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DE-MORALIZATION AS EMANCIPATION: LIBERTY, PROGRESS, AND THE EVOLUTION OF INVALID MORAL NORMS *

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2017

Allen Buchanan  and
Russell Powell
Allen Buchanan
Affiliation:
Philosophy and Law, Duke University
Russell Powell
Affiliation:
Philosophy and Biology, Boston University
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Abstract:

Liberal thinkers of the Enlightenment understood that surplus moral constraints, imposed by invalid moral norms, are a serious limitation on liberty. They also recognized that overcoming surplus moral constraints — what we call proper de-moralization — is an important dimension of moral progress. Contemporary philosophical theorists of liberty have largely neglected the threat that surplus moral constraints pose to liberty and the importance of proper de-moralization for human emancipation. This essay examines the phenomena of surplus moral constraints and proper de-moralization, utilizing insights from biological and cultural evolutionary thinking

Keywords

de-moralizationsurplus moral constraintsinvalid moral normssocial experimentationevolutionEnvironment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA)moral progress
Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , Winter 2017 , pp. 108 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2017 

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References

1 The fact that abandoning a moral norm would increase liberty does not, of course, show that this change constitutes moral progress. Abandoning valid moral norms might increase liberty, but would not be progressive. The topic of this essay is proper demoralization — abandonment of invalid moral norms. So far as invalid moral norms constrain liberty, they do so without justification, and removing this constraints counts as moral progress, other things being equal, for two reasons: first, because it is a case of remedying a defective understanding about what morality requires; and second, because (at least from a liberal standpoint), unjustifiable constraints on liberty are to be avoided.

2 Morality constrains liberty in two ways. First, one of the most distinctive and important features of morality is that it constrains the satisfaction of desires and imposes limits on the pursuit of interests, especially, but not exclusively self-interest. Second, “ought” judgments, even positive ones as opposed to prohibitions, entail limitations on liberty: If I ought to do X, then I ought not to refrain from doing X and I ought not to do that which prevents me from doing X.

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4 Focusing only on external constraints not only obscures the fact that invalid moral norms, if internalized, can unnecessarily limit liberty; it also abets a failure to see that false factual beliefs can limit liberty and at great cost. Buchanan, Allen, “Prisoners of Belief,” Oxford Handbook of Freedom, Schmidtz, David, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

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9 For a more comprehensive catalog of types of moral progress, see “What is Moral Progress?” supra note 5. Powell and I explore at length a different form of moral progress, what Peter Singer (following William Leckey) terms “expanding the circle” of moral concern in “Toward a Naturalized Theory of Moral Progress,” supra note 4.

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43 Of course enforcement only works if it is employed. It might be the case that a norm N1 could be abandoned without bad consequences, including the undermining of a valid norm N2, but only if another norm N3 were enforced. Suppose, however, that the fact that the enforcement of N3 is necessary to prevent the abandonment of N1 from causing damage to N2 is not known and a consequence N3 is not enforced. This possibility lends support to a moderately conservative thesis with which the author of this paper agrees, namely, that anyone proposing or welcoming the abandonment of a norm ought to take seriously the risk of unintended bad consequences of doing so. It does not support the assumption of extremely dense interconnections among norms suggested by the seamless web metaphor.