Moralistic relativism

Relativism has gotten morality. Kinda.

The moral relativism that Christians fretted about a generation ago is fading. The sort of people who made “don’t judge” into a mantra back in the nineties and noughties, and who loudly complained about any efforts to “impose morality” are now themselves very judgmental and eager to impose morality.

It is once again permitted, even fashionable, on the left to speak the language of morality—although, for those of us of a certain age, it is a bit jarring to see, say, a liberal young woman on TikTok insisting that a vote for Donald Trump was a profoundly immoral act. And, of course, wokeness, which escaped academia to afflict us all, is dedicated to judging and imposing morality on politics and culture.

Something like this was inevitable. We are moral beings. We need moral agreement for social cohesion and survival and moral justification to sustain our own self-regard. An ethos of moral relativism was never going to endure no matter how effective it was at tearing down established norms.

Consequently, we are not beset by moral relativism so much as by a moralistic relativism, or perhaps a relativistic moralism. Either way, the dynamic is exemplified by leftists cheering and excuse-making for the murder of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson. Such people display a judgmental, vicious moralizing disconnected not only from genuine moral truth but even from any serious attempt to construct a consistent moral ethos.

This newfound moralism is still relativist insofar as it does not bother to articulate principles of moral reasoning or a description of virtue and a life well-lived. Indeed, moralistic relativism is unperturbed by contradiction and inconsistency because it is fundamentally about indulging desire and imposing one’s will (or that of one’s tribe) rather than conforming one’s will to a real truth.

This is why there has been a trend toward the sort of emotivism that Alasdair MacIntyre described in After Virtue. Without a shared ground for moral discourse and debate, people rely on intense expressions of emotion to try to get their way. Forceful emotional demonstrations become a substitute for the force of rational demonstration.

Thus, performative emoting becomes an argument and vindication in itself, which may be a psychological necessity for many—as the vehemence with which a conviction is expressed provides a substitute for rational vindication. Thus, moralism comes rushing back but without any support. Rather, there is an echo of the George Costanza bit in Seinfeld about how “it’s not a lie if you believe it.” In this case, it’s a valid moral reason if you really believe it, which will be manifest by the intensity of expression. Examples abound. Indeed, this is the dominant mode of our distorted discourse.

And so we have a culture that is moralistic in language, tone, and even conviction but relativistic insofar as most people have no sound basis for the moral positions they express. Instead of reasoning from first principles or a theory of natural law or divine commands or an ideal of virtue, there is just emoting. Yes, the best human efforts to apprehend and articulate moral truths are fallible and incomplete, but abandoning the effort is telling, especially as the language of morality makes a comeback on the left.

But moralistic relativism is also a phenomenon on the right, where many have drifted into a tribalism that deploys morality according to the friend/enemy distinction rather than with any consistent moral judgment. The overriding imperative becomes defending the tribe and its leaders and attacking their enemies rather than speaking the truth.

Imperfect alliances are inevitable in politics, but no politician is owed an allegiance that usurps the place of true and consistent moral judgment. It is wrong, even idolatrous, to subordinate honesty and justice to the immediate imperative of “winning” a news cycle or stroking a politician’s ego.

The result, on the right just as on the left, is a self-righteousness that precludes a true real hunger and thirst for righteousness. The moralistic arguments hurled back and forth may contain fragments of older, more coherent moral frameworks, along with bits of the natural law, which is written on the heart. But these truths are fragmentary and further corrupted as moral reasoning is made a slave of passion, fashion, and self-interest.

Thus, our culture and politics are suffused with eager condemnations, often of genuine wrongs, but there is less appetite to build a morally coherent alternative, which would entail honesty about the compromises and sins of one’s own side.

The answer to moralistic relativism is not even louder, more performative emotionalism from the other side, but the arduous work of articulating and living out genuine moral truths.