Making Sense of Wilson, pt. 9: Universal Impulse

In a prior post in which I reflected on James Q. Wilson's book The Moral Sense, I drew attention to the universal impulse in moral sentiment that he identifies:  "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).  Because it is so remarkable, and because it has such sweeping implications, it is worth probing further this topic about the development of universalism in moral thinking and practice.

We can begin by focusing on a question that Prof. Wilson himself poses:  "How can we explain the great expansion of the boundaries within which the moral sense operates?  How, in particular, can we explain why we believe that moral rules ought to have universal applicability?  This aspiration toward the universal is the chief feature of the moral history of mankind" (194).  Indeed.

Professor Wilson suggests that the long development of consensual marriage, particularly in northwestern Europe, helps to provide a key, but not the only, component of an explanation.

The link between the two, consensual marriage and universal moral applicability, may not be immediately apparent.  The tie, however, is the parallel development in northwestern Europe of individualism.  What is the connection?

Most basically, the progress toward exercising individual volition simultaneously marked progress in conceptions of individuals, which also marked progress in conceptions of everyone.

Consensual marriages leading to families that were independent of clan control do not automatically produce conjugal habits or child-rearing practices that emphasize individual worth and self-determination, much less ones that inculcate universal as opposed to parochial moral understandings.  Autonomous families are as capable of teaching bigotry and narrow self-interest as are clan-dominated ones.  But the spread of relatively autonomous consensual marriages prepared the ground for an extension of individualism.  Individualism implies universalism, since if each person is morally equivalent then all people are morally equivalent.  Commerce may have provided a practical reason for acting on such universalistic beliefs in order to take advantage of the division of labor and the expansion of markets, and theology provided doctrinal support -- the view that all men, however primitive, have souls and natural reason -- for acting as if universalism were true. (211-12; my emphasis)

As this paragraph shows, a single change in marriage was not the only factor in the rise of universal moral thinking, but it was absolutely critical.

The shift to consensual marriage was not only critical; it was also consequential.  It altered the landscape, or background conditions, within which daily affairs of religion and business (including related property rights and common law) operated.  The moral and social implications of this pivot to individualism (and the universalism that it entails) are great.  As Prof. Wilson observes a little later, "The strength of the moral senses are revealed when circumstances permit their fuller expression and wider effect" (215).

If a single change in just the way that marriage is entered into (by individual consent rather than strictly by family arrangement) can have such a significant effect on the nature and practice of morals (advancing universal rather than strictly communal moral applicability), what would be the potential magnitude of changing the nature, function, structure, and operations of marriage itself?

This is a question about the extent of the moral implications of a change around the margins (how one enters into marriage, which remains the same) relative to a change at the core (who enters into marriage, which thereby would not remain the same).  To answer this question is not to prejudge whether the implications of the potential change are good or bad; it is simply to be candid about their significance.

That debate about the proper participants in what we call “marriage,” which I discussed in a recent post, turns very much on the legacy of individualism as characteristic of modern society.

About that legacy Prof. Wilson offers some observations.  They are in keeping with the notion that changes in the family also change society and its members.  But the first school for moral instruction is the family and its rearing of children.  And so we should not be surprised if the main moral disputes of our time have their seeds in the turn toward individualism in the family.  What, then, can we discern about the societal effects of the inculcation of moral senses in children, particularly as that moral instruction reflects a shift from a communal orientation to an individualistic, and thus universal, one?

The medieval and later Enlightenment and modern moral developments resulted in two faces of the family:

...wherever children learn mutual dependency and family obligation, they are learning to give highest priority to self-control and the sense of duty.  When, as in the United States and other societies with a more individualistic and democratic family culture, children learn independence and self-expression, they are learning to give highest priority to sympathy and a sense of fair play. (154)

To identify two family faces is not to say that the one is unconcerned about sympathy and fairness, or that the other is unconcerned about self-control and duty.  It is, however, to suggest that the notion of the good (what families and their members ought to pursue in life) is oriented, on the one hand, toward the cultivation of virtue and, on the other hand, toward the possession of rights.

This is an oversimplification.  It, however, does make a point that should provoke thought.  To what degree do our families, and by extension our societies, reflect some moral senses more than others?  And what are the consequences?

In Prof. Wilson's estimation, modern society, bred from the modern autonomous family, has many strengths but is, at bottom, out of balance:

My view is that much wanton cruelty and unreasoning prejudice are averted by a family system that encourages a belief in individual dignity and a widely extended capacity for sympathy and by the opportunity for the widespread ownership of private property.  But unlike some enthusiasts of the Enlightenment, I believe that this gain is purchased at a price, and sometimes a very high one:  a lessened sense of honor and duty, and a diminished capacity for self-control. (218)

If autonomy is prized above most everything else, then it is not so hard to conceive that self-control in the service of duty -- limiting one's action for oneself in order to act for the sake of others -- might be displaced.

But, someone may ask, why is this problematic?  Are not the gains of individualism and universalism greater than the losses?

I might try to answer these legitimate questions in several ways.  Let me select one:  citizenship.

What sorts of civic virtues are necessary for life to flourish in Western liberal democratic welfare states, such as the United States, Canada, and Great Britain?  What does it mean to be a citizen in such a state?

A common view is that to be a citizen is simply to have "the right to have rights" (Trop v. Dulles, U.S. Supreme Court, 1958).  Citizenship, on this common view, is possessing and preserving certain civil, political, and social rights as appropriate to all citizens.  But this model of citizenship is largely passive and private.  Voting is widely seen as the only or main civic virtue, which is a right that you wish to have provided but you may or may not choose to exercise.  As Will Kymlicka remarks in his fine study, "When asked what citizenship means to them, people are much more likely to talk about rights than responsibilities or participation" (Contemporary Political Philosophy, 288).

This is to say that, in general in these Western liberal democratic republics, most people are more inclined to talk about what others should do or furnish with respect to them than what they should do or furnish with respect to others.  Their emphasis is on rights they possess more than virtues that they should practice.  The accent is on individual autonomy more than on communal duty.

If this is broadly the case (and a large body of academic study and just plain common experience suggests that it is), what gets lost?  For one thing, a passive/private view of citizenship erodes genuine conversation.

Conversation, unlike, say, a one-way Facebook status update, is a two-way street.  It involves speaking and listening.  It is, again drawing upon Prof. Kymlicka, "to seek to understand what others say, and to respond respectfully to the views of others, so as to continue the conversation" (Contemporary Political Philosophy, 289).  What we are talking about is civil public discourse.

If citizenship is mostly about individually exercising rights, then this is something we can largely perform by ourselves, independent of other people.  We are, for instance, entitled to free expression of speech, and we are not required to listen to anyone else.  Citizenship protects our privilege to shout our opinions from the rooftops, but it does not obligate us to pay attention, much less seek to comprehend and sympathize with, the opinions that other people are shouting -- or updating, or tweeting, or blogging.  Indeed, the public square today is largely something one enters through the privacy of one's computer screen or smartphone, with the volume turned down and the swift "unfriend" or "unsubscribe" click ready at hand. Technology makes it easier than ever to talk more and to listen less.

The tendency opposite that of the passive/private view of citizenship is also dangerous, namely, to equate citizenship with government activity.  The collective life and responsibilities of citizens are not identical with the enacted policy of government branches. To speak of civic virtues at all is just to speak of the habits of action and dispositions of character that are necessary for citizens to reflect in their lives with one another for their shared life in the state to flourish.  These civic virtues of citizens should influence what the government does on behalf of its citizens.  But civil society is not civil government.   Citizens' civic virtues practiced in public are not coextensive with government's public policy actions.  Participating in society is distinct from participating in government.  What we do together as citizens is not the same as what the government does.

If the passive/private view of citizenship sometimes implies that one has few if any civic obligations beyond personal autonomy, the collective government view of citizenship may imply little to no space for citizens in between their pursuit of individual liberty and the state's activity.  The real nature of citizenship, however, lies somewhere in between.

One thing that this tells us is that the universal moral impulse, and the individualism that underlies it, may not always lead us to the best destination or have purely benign consequences.  There has been fallout, and the perhaps unintended consequences raise new moral questions of their own.

I, moreover, find particularly curious the close relationship between individualism and universalism.  We might instinctively think of these things as opposed to one another:  what applies to the individual does not apply to everyone.  But we have seen that the paths of individualism and universalism run parallel to each other.  "Individualism implies universalism," to recall how Prof. Wilson put it, "since if each person is morally equivalent then all people are morally equivalent."  The civil and political implications of this are challenging.

A closing case in point is the debate in Germany over a judge's ruling that outlaws infant circumcision on the grounds that it is unlawful bodily harm and sexual violence.  The German judge in effect says that autonomy is so privileged over other rights that circumcision is only allowable if the male subject chooses it himself.  (Never mind the irony that this judge is deciding for others that they cannot make the decision for others.  One perceptive commentary on the ruling along these lines appeared in the Washington Post.)  At bottom, the response of Jews and Muslims, who practice ritual circumcision as part their religious identity on theological grounds, highlights how the application of purported individual, universal rights (even to infants) may conflict with other individual, universal rights that are given collective expression within the state. 

The type of decision that the German judge made is at the heart of modern-day debates about the coercive arm of the state into religious communities and voluntary societies like churches, synagogues, and the like.  It also exemplifies vividly the universal impulse, which turns on individualism.

The issue in this case and in general is what happens when different conceptions of the good collide:  for instance, the state's belief in a radical (i.e., root-level) individual liberty, on the one hand, and, on the other, the Jewish community's/family's belief in a radical marker of identity (male circumcision) and right of free and equal religious expression and practice.

Put differently, the conflict is between the state's coercive belief in non-private identity and practice, and the Jewish community's/family's belief in a private identity and practice permitted to individuals and groups within the civil sphere.  In this case, the state is saying that the interests of the state in promoting its view of individual autonomy and liberty justify prohibiting the interests of the community.  This is justified even if the measure in question violates the otherwise protected right of liberty of conscience that a Western liberal democratic republic supposedly grants to its citizens.  It is also justified even if the measure changes, terminates, and denies the group's marker of identity, core imperative, and ultimate raison d'etre (Abrahamic in origin).

This sort of conflict is a tension within liberalism itself, and it has generated a voluminous literature.  Is liberalism confined to the political sphere only (per Rawls), or is it really in practice a comprehensive doctrine that imposes itself (despite Rawls's disclaimer that it is circumscribed) on non-liberal minorities or on minority groups whose basic identity and concerns are not those of the liberal state?

The whole topic is worth thinking about, because it is both central to the flowering of the universal moral impulse in modern society and because, as such, it is not going away any time soon.