Are moral theories useless for solving issues surrounding whatever applied ethical dilemma we face? Is there a crisis in ethics? Back in 1956 Anscombe pointed out that legal theories of ethics and consequentialist theories had reached a dead end because the God who is the source of the law is so widely disbelieved in. I want to extend the analysis and say that ethics is still in crisis for three reasons: it cannot establish intrinsic goodness, it has an inadequate grounding in a social idea of justice, and it fails to account for the real world circles of interest we all inhabit.

1. Ethical theories have a problem defining intrinsic goodness particularly of the environment but also when it comes to justifying the absolute sanctity of human life. We see this most obviously in the pragmatism which attaches to utilitarian ethics, where despite Mill’s best efforts, the end really does justify the means. This has led to all kinds of medical horrors, such as the compulsory neutering of disabled people in the US in the 1920s, and some would say, the experiments on human embryos in the name of genetic research.

But consider Kant as well. He argues that the only intrinisically good thing is the good will. In other words, it’s our motive which is good or bad and we have one intrinsically good motive, which is our duty to obey the categorical imperative. But exactly what the duty consists in is what is open to question – Kant begs the question as we can universalise pretty much anything depending who we count in or out of the ‘rational being’ equation.

2. Ethical theories have problems creating an adequate theory of justice. In medical ethics for example we have great difficulty seeing the wood from the trees in allocating scarce resources in the face of ever more expensive treatments. So the NHS crisis is actually a moral crisis driven again by utilitarian pragmatism. Instead of finding a moral way of allocating these resources, we bend and sway to Daily Mail headlines about treatments denied and as usual the political parties fight scared of approaching the moral dilemma created by a simple truth a choice to spend money on X means it cannot be spent on Y.

It’s a form of moral cowardice to pretend that you can ring fence and also allow more and more expensive treatments to come on tap – what this means is that the NHS budget will simply spiral out of control, or treatments will be rationed. Which treatments are necessities and which are luxuries, which are affordable and which are not is an application of a principle of justice where allocations have to be fair, and not based on wealth or a postcode lottery.

3. Ethical theories have a difficulty coping with the truth that we all have circles of interest and against both Kant and the utilitarians, we don’t operate as impartial spectators adding up utils or universalising in abstract. So again utilitarianism pretends to argue from a universal viewpoint where ‘everyone to count for one and no-one more than one’ to quote Bentham. But this is completely unrealistic. In practice we do think ethically in terms of my children in the first circle, my close relatives e.g. my mum in the next circle and then neighbours perhaps, then friends, and so on, it is like ripples of a pool when we have dropped a stone in.

Unfortunately this also gives me the incentive to try and jump the queue for an operation or a place at a key school. It gives me the incentive to hire a lawyer if an expensive treatment is denied me.

What we end up with inevitably is a highly immoral world. The wealthy buy their privileges and are free to do so. Those who are poorest are left behind. There doesn’t seem to be an adequate social ethic in existence to stop this happening. And so what we need, I would argue is a new ethic of the social contract, where rights and obligations are clearly set out, expectations managed, and realism is applied to how to make difficult moral choices. John Rawls attempted this in his Theory of Justice, updating Kant for a world where injustice is rife.

But we don’t have this just world or the moral theory to back up a concept of civic duty, and so I for one think that this election will be the most vacuous ever – full of sound and fury but ethically speaking, signifying…nothing.

Peter Baron