Can antimoralism avoid moralizing? Reflections on the relation of science to ethics

Abstract

To moralize is to claim to be entitled to impose normative moral standards on persons who either have not already endorsed them, or having endorsed them, fail to meet them. Antimoralism refers to the view that we should reject the hegemony of morality: contrary to what is assumed by most moral philosophers, we are not required to rank moral considerations above all others when we make decisions. On this view, the legitimate sphere of morality ought to be strictly constrained. The word 'ought', in the last sentence, signals a potential incoherence: for is this not itself a normative statement, which although it belongs strictly speaking to metaethics rather than morality, could be charged with the sin of moralizing? The argument of this paper begins by sketching reasons for thinking that existing attempts to find a foundation of morality all fail. In the spirit of Humean skepticism and Nietzschean genealogy, recent work in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience suggests that morality is not all of a piece, but arises from clusters of emotional dispositions that order themselves into relatively distinct domains. The avoidance of harm, justice and liberty are part of the liberal conception of ethics, which excludes three other domains - purity, community-loyalty and hierarchy- authority - that are central to traditional and conservative morality. Liberal ideology therefore seems guilty of just the sort of moralizing it deplores in traditional morality. I conclude by sketching some ways in which it can evade this charge.