Are our moral beliefs just illusions?
Moral skepticism between classical Greece and the Enlightenment
Suppose you always belch loudly after eating. Is that bad behaviour? It depends on your culture, one might say, or on your upbringing. Sure. If you leave it at that, you are using a morally relativistic argument.
But can might also say that it is good or bad in itself, regardless of culture and upbringing, and perhaps even regardless of whether others are affected by it? Can we determine if it’s good or bad in itself? If you say we can't determine it, you're using a morally skeptical argument.
Moral skepticism is related to epistemological skepticism. In an earlier newsletter about Sources of toleration in antiquity we’ve read about the latter:
Let's summarise that discussion about real knowledge.
After Xenofanes, it had become clear that no one has unlimited insight into the truth. No one disputed that.
But is there a truth anyway, and can we know it? Plato thought so. At least, if a thinker tries really hard, he can get pretty close. Aristotle was on the same track, and he refined Plato's epistemological theory. The existence of a supreme being fits well into that line of thinking: God as the creator and source of all knowledge. It is not surprising that in Christianity and Islam the epistemology of Aristotle was deeply explored.
Opposite were the skeptics, including Pyrrho of Elis (ca. 360 - 270 BCE) and Sextus Empiricus (ca. 150 - ca. 220 CE). Real knowledge is unattainable, they thought. We shouldn’t even try. Don't worry about it, said Pyrrho. Let tradition, the wisdom of others, and rules of thumb guide us, Sextus said. Not that we can derive certainty from that, but that's all we have. The academic skeptics went even further, stating that knowledge is by definition impossible.
In this newsletter, we are going to look at the beginnings of moral skepticism, what the skeptics thought about morality, and how moral skepticism was gradually rediscovered after the Middle Ages.
Ethical knowledge
Ethics is about what is right and what is not. About what to do and what not to do. And about how to find out the difference.
As we shall see shortly, Sextus made a connection between the existence of knowledge of truth and knowledge of ethics. We cannot understand reality, he said. Nor can we tell with certainty the difference between good and bad.
When one comes close to the truth, one can also try to distinguish between good and bad. This is most clearly seen in religion. We will never understand God's knowledge, but we can listen to what he tells us. About the difference between good and bad, for example. Whoever thinks he can get close to the truth can say something with just as much authority about the difference between good and bad.
On the other hand, anyone who thinks that knowledge is unattainable anyway, can’t say with authority that one is good and the other is bad. We might start from personal intuition and preferences. But at the same time, we must recognise that our moral judgments are all subjective.
Before we get to that, let's take a step back in time, to the 5th century BCE.
The Greeks discover the world
What is good and what is not? We can find that out through experience. What behaviour pleases us, what will get us the furthest, what makes us happy, what is best for the community, for others or for the world? We can then share those insights in the form of life lessons. Initially, Greek ethics did not get much further than that. The traditional codes of the nobility were regarded as normative. Initially, Greek ethics were practical and conformist.
But as the Greek Empire expanded, the Greeks came into contact with other civilisations that held very different morals.
Darius in the time of his rule called those of the Greeks who were present and asked for how much money would they want to devour their fathers, when they die, and they asserted they would not do that for any.
Then after that Darius called those of the Indians called Callatians, who consume their begetters, and asked, while the Greeks were present and learning what was being said through an interpreter, for what amount of money they would prefer to burn up their fathers with fire, when they met with their end, and they let out a loud cry and bade him hush.
Now thus those beliefs are held.
— Herodotos, Historiai, book 3/16 (c. 440 BC), translated by Shlomo Felberbaum
The sophists
The sophists, such as Protagoras (ca. 490-420 BCE) and Gorgias (c. 483-375 BCE) began to ask questions.
How can something be good in one situation, but bad in another?
How can something be good in one situation, but bad in another? And why do other civilisations think different things are good and bad? Moreover, they noticed that morality also depended on power: whoever has the power influences morality. Was our own moral code perhaps just a convention?
Man is the measure of all things.
— Protagoras, quoted in Plato, Theaetetus (ca. 368 BCE.)
Not that the sophists argued that there is no moral foundation. There is a common human nature. And that is of the utmost importance for morality. Moral rules are created by human agreement. And human agreement is in turn influenced by human nature. Moral rules themselves are not given 'by nature'. As a result, the sophists made high demands on moral rules, which they did not accept unquestioningly.
And with that they cast their shadow ahead of David Hume (1711-1776), about whom more later.
Sokrates, Plato and Aristotle
For Sokrates, morality came from knowledge. Whoever has full knowledge automatically does the right thing and has found the right path to happiness. Bad behavior thus arises purely from ignorance. No one is deliberately malicious.
Bad behavior comes from ignorance
Plato was on the same line. And according to Plato, it was possible to find the right path. Because, according to Plato, we live in an ordered universe in which the forms determine the order. The form of good is the highest form, the clearest place of being. Of form of good is the cause of everything, and whoever sees that form will behave well.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was a student of Plato. In his Ethika Nicomachea, he was the first to systematically look for morality as an interplay of human nature, reason, virtue and happiness. The right life that leads to excellence is a virtuous life that is in harmony with reason.
Aristotle, especially his virtue ethics, will be discussed in more detail in the series about morality.
Moral Skepticism in Greece
Despite the influence of Sokrates, Plato and Aristotle, a skeptical and relativistic school of thought persisted. For example, Protagoras's relativism was taken up by Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus
The sceptic started philosophising about the fact that he evaluated his sensory images, and realised that some were true and some were false. He then fell into contradictions between equally good arguments on either side, and not being able to decide one way or the other, he suspended judgment. Finally, suspension of judgment led by fate to serenity in matters of opinion.
Someone who believes that anything is objectively good or evil is perpetually disturbed.
— Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoneioi hypotyposeis (ca. 200 CE)
This form of skepticism is referred to as pyrrhonistisc skepticism. Anyone who claims that certain moral convictions are irrefutably true is wrong. Because you can never be sure. But conversely, anyone who claims that moral knowledge is impossible by definition is also wrong. Because you can never be sure. Pyrrhonist skeptics simply refrain from judging. There were also the dogmatic skeptics, who held that moral knowledge is impossible by definition. The truth about good and evil simply does not exist.
But if we have no judgment about the true nature of good and evil, how can we live? We will sometimes have to make choices. Sextus was level-headed about that.
We're just doing something
Of course we have moral intuitions, Sextus thought, even as an ethicist; there's nothing wrong with that. Like we find honey sweet, without worrying about questions like: what is sweet, and why do we think it is. Similarly, we can find murder bad, or altruism good.
But they remain intuitions; we shouldn't deceive ourselves that your moral judgments exceed those of others, or that something is an absolute good or bad. We're just doing something. We go with the flow. It goes without saying that we comply with the law, not because it is good by definition, but because otherwise we will get into trouble. But we’re better off not worrying about it.
Resurgence of moral skepticism after the Renaissance
The moral realist school of Sokrates, Plato and Aristotle would remain dominant well into the Renaissance. Relativistic and skeptical ideas did not find fertile ground for centuries, due to the dominance of Christianity. After all, Christian dogma was provided by God himself and was therefore absolute; there was no room for relativising.
In Tommaso d'Aquino’s Summa Theologiae (1265), natural law was regarded as the source of all morality. Human opinions don't matter and neither do cultural differences; natural law is universal and immutable. Thinking in the Middle Ages was therefore unaffected by relativism and skepticism.
In the Renaissance - the world also gradually got bigger and bigger - thinkers started to think seriously again about the possibility that there are different perspectives on reality and morality.
Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was one of the first. In his essay Des Cannibales (1580) he described the bizarre customs of a Brazilian Indian tribe. Like Herodotos, he realised that morality apparently depends on culture.
But Montaigne can’t be described as a moral skeptic; he was a moral relativist at most. He could not yet dispute the superiority of his own moral convictions (but who can?). At most he could put his morality into perspective.
Skepticism was a dangerous business in those days. It was known as Pyrrhonism, which was almost as bad as atheism. A Pyrrhonist may not deny the existence of God, but he was free to doubt. Seeing God's commandments and natural law as binding was thus at risk. That was unthinkable at the time, and very risky.
Bayle
A breakthrough came from Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), a key figure in the thinking about toleration.
Bayle was a Huguenot in Rotterdam. At the time, the controversy about religious toleration was at its peak. Defenders of their own faith argued that their morality was better. Repression of other religions was therefore justified. Bayle opposed that. As a Christian we are not necessarily better persons. But he did not categorically reject the difference between higher and lower morality. Bayle was not a full-blooded moral skeptic. He just felt that faith, morality and reason cannot be put on the same level.
Hume
Moral skepticism was revived half a century later by David Hume (1711-1776). In his Enquiry concerning human understanding (1748) he draws explicitly from pyrrhonist sources. And in his essay The Sceptic (1741) and in his Enquiry concerning the principles of morals (1751) he states that nothing in itself is good or bad; they are human judgments and instincts.
But Hume refused to submit to the pyrrhonian abstinence of judgment. Morality is worth investigating. If opposing moral judgments are possible, it does not mean that they are both worthless. On the contrary, they can both be true.
With a combination of sense perceptions, instincts and careful reasoning we can go a long way. But we must be aware of our human shortcomings. Our perceptions and instincts can deceive us and get in the way of sound reasoning. In doing so, Hume was the first to make classical moral skeptical arguments socially acceptable again.
But where the Greeks got stuck in abstinence of judgment, Hume went a step further. Hume thus opened the door to modern ethics, in which man is not merely a rational, reasoning being, but also someone with culture, instincts and cognitive errors.
More about Montaigne, Bayle and Hume in later newsletters, especially in the series of newsletters on morality.
Further reading
Katja Vogt, Ancient skepticism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2022)
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Moral skepticism, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2019)
Diego Machuca (red.), Pyrrhonism in ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy (2012)
Richard H. Popkin, The history of scepticism, from Savonarola to Bayle (1960/2003)
More literature can be found under the hyperlinks.
This was the third episode in the series about the ancient sources of toleration.
The previous episodes were about:
Why we really can't know anything for sure
Classical sources of toleration, part one: epistemology and skepticism. About the doubts of Xenofanes, Plato, Sokrates, Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, Cicero. And their rediscovery in the Renaissance.
Why we need opposing views
Dialectics and free speech in classical Athens and Rome
The next episodes will be about:
Don't let it get to you
How our thinking about toleration is influenced by classical stoicism
Humanitas and forgiveness
Clemency and humanity as a source of toleration. About the biological tendency to forgiveness, the humanity of Cicero, the source of Jesus' forgiveness, and about repentance and retribution.
We don't owe our ideals of liberty and equality to Antiquity
Freedom and equality are quintessential in toleration. And the Greeks and Romans knew them too. But we hardly owe them this source of toleration.
On pragmatic rulers and subjugated nations
Pre-modern despots could be quite tolerant towards conquered peoples. About idols taken hostage, Roman exceptionalism, and the tolerance of Genghis Khan.
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