What Rational Morality Is Based On

Morality, politics, and decline (part 1)

A detail from "Mankind's Eternal Dilemma—The Choice Between Virtue And Vice," 1633, by Frans Francken the Younger. Oil on panel. Musuem of Fine Arts Boston. Public Domain

One of the most perplexing things in our Western society to many is how morality seems to have disappeared under the umbrella of politics. It seems, for example, to matter more whether one is a Democrat or a Republican than whether one is right or wrong. For that matter, being right or wrong has become synonymous with being either a Democrat or a Republican! We, in other words, have become tribal rather than rational.

However, as English moralist and essayist Samuel Johnson observed, “He who thinks rationally thinks morally.” To think tribally—my country, my party, my family, my ideas, right or wrong—is a perversion of reason. Indeed, Dante’s whole poem “The Divine Comedy” can be said to be about the perversion of reason (the intellect) that leads to hell, damnation, and the unending misery of so much of the human condition in this life as well as the next.

Morality Is No Longer Acceptable

Morality is not really a popular topic these days; it is perhaps considered too opaque, too controversial, and most importantly by far, too judgmental. Did I say “judgmental”? As author Theodore Dalrymple, also called the “Orwell of our time,“ observed: “When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as ‘nonjudgmental.’ For them the highest form of morality is amorality.” Not surprising, then, that New York Times writer David Brooks in his article ”If It Feels Right...” talks about interviews conducted across America where “two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question [about their moral lives] or described problems that are not moral at all.”