Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 6: Sociability

In Part II of his book The Moral Sense, James Q. Wilson discusses the sources of the four moral sentiments that he explores in Part I.  Those sentiments are sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty.  The sources of these virtues that he takes up are also four in number:  the nature of humans as a social animal, the family, gender differences, and the modern impulse toward moral universalism.  A common theme across each of the four chapters on these sources is sociability:  “The mechanism underlying human moral conduct is the desire for attachment or affiliation” (127).

From our survey in previous posts of the four moral senses, it should come as no surprise that the social nature of humans is integral to and helps to explain our moral sensibilities.  Sociability gives rise to moral feeling, thinking, and conduct, and it explicates why those things that we identify as virtues -- like sympathy, fairness, self-control, and duty -- are praiseworthy.  The main reason is that these virtues help to regulate a relational, or social, order that both advances what it means to live well together as humans and clarifies to what admirable ends we should live.

Let me provide a smattering of excerpts from Part II on the sociability that arises from our human nature and that takes shape in our families, along gender lines, and from a modern universalizing impulse:

The motives that shape our morality all arise from our social nature, but some are chiefly means to an end (for example, given my desire for the company of others, how can I best and most cheaply acquire it?) while others express a conviction about what those ends ought to be. (121-22)

Sociability is a two-edged sword: it is the source not only of our moral sentiments but also of our concern for reputation and respect. Our tendency to judge others is accompanied by the constant awareness that others are judging us. ... Our sociability generates our moral sense and then places us in countless positions where its expression is muffled or distorted. That is the human predicament. To be fully human is to recognize this predicament and to take advantage of our calmer, more detached moments to reflect on the moral components of our social sentiments so that we might find our way out of it.  (140)

We know why men and women come together, but what keeps them together? Unless we can explain that, we cannot explain the social unit that forms human character.  Moral life begins not with sexual congress but with emotional commitment -- the formation and maintenance of the family.  (176)

The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise -- and occasionally the application -- of the view that all people, and not just one’s own kind, are entitled to fair treatment.  (191)

Professor Wilson covers a tremendous amount of moral, social, psychological, and historical territory in these four chapters.  The sample of passages above is just that, incomplete and partial.  But his overall thesis is plain enough:  our life is moral because our life is social, and because our life is social it is also inescapably moral.

I could highlight a number of perceptive insights into human morality that Prof. Wilson makes.  In the next few posts I will reflect briefly on just three areas in which his discussion touches on topics at the top of my mind.  These are (i) why the nature and structure of the family is so heatedly debated, (ii) a lesson from gender differences about moral sensibility, and (iii) the effect of the universalizing moral tendency in modern times.

For now, let me just say what may be obvious to some but was not so explicitly clear, or so clear in this particular way, to me before reading The Moral Sense.  It is the significant point that human morality arises from and is largely explained by human sociability.

Maybe it is the term "sociability" that makes the point stand in relief from the more mundane idea that humans are relational creatures, which I have always accepted.  Whatever the reason for the new-found prominence of this idea, to view human relationships -- both their nature and function -- through the lens of moral senses (or vice versa) highlights why we assign so much importance to both our relationships and our moral sensibilities.  They are inseparable, and they lie at the core of our being.  We can no more escape our moral impulses than we can jump out of our human skin.

So what?  The payoff could be a reciprocity in evaluating moral matters:  viewing them as also relational matters in some sense, even if the moral aspect is not immediately apparent.  This reciprocity consists also in being constantly cognizant that our relationships are always matters of moral behavior.  If we were tempted to do so, we can no longer isolate the moral from the relational, and we cannot compartmentalize them.

Furthermore, this awareness itself may bear fruit.  Our relationships and our moral sensibilities may be enriched to the extent that we appreciate, and cultivate, this interaction.

• How would our relationships be enhanced if we embraced them for the moral mini-universes that they are?  
• How would our moral sensibilities be sharpened if we more consciously and more consistently treated our relationships, particularly their challenges, as opportunities for moral character-building and for the demonstration of principled fidelity to others?

It is hard to answer these questions definitively, if they in fact can be answered in this way.  For my part, I venture that we will be stretched -- and our lives refined -- if we give this conscious approach to our moral and relational lives a go first.

It may not be easy.  But what will we say when we report back?  More important, what relationships will have been improved?