Abstract: Contemporary political philosophy faces the challenge of resolving moral conflict under conditions of deep pluralism. Liberal theorists such as John Rawls and Thomas Nagel attempt to address this problem by distinguishing between levels of moral justification and by locating universality in epistemological agreement concerning principles of justice. This paper argues that such approaches undervalue a fundamental dimension of moral action: the volitional commitment to do what is right.
Drawing on the moral philosophy of T. H. Green, the paper advances a dual-aspect account of morality, distinguishing between its epistemological component (moral knowledge) and its volitional component (moral will). While Rawls’s and Nagel’s strategies rely almost exclusively on epistemological solutions and thus tend toward psychologically and practically unstable meta-moral frameworks, Green’s emphasis on volition provides a more coherent and resilient basis for moral universality.
The paper concludes that recovering Green’s account of moral action allows contemporary liberal theory to reconcile pluralism with universality without undermining ordinary moral agency, offering a more effective framework for resolving moral conflict in pluralistic societies.
Introductions:
In an increasingly global world, the fact of pluralism has become a problem. While difference is welcome when each culture has its own space to flourish, in a world of fast communications and ever more elusive boundaries, communities are more and more exposed to other people’s values. And even if we were to agree to disagree, there would still be at least two occasions on which we would have to reach an agreement: when we have to decide the basic principles of our political institutions and when we have to resolve moral conflicts. While the first problem was at the forefront of John Rawls’s mind in the 1970s and 1980s, the September 11th events at the beginning of this century have made the second problem prominent. Here I will view these two issues as related, and seek a solution that applies to both of them.
In this paper I compare two strategies for resolving moral conflict: John Rawls’s and Thomas Nagel’s, on the one hand, and T. H. Green’s, on the other. The reason why these two parties offer different solutions to moral conflict is because they offer different accounts of moral action. I argue that there are two important sides of moral action: our determination to do the right thing and our knowledge of the right thing to do.
I call the first aspect ‘volitional’, as it reflects moral will, and the second ‘epistemological’, as it reflects moral knowledge. My claim is that while Green gives priority to the volitional aspect of morality over the epistemological one, Rawls and Nagel identify morality almost exclusively with its epistemological aspect. The act that Green accounts for both aspects of moral action places him in an advantageous position. When moral conflict occurs, Rawls and Nagel can office only ‘epistemological’ solutions, as they deal almost exclusively with moral knowledge.
Green does this as well, but he fortifies his epistemological solution with a volitional one, and therefore, overall, he offers a better strategy for resolving moral conflicts. My purpose in comparing the contemporary liberal and Green’s perspectives towards moral conflict is to show how Rawls’s and Nagel’s positions can be revised and improved by retrieving Green’s ideas.
The paper starts with a review of the background arguments leading to she comparison between the contemporary liberals and Green, followed by an outline of the main claims that will be made (section II). There is a brief discussion, in section III, of the compatibility between the different themes and contexts of the two parties in comparison. Section IV explains the usefulness of the distinction between the volitional and epistemological aspects for the purpose of analyzing moral action.
A parallel is drawn between this distinction and Green’s formal and substantive accounts of morality. Section V explains Rawls’s and Nagel’s strategies for resolving moral conflict, and identifies a pitfall in their moral theories: a pitfall that could be avoided by bringing Green’s ideas into the contemporary discussion. Sections VI and VII deal with Green’s theory of how a moral philosopher can help us get out of a moral crisis. Section VIII brings all the insights together by explaining
- The amendments that could be made to contemporary liberal moral theory on the basis of the ideas drawn from Green’s philosophy and
- The reasons why Rawls and Nagel tend to undermine the volitional aspect of moral action.
Background
One of the problems that contemporary political philosophy tries to resolve is how in view of the existing pluralism of philosophical, moral, and religious doctrines we can find a common ground on which to build our political institutions. The problem has two parts: asserting the existence of pluralism, on the one hand, and the need of a universal standpoint, on the other. In A Theory of Justice John Rawls attempts to square the circle—that is, of acknowledging the fact of pluralism, but still asserting the existence of a universal standpoint—by introducing a distinction between the right and the good, There is a plurality amongst different concepts of the good, he argues, but the concept of the right is universal.
Commiunitarian critics of Rawls argued that the concept of the good engulfs everything; therefore the right has no independent ground outside the good. In an attempt to express his position in a different way, Rawls introduced the distinction between political ang metaphysical, where political conceptions of justice aim to be unanimous, whereas a conception that is part of a metaphysical doctrine is only one of many.
Thomas Nagel supports Rawls’s distinction, and offers his own distinction between what is needed to justify belief and what is needed to justify employment of political power. The idea is that we may lack grounds to assert one belief as truer than another, but can find objective grounds for justifying decisions of ultimate political importance.’ Establishing different levels of engaging with particular sets of values is an important part of the strategy whereby contemporary liberals deal with pluralism. This in itself is not a problem: if on one level of communication there is a conflict, it is reasonable to seek another level where the conflict can be either avoided or resolved. The problem occurs when the first level is identified as ‘moral’, and the second level as also ‘moral’, but of a superior nature. We then face the question about how there can be two levels of moral commitment. How can there be a two-tier moral system, where one set of moral beliefs is less important than another set? Contemporary attempts to defend liberalism offer a confusing explanation of morality.
The problem of a two-tier moral system consists in the following. If we assert morality of a second, which is also a higher, level, we implicitly undermine what remains a first, lower-level morality. Because we have moved on to a more complex moral problem, we undermine the place and function of traditional morality. This expresses a standard communitarian concern about the impossibility of setting aside our basic, community-based moral beliefs. Communitarians argue that we cannot, and also should not attempt to, transcend these commitments to the good that are part of our daily social practice. The problem is that if we move to a higher standard of morality, we make our primary, traditional moral commitments redundant, and this poses a question mark over the value of our routine good actions.
Despite these well founded communitarian concerns, however, I believe that the ‘plurality versus universality’ dilemma which contemporary liberals face needs to be taken seriously, Pluralism of philosophical, religious, and moral beliefs is a fact of life nowadays, yet we need some moral common ground on the basis of which to build our political institutions. And if the way in which contemporary liberals try to reconcile plurality and universality is not good enough, we have to seek other alternatives.
Here I offer a solution of this problem based on T. H, Green’s philosophy. As the difficulty (the rwo-tier moral system) we face is based on a confusing interpretation of morality, what we can look for and find in Green is a better understanding of moral action. On the basis of Green’s moral philosophy, I argue that moral behavior has two components: the determination to do the right thing and the knowledge of the right thing to do.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I call the first component ‘volitional’, and the second one ‘epistemological’. My claim is that universality resides with the volitional component of moral behaviour, while plurality resides with the epistemological one. Rawls and Nagel undervalue the volitional component, and focus their moral philosophy almost entirely on the epistemological aspect of morality.
For Green, the volitional aspect is the fundamental one, and this protects him from the theoretical crises caused by the existence of conflicting visions of the moral good. Faced with such crisis, Rawls and Nagel are pushed to redefine morality and seek a meta-moral level, while Green is in a position to offer philosophical guidance.
Both parties to this comparison attempt to find a universal dimension where moral conflicts could be resolved. Both parties pursue a metalevel a level where plurality no longer exists. The difference is that while Rawls’s and Nagel’s path towards this meta-level is psychologically and practically untenable, Green’s path is psychologically adequate and practically sound.