Wilson's Moral Sense

As I mentioned that I would in a prior post, I have picked up the late James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense and have begun to make my way through it.  Some excerpts from and reflections on the book might appear in this blog in the process.

Professor Wilson's thesis is this:  "that most of us have moral sense, but that some of us have tried to talk ourselves out it.  It is as if a person born to appreciate a golden sunset or a lovely song had persuaded himself and others that a greasy smear or a clanging gong ought to be enjoyed as much as true beauty" (ix).  This thesis and the analogy attached to it are interesting for any number of reasons. 

Just to mention one, for instance, I am impressed by the explanatory connection that Mr. Wilson draws between morality and beauty.  This is a relationship, older in conception and articulation, that it seems to me is very much worth exploring.  That for another time.

It is, however, worth noting now that such a connection between morality and beauty has become unfashionable because beauty is deemed to be merely subjective.  Therefore, it is often reasoned, a fluctuating thing like a conception of beauty cannot have a bearing on or relation to morality, even when morality is not held to be merely subjective and fluctuating itself.  Another way of saying this is that beauty is only a cultural judgment, unstable and variable.  It is, after all, "in the eye of the beholder."  And sometimes morality is seen to be similar, perhaps merely a cultural ascription by humans onto things with no firm basis, no culturally transcending justification, or even no simply shared human instinct.  To this Mr. Wilson addresses himself:

Two errors arise in attempting to understand the human condition.  One is to assume that culture is everything, the other to assume that it is nothing.  In the first case there would be no natural moral sense -- if culture is everything, then nature is nothing.  In the second, the moral sense would speak to us far more clearly than it does.  A more reasonable assumption is that culture will make some difference some of the time in the lives of most of us and a large difference much of the time in the lives of a few of us. (6)

Mr. Wilson's thesis, to restate the matter, is that humans have a moral sense and that something has gone wrong with it.  One of the main manifestations, or causes, of the wrong turn is the unjust enthroning of culture (human civilization in its totality) over what is properly human.  By implication, what has also gone wrong is human judgment about what is properly human.  A more accurate understanding of what is properly human -- and what is not -- may lead to a better reckoning of what is moral.  Perhaps it will also enhance our understanding and appreciation of aesthetics.