Moral Fetishism, an essay by Dr. Hossein Dabbagh

It must be admitted that in the external world, good and wrongful matters are sometimes so interwoven that they leave one bewildered. For example, think of Robin Hood and consider a kind of “Robin Hood morality.” That is, people who try to steal from rent-seeking rich and distribute their wealth among the destitute poor. You see that here, wrongful and good matters are entangled, and sifting through them is a difficult task. On the one hand, the very act of attending to the poor is a good and fine thing. But stealing to achieve this goal is, of course, wrongful and reprehensible.

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Moral Fetishism

Hossein Dabbagh

What wonder if a person becomes enamored!

Mawlana Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi

1. Moral “Goodness” and “Rightness”

Scholars and philosophers of ethics, by providing normative ethical theories, endeavor to clarify the “rightness” [1] and “wrongness” [2] of human actions and behaviors. For instance, classical utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham, David Hume, and John Gay believed that a right act is one that brings about the greatest benefit and the least harm for everyone. Or classical contractarians [3] like Thomas Hobbes, and to some extent Rousseau and John Locke, considered the right act to be limited to our contracts. In this sense, if an act is performed according to contract and the consent of the parties, it is right. In addition to determining “rightness” and its semantic, epistemic, and psychological analysis, philosophers of ethics also speak of “goodnesses” and “badnesses.” In truth, the distinction between “rightness and goodness” is one of the valuable subtleties of moral philosophers, which this article undertakes to explain. The claim of the author of these lines in this writing is that a balance must be struck between rightnesses and goodnesses. An imbalance in the exposition and recommendation between these matters leads to something that can be referred to as “moral fetishism” [4].

By way of introduction, consider the following three scenarios and, as much as possible, put yourself in the shoes of their actors:Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi

First Scenario: Sophie is trapped in the Auschwitz camp. One night, a sadistic doctor forces her to make a horrific decision. Sophie must choose one of her two children, a son and a daughter, to be killed in the gas chamber. Sophie sacrifices her younger daughter. (For example, see the novel and film “Sophie’s Choice” [5])

Second Scenario: It is the Iran-Iraq war. Khadijeh is besieged in Khorramshahr and is hiding in a house with her six-month-old child. An Iraqi soldier is near the house. Khadijeh is forced to silence her six-month-old child. If she puts her hand over the child’s mouth, the child will die. If she does not, both of them will die. Khadijeh chooses the second path.

Third Scenario: Your spouse has contracted a severe illness. The doctors have lost hope of curing her. After enduring much suffering, one day she asks you to end her life. You are still unable to decide. (For example, see the film “Amour” [6])

Finding what is "right"[7] is gratifying for every human being. Yet in the scenarios above, arriving at a final and correct answer is undoubtedly extremely difficult for everyone, even the most virtuous of people and the most adept moral philosophers. One might say that in cases similar to the above, finding a "reason" that can be regarded as certainly correct and taken as a reason for performing an action[8] is fundamentally unattainable:[9] "Be silent, O reason, your silence is speech." For example, recall the story of the student who sought advice from Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, during the Second World War. He asked Sartre: on the one hand, I have an ailing mother who needs me at home, and on the other, a country that needs me to fight. I am at a loss, what should I do? Sartre's response in the face of this moral dilemma was that, despite various ethical theories, this student was "free" and "autonomous" to choose either side of the fork.

But if Sartre is right and ethical theories cannot untie our knotted affairs, then what is our duty and what is to be done? Can we say that in different moments of life we are free and autonomous to advance matters according to our own "heart"? In that case, must we not say that moral principles are useless and do not assist us in the situations where we need them! Moreover, if the most virtuous people and the most erudite philosophers cannot convince us with a reason as to what should be done in these difficult moral moments and which action is right, what can be expected of the average and the general public to discern and distinguish right from wrong:

Where the lightning of rebellion struck Adam the Chosen,

How does it befit us to claim innocence?

Answering the above questions truly requires a "sage of old." But before we put the above questions to discussion and scrutiny, let us for a moment forget the discussion of the rightness of actions and bring before our eyes the moral dispositions that are intrinsically and in themselves good[10], possess value[11], and emerge and manifest in our actions; dispositions such as knowledge, friendship, beauty, modesty, justice, love, moral virtues[12], success, happiness, joy, pleasure, the reduction of pain and suffering, and so on. I do not suppose anyone, whether moral philosophers or the average person, doubts the goodness of the aforementioned goods and values. It is evident that seeking happiness and reducing suffering is a good thing. Can one imagine someone considering beauty or joy to be bad, or holding that knowledge and friendship are not desirable! All human beings on this earthly globe acknowledge the goodness of justice and moral virtues and, in some way, make earnest efforts to attain them.

Yet, for all the self-evidence that surges within these good values and is undeniable, some philosophers disagree on which goods are intrinsically good and which are not. That is, while they share a consensus on the existence of a list of goods, they diverge on the number of goods and on which values are inherently and self-evidently good. Look, for example, at David Ross and G. E. Moore, two famous intuitionist philosophers. Ross, in his first book, The Right and the Good (1930), following Moore, claims that joy and pleasure are among the intrinsic goods. But several years later, in his second book, Foundations of Ethics (1939), he retracts his claim and argues that pleasure cannot be intrinsic because some joys and pleasures are not good. Likewise, Moore, in his book Principia Ethica (1903), claims that knowledge is not an independent good in itself and must be placed under beauty (247-248). In addition to the list of goods that Ross provides, Moore also counts success among the self-evident goods and places love among the most principal intrinsic goods (Principia Ethica, 251).[13]

At first glance, it seems that just as philosophers share a consensus on the existence of certain goods, they lack such a consensus on permissibilities. But in truth, do philosophers and ethicists share no consensus whatsoever on any permissibilities? Consider, for example, the propositions "Torturing an innocent person for pleasure is morally impermissible," or "Pouring gasoline on a cat and setting it alight to entertain children is morally wrong," or "In India, five men raped a 20-year-old girl." Can one find anyone who doubts the impermissibility of the above acts? Is it possible for a normal person, possessed of the most minimal moral sentiment, to witness such events and not bat an eyelid? It is natural that, despite all the disputes and quarrels over permissibilities among the experts, one can at least identify some moral propositions that are always and everywhere permissible (or impermissible).

Therefore, it can be concluded that philosophers and ethicists share a consensus on at least some self-evident goods and permissibilities. But what is important and noteworthy amidst this fray of opinions is that goods possess greater solidity and strength in relation to permissibilities. This means that, despite all the disagreements philosophers have about the number of goods, they are at least unanimous in the view that there is a list of self-evident goods and values that are undeniable. However, as I have shown, the same does not hold true for permissibilities. That is, in many complex moral situations in everyday life, such as abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia, genetic engineering, politics, marriage, childbearing, etc., it is very difficult to find a single opinion among philosophers and masters of the field regarding the permissibility of these matters. In other words, while some permissibilities are readily accessible, in today's complex world, many permissibilities are not easily grasped. This difficulty in accessing many permissibilities leads to a point where we fix our gaze excessively on finding them and neglect attention to moral goods. The imbalance between permissibility and goodness is the beginning of a predicament that brings with it a kind of moral temptation and obsession. The obsession with discovering permissibilities causes us to become a moral fetishist.

2. Who is a Moral Fetishist?

In my belief, our philosophers and intellectuals have erred in their limitless emphasis and incitement on finding permissibilities. So much so that they have neglected goods. That morality which philosophers like Kant once thought was "the checkmate of the king of kings itself," has, in the present age, been stifled and put to sleep by the excessive emphasis on permissibilities, and bleeds in the corner of seclusion, waiting for a messiah to come and take it by the hand. [14] Public intellectuals, instead of chasing and running after moral permissibility and impermissibility and constantly judging others with moral verdicts, should place moral goods before the public eye.

This fascination, idolatry, obsession, and limitless adoration for the attainment of the permissible can be considered a form of moral fetishism. In this sense, a moral fetishist is someone who upsets the balance between the good and the permissible, and considers the discussion, investigation, and reasoning to find the permissible as preferable to strengthening, cultivating, and nurturing the good within themselves and others. The excessive emphasis on the permissible prevents a fetishist from attending to good things, and this neglect causes their moral behavior to become unbalanced. Allow me to explain the difference between good (bad) and permissible (impermissible) a little further.

It must be confessed that in the external world, good and impermissible things are sometimes combined in such a way that they bewilder a person. For example, think of Robin Hood and consider a kind of "Robin Hood morality." That is, people who try to steal from rent-seeking rich people and distribute their wealth among the destitute poor. You see here that wrong and good things are intertwined, and filtering them out is a difficult task. On the one hand, the very act of attending to the poor is a good and virtuous thing. But stealing to achieve this goal is, of course, impermissible and reprehensible. Consider another example to see how permissible and bad things become entangled.

Imagine a friend has wronged you. You are deeply hurt and have even considered severing the relationship entirely. Perhaps if you were to take such a step and cut ties, no one would tell you that you have done an improper act. For you have acted according to your own chosen moral theory. But have you also done a good act? Imagine again a blind person crossing the street. According to your moral theory, you are not obliged to help this person. That is, if you do help, you have certainly performed a right act, but if you do not, no wrong has been committed. Yet even if we suppose you have committed no wrong by not helping, have you done a good act?

These two examples determine one thing for us, and that is that moral rightness must be separated and understood apart from moral goodness. Right acts are not limited to good acts. As another example, recall the student athletes at Oxford University who some time ago resolved to do a charitable deed and, in order to raise money for charity, bared their bodies and sold their nude photographs in various poses as a calendar for ten pounds. Naturally, the above act can be considered a good act. For it was done with the intention of spending the money on charity, and the aim was to perform a good deed. But does this guarantee that the above act is also a right act? That is, can it be said that an act's being good is necessarily the same as its being right? I think not. There may be many who, according to their moral theory, deem the above act right. But one can also imagine many who consider the above act wrong and a violation of human dignity and respect. Hence, these two groups of people, while sharing the view that the above act is good, are not in agreement about its being right.

3. Philosophers of the "Good" and Philosophers of the "Right"

Look at the history of moral philosophy and how the subject of goodness and rightness has occupied the minds of philosophers. One might say that on this matter, Cambridge philosophers and Oxford philosophers confronted one another and voiced opposing views. Harold Prichard and his student David Ross at Oxford separated the concept and instances of good and right, considering for each a plurality irreducible to unity. That is, just as we have various goods, multiple reasons for rightness can also be found. There is no single principle for determining rightness; rather, it is various principles that guide us. For example, in the story of the soldier who consulted Sartre, according to the view of Prichard and Ross, whether the soldier went to war or stayed with his mother, he performed a right act. In contrast, however, Henry Sidgwick and his student G. E. Moore at Cambridge saw the concept and instances of goodness and rightness as intertwined. Although they believed in various goods, they defined the rightness of acts solely under one specific principle. For them, rightness is defined in terms of goodness, and a right act is considered equivalent to a good act, which is the very meaning of consequentialism.[15]

Moral rightness and wrongness are determined according to moral theories. For instance, in the third scenario, if one is a classical consequentialist or a Hobbesian contractarian, one might consider reducing one's spouse's suffering desirable and correct. But if one is a Kantian deontologist, one likely deems compassionate killing wrong. Likewise, if one is a virtue ethicist, one can hardly involve oneself in killing or the death of another, and so on for the remaining moral theories.

You see that the diversity of normative ethical theories makes arriving at moral rightness and wrongness so elusive, if not impossible, that one sometimes wishes ethical theories had never been born! It is not without reason that figures like Derek Parfit and Brad Hooker, the Oxford professor and student, have sought to bring ethical theories together, to forge a link and a marriage between them, and through this union to arrive at a single principle to reduce moral perplexities. Brad Hooker, in his acclaimed book, Ideal Code, Real World[16] (2000), was one of the first philosophers to sound the call for blending ethical theories. According to Hooker's argument, one can speak of a kind of rule-consequentialism that has a Kantian resonance and takes the universalization of moral rules seriously. Parfit considers Hooker's book the best defense of one of the best ethical theories, and several years later, following his student, in his exceptional book, On What Matters[17] (2011), he views the three prevalent theories of moral philosophy—rule-consequentialism, Scanlonian contractualism, and Kantian deontology—as different paths up the same mountain, from whose convergence a triple theory of ethics is born. Brad Hooker takes his teacher's work seriously and sets out to complete his project. Two years later, in 2013, at a conference at the University of Reading, he unveils his new theory, the fivefold theory of ethics. In this theory, Hooker attempts, while recognizing Parfit's triple theory, to also incorporate David Ross's pluralistic theory and virtue ethics into his framework and bring them under one umbrella.

All of this was said to make it clear that, despite all our need for ethical theories, they sometimes become a hindrance. Theories have made performing moral actions so difficult that even in some occasionally easy and simple situations, disagreement becomes an obstacle to action. Public intellectuals, instead of entangling themselves in fruitless debates over moral rightness, should strive to make the manifestations of moral goodness more visible, clearer, and more enchanting to the public. Debating moral rightness and engaging in reasoning disheartens the general populace, suggesting that existing morality solves no problem for us and leads nowhere. But goodness sometimes awakens people's dormant conscience, brings meaning to their lives, and makes the present world more desirable and bearable. Leave the reasoning for the rightness of moral actions to academics and students of moral philosophy, for whom the meaning of philosophical life is nothing else.

4. Final Word

Emphasizing the discovery of "moral rightness" and encouraging the public to judge which action is right or wrong is, of course, a good and commendable thing. But excess in it prevents us from performing "moral goodness." Moral fetishism means nothing other than this. One who disrupts the balance between "the right and the good" and pushes one aside in favor of the other has succumbed to a kind of fetishism, which is indeed intolerable. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that in this article I did not argue that ethical theories like consequentialism are mistaken when they define rightness in terms of goodness and reduce one to the other. As long as consequentialists (and any monistic ethical theory) can, apart from defining rightness, independently enumerate goodnesses as well, they have avoided the problem of fetishism.

The recommendation of this article to intellectuals and thinkers is to bring "moral goodness" before the public eye to make moral life more attainable. "Moral rightness" in everyday life, since it is hard to grasp, stirs up mischief, so much so that it cultivates the erroneous and ominous belief in the public mind that moral life is so complicated that one should simply forgo it. This is how fetishism deals a fatal blow to the moral body of society and corrupts it.

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[1] Right

[2] Wrong

[3] Contractarianism

[4]  Michael Smith, the renowned philosopher at Princeton University, was the first to use the term “Moral Fetishism.” His meaning, however, is entirely different from what I am arguing in this essay. To understand his point, see:

Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994, pp. 61-72

Lillehammer, Hallvard, “Smith on Moral Fetishism”, Analysis, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 187-195

[5] See Sophie's Choice, (1979) by William Styron. See also http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084707/

[6] See e.g. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1602620/

[7] Permissible

[8] Reason for Action

[9]  David Ross, the twentieth-century intuitionist moral philosopher, thought similarly about final moral judgments and verdicts.

[10] Intrinsically Good

[11] Valuable

[12] Moral Virtues

[13] See e.g. G. E. Moore, (1903 [1993]), Principia Ethica, Cambridge University Press. Revised edition with "Preface to the second edition" and other papers, ed. T. Baldwin, Cambridge University Press.

[14]  Prichard, the English intuitionist philosopher, in his controversial early twentieth-century essay titled “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” (1912), accused philosophers of having taken a wrong path. In his view, the philosophers’ mistake is that they have sought a single principle as the criterion of rightness, whereas they should employ multiple principles to assess right actions.

[15]  There were philosophers like Ewing who, contrary to Sidgwick and Moore, defined good in terms of right. See:

Ewing, A. C., 1959, Second Thoughts in Moral Philosophy, London, Routledge.

[16] Hooker, B., 2000, Ideal Code, Real World, OUP.

[17] Parfit, D., 2011, On What Matters, OUP.

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Moral Fetishism, an essay by Dr. Hossein Dabbagh

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