The Strange demise of moral language

Right and wrong

Recently in the House of Lords there was a question about the rise in the number old age pensioners shoplifting. The Peer who asked it was clearly trying to draw attention to the extent of poverty amongst old people. The Minister, Lord Hanson of Flint, in his answer said that shoplifting by anyone, whether they were a pensioner or not, was ‘unacceptable’ and should not be ‘tolerated’. Why those words? Why not just say that it was wrong? For some time now we have been frightened of using the word. We even talk about shoplifting rather than stealing. Those who use social media can be very judgemental, but even there words like right and wrong do not come naturally.

For centuries all children were taught the ten commandments. In many churches they were written on either side of the altar. They grew up believing we lived in a universe in which moral choices had to be made. It was not just a matter of what was legal or expedient but what was right. This certainly prevailed until the end of the 1950’s. Children would still then be taught a famous story about George Washington, how when he was six he was given an axe which he used to  cut down his father’s cherry tree. When his father was angry George Washington owned up to it, not being able to tell a lie, and his father’s anger dissipated. I suspect that all this teaching about right and wrong  began to fade in the 1960’s and certainly by the 1980’s we had come to the position where people could say ‘greed is good’  and where what was legal rather than what was honest became the prevailing mood.

There are three understandable reasons why we shy away from the language of right and wrong. First of all we have grown in our understanding of how people might be drawn into crime by social deprivation, dysfunctional upbringing, psychological factors or often a combination of all of them. It is of course good that we should trying to understand those forces but this should not undermine a basic belief that people are responsible for their actions. When Dostoevsky was in prison he had to live with some of the most hardened  criminals  on earth. Although felt a deep sense of pity for them he still asserted they must take hold of their own lives.

Secondly we hesitate to use  the language of morality for fear of sounding  self-righteous. If you say someone is wrong they might feel that you are claiming a moral superiority. Christians in particular ought to be able to address this one, because we know we are not morally superior to others. We are all mired in the solidarity of sin. Somehow we have to learn to use the language of right and wrong without implying any kind of self  righteousness.  Reinhold Niebuhr was exemplary in this regard. For example, he never doubted that we should fight the evil of the Nazis but was always aware that the seeds of that evil were in ourselves. As a line from one of his prayers runs ‘We pray for wicked and cruel men, whose arrogance reveals to us what the sin of our own hearts is like when it has conceived and brought forth its final fruit’. Or again, ‘We pray for ourselves who live in peace and quietness, that we may not regard our good fortune as proof of our virtue.’

Third, there is the widespread moral relativism of our times, the belief that moral judgements simply reflect the outlooks of different people and  cultures and there is nothing objective about them. In fact although there is indeed some variety  it is not possible to find a society in which stealing and murder for example, are not condemned. There are some acts, such as torturing babies, which revolt any sane person. We live in a world where judgments have to be made, even though there may be fault on both sides. The Nato countries are partly to blame for the fact that we have the war in Ukraine, for steps could have been taken at the end of the Cold War to make Russia feel less paranoid about its policies. But there is no moral equivalence between Ukraine and Russia. Putin deliberately invaded a friendly neighbour and is causing the death of thousands of his own countrymen apart from the many Ukrainians. It was an evil act.

In fact there are rare occasions when we are aware of a moral dimension to life- when there is a national scandal. The then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak said  to the House of Commons on the blood infection scandal:

 This is a day of shame for the British state. Today’s report shows a decades-long moral failure at the heart of our national life-from the National Health Service to the civil service to ministers in successive governments at every level.

He talked about a ‘moral failure at the heart of our national life’. The problem is that, as has been shown in relation not only to the blood infection disaster  but the Post Office scandal and the Grenfell Tower fire, we do not seem able to hold individuals or institutions properly to account. We hold up our hand in horror but no one is held responsible. Andrew Marr has written: ‘It’s time to acknowledge the obvious: we have a moral and intellectual hole sitting in the middle of our democracy’. Until we can hold particular individuals and institutions to account there will continue to be this hole.

We do not want a return to the alleged moralism of the Victorians and any kind of self-righteousness needs to be guarded against. We are after all welcomed by Christ through sheer graciousness not by any moral achievement.  But as human beings we are moral beings and life is a moral struggle. The Philosopher Wittgenstein  wrote that his life was in the world and:

That my will penetrates the world.

That my will is good or evil.

Therefore that good and evil are somehow

Connected with the meaning of the world.

It is a message our present generation badly needs to hear again in relation to all aspects of life, personal and political, individual and institutional.

Richard Harries. He is the author of The Re-enchantment of morality (SPCK) which was short listed for the Michael Ramsy Prize.