that they are not all on the same level. Different degrees of risk are involved in ignoring different rules. For example, though conceivably one might imagine a case where murder would advance the purpose of love, the chances are very heavily against it. Moreover. if one should be mistaken, the damage would be catastrophic. The risk in breaking this rule would therefore be very high. There are other rules which, though also very useful guides, my not cover quite such a high percentage of cases. Perhaps the rule about never withholding the truth is one of these. Before departing from any of the traditional norms, therefore, one does well to take stock of the risks involved.

     Fifthly, all moral rules may in principle be improved upon. At this point I am indebted to Dean Heath’s remarks, when he said that we are constantly refining our rules of conduct, as we learn more about human relations. For example, thanks to the insights of psychology, the relation of parent to child is no longer as strict and authoritarian as it once was. Similarly, the whole concept of punishment has been transformed by a scientific understanding of personality. Vindictiveness does not reform the criminal, but perpetuates his hostility. There is no moral rule which may not be modified or oven discarded if it produces the wrong results. The test of any rule, like the test of any action, lies in its consequences.

    This is my answer to the question, “Can there be morality without rules?” Morality without rules is as blind as any other human activity without rules. The mistake comes when you permit the rules to become an end in themselves, instead of a means. When the good is defined in terms of purpose, the individual is called upon to use his creative capacity to the fullest. Every new situation confronts him with on opportunity for constructive ingenuity. He need not thereby become an opportunist. He is rather putting into practice the dictum of St. Paul, “All things are lawful, but not a11 things are expedient.” That is, although nothing is intrinsically “bad,” it becomes bad when it prevents love.