Moral clarity

Last updated October 25, 2023

Moral clarity is a catchphrase associated with American political conservatives.^{[ citation needed ]} Popularized by William J. Bennett's Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, the phrase was first used in its current context during the 1980s, in reference to the politics of Ronald Reagan.^[1]

The War on Terrorism, like some previous wars involving the United States (particularly World War II and the Cold War), is a conflict between good and evil.^{[ citation needed ]}
Traditional American values like democracy and freedom are universal human rights, worth promoting and defending through military intervention.^{[ citation needed ]}
Attempts to understand or explain the actions of anti-Western terrorists as justifiable responses to actions of the United States or Israel are a sign of moral weakness at best, and sympathy for the terrorists at worst, and will hamper efforts to defeat them.^{[ citation needed ]}
Though the actions of the United States and its allies may lead to civilian deaths or other forms of collateral damage, may require the use of means such as torture that would be condemned in other contexts, and may involve temporary alliances with undemocratic regimes, these actions are justified by the greater moral necessity of defeating terrorism and thus promoting American values and ensuring long-term U.S. security.^{[ citation needed ]}
Opponents of action against terrorists are guilty of promoting moral relativism or moral equivalence, in which the allegedly similar means of both anti-terrorists and terrorists are used to blur the moral differences between good and evil.^{[ citation needed ]}

Opposing views

For opponents of the notion of "moral clarity", dividing the world into good and evil does not lend itself to a workable foreign policy. For example, if Iraq was invaded for reasons of "moral clarity", it follows that other "rogue states" (like North Korea) would also be similarly attacked. This apparent contradiction is used to argue that proponents of "moral clarity" are guilty of hypocrisy or special pleading, and that the slogan moral clarity masks less exalted reasons for military intervention, particularly economic motives.

Opponents of the notion of "moral clarity" also note that organizations such as al Qaida and neo-Nazis also believe that their own point of view is one of "moral clarity", which justifies them to take whatever action they feel necessary against what they see as the "forces of evil". Thus, opponents of the notion of "moral clarity" assert that, but for the accident of their country and culture of birth, the proponents of "moral clarity" might well be on the opposite side, holding the same views. Proponents of this view argue that understanding the motivations and values of other cultures, rather than labeling them "evil", is a better first step in eliminating violence.

Critics also argue that "moral clarity" promotes a dangerous view expressed in the famous phrase "My country, right or wrong". The idea that the United States is always "good" is actually an argument of moral relativism, they say, since it makes no distinction between right and wrong actions. Furthermore, it is argued that "moral clarity" is used to discredit those who want to hold the United States to a higher moral standard than "My country, right or wrong", a standard expressed by U.S. Brigadier General Carl Schurz: "Our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right."

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In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument against a form of realism Dummett saw as 'colorless reductionism'.

In ethical philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value. Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative. Different consequentialist theories differ in how they define moral goods, with chief candidates including pleasure, the absence of pain, the satisfaction of one's preferences, and broader notions of the "general good".

Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value; these fields comprise the branch of philosophy called axiology.

In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics.

Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to deny that a moral comparison can be made of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides.

The "Evil Empire" speech was a speech delivered by U.S. President Ronald Reagan to the National Association of Evangelicals on March 8, 1983 at the height of Cold War and Soviet-Afghan War. In that speech, Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and as "the focus of evil in the modern world". Reagan explicitly rejected the notion that the United States and the Soviet Union were equally responsible for the Cold War and the ongoing nuclear arms race between the two nations; rather, he asserted that the conflict was a battle between good and evil.

Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them. Moral relativism encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures. Epistemic relativism holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normative belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones. Alethic relativism is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture. Some forms of relativism also bear a resemblance to philosophical skepticism. Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the word truthfulness of views within a given framework.

Moral relativism or ethical relativism is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist for short.

Moral absolutism is an ethical view that some actions are intrinsically right or wrong, regardless of context or consequence.

Cultural relativism is the position that there is no universal standard to measure cultures by, and that all cultural values and beliefs must be understood relative to their cultural context, and not judged based on outside norms and values. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another.

Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered to be far outside the mainstream attitudes of society. It can also be used in an economic context. The term may be used pejoratively by opposing groups, but is also used in academic and journalistic circles in a purely descriptive and non-condemning sense.

Ethical subjectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:

Ethical sentences express propositions.
Some such propositions are true.
The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the attitudes of people.

Subjectivism is the doctrine that "our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience", instead of shared or communal, and that there is no external or objective truth.

Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or morally wrong and that morality doesn't exist.

Situational ethics or situation ethics takes into account only the particular context of an act when evaluating it ethically, rather than judging it only according to absolute moral standards. With the intent to have a fair basis for judgments or action, one looks to personal ideals of what is appropriate to guide them, rather than an unchanging universal code of conduct, such as Biblical law under divine command theory or the Kantian categorical imperative. Proponents of situational approaches to ethics include existentialist philosophers Sartre, de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, Jaspers, and Heidegger.

In meta-ethics, expressivism is a theory about the meaning of moral language. According to expressivism, sentences that employ moral terms – for example, "It is wrong to torture an innocent human being" – are not descriptive or fact-stating; moral terms such as "wrong", "good", or "just" do not refer to real, in-the-world properties. The primary function of moral sentences, according to expressivism, is not to assert any matter of fact but rather to express an evaluative attitude toward an object of evaluation. Because the function of moral language is non-descriptive, moral sentences do not have any truth conditions. Hence, expressivists either do not allow that moral sentences to have truth value, or rely on a notion of truth that does not appeal to any descriptive truth conditions being met for moral sentences.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that examines right and wrong moral behavior, moral concepts and moral language. Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology.

Neoconservatism: Why We Need It is a 2006 book by Douglas Murray, in which the author argues that neoconservatism offers a coherent platform from which to tackle genocide, dictatorships and human rights abuses in the modern world, that the terms neoconservativism and neocon are often both misunderstood and misrepresented, and that neoconservativism can play a progressive role in the context of modern British politics.

In religion, ethics, philosophy, and psychology "good and evil" is a very common dichotomy. In cultures with Manichaean and Abrahamic religious influence, evil is perceived as the dualistic antagonistic opposite of good, in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated. In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence, both good and evil are perceived as part of an antagonistic duality that itself must be overcome through achieving Śūnyatā meaning emptiness in the sense of recognition of good and evil being two opposing principles but not a reality, emptying the duality of them, and achieving a oneness.

Political hypocrisy or hypocrisy in policy refers to any discrepancy between what a political party claims and the practices the party is trying to hide. Modern political debate is often characterized by accusations and counter-accusations of hypocrisy.

References

↑ The Spokesman Review (Nov 5, 1980) Reagan tide rolls through the inland empire Retrieved 2010 May 3

Moral clarity

Contents

Opposing views

See also

Related Research Articles

References

Further reading