THE POWER OF MORAL WITNESS

We need a rebirth of ethical idealism. May the courage of others inspire us.

Strife, struggle, hardship, danger, and risk are the matrices from which ethical ideals are born. It is out of this context that they are most brightly illuminated. We see this now most dramatically in the suffering and heroic response of the Ukrainian people and in the surprising leadership of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Most Americans could not identify Ukraine on a map, yet the values emerging from the plight and courage of the Ukrainian people are universal. They grip the moral imagination. We are moved to pay attention and to care.

It is hard to remember a time in recent years when ethics was so salient and what was morally at stake so clear. We have not seen it within the American context. From my standpoint, American life has long been bogged down in petty, mind-numbing preoccupations. It seems as if it has not risen much above conflict between adverse interest groups fueled by the ugliness of resentment. The most salient is ego-driven posturing by political figures seeking to augment their power. Dedication to larger, necessary and edifying principles such as democracy and constitutional governance seem to matter little or not at all. There is little dialogue, little concern for the common good, and a dearth of goodwill. Life in America feels small-minded and despiritualizing. Hyper-individualism and selfishness have become society's prime movers.

But we do not live by self-interest alone. Ethical values can readily be derided as little more than sentimentalism. It is the tool of the weak and the powerless, who leverage results from inducing a guilty conscience in alleged malefactors. So argued Friedrich Nietzsche. Lodging its origins in powerlessness, Nietzsche saw that behind ethics, even more, was a kind of sickness. We may conclude that it is nice to treat others ethically, but in the “real world” power commands our respect and should have the last word.

While it may be true that those who lack any power may see ethical pronouncements as their only weapon, I don't think Nietzsche's analysis, however perceptive, exhausts the character of ethics. Ethics or morality is not merely a product of deprived circumstances, but an aspect of our nature as social beings that is intrinsic to the kind of creatures that we are.

Evolutionary psychology asserts that moral behavior is necessary for the reproductive success of the species. Morality requires that we cooperate with each other, especially our kin, and thus fortify our chances of passing our genes on to the next generation. But being human involves us in much more than our biological natures. In fact, one could argue, and I would so argue, that our humanity -- and we can employ “dignity” as a correlative term -- is vested in our yearning to transcend our biological natures. We are biological creatures but we are more than biological creatures. We are animals but we strive to move beyond our animal natures. It is out of this yearning that culture and civilization are born.

Our humanity is thereby vested in great measure in our intellectual life, in ideas, which we may conclude makes us distinct from other animals. Ideas may emerge from our biological natures and are shaped by our social condition and by intellectual history, but they are not mere byproducts, effluvia, or epiphenomena of their material foundations. I have long believed that ideas themselves have real force in shaping our reality, our characters, and society. I am a naturalist, believing that nature is all there is, but I am not a material reductionist.

So too is our sense of ethics and the inspiration we derive from the contemplation of ethical ideals. They are spiritually uplifting and edifying, and place us in relation to things greater than ourselves. Moral ideals move us beyond where we are and both remind and inspire us to envision where we can be and ought to be. As such, they are a spur to action and to social transformation. In the personal domain, I would say we need moral ideals to enrich our sense of our life's meaning. The pursuit of mundane and material satisfactions can only take us so far.

Like ideas, ethical ideals do not require a supernatural origin. They do not derive from an unchanging, pristine, cosmic order. I look again to the humanist philosopher, John Dewey, when he observed, “The aims and ideals that move us are generated through imagination, but they are not made out of imaginary stuff. They are made out of the hard stuff of the world of physical and social experience.” “[A]...new vision does not arise out of nothing, but emerges through seeing, in terms of possibilities, that is, of imagination, old things in new relations serving a new end which the new end aids in creating.” For Dewey, this relation between our current circumstances and the ideal possibilities we frame via our imagination can be understood as religious, but again without supernaturalism or fixed dogmas or beliefs.

In other words, out of current conditions, which we experience as problematic or oppressive, we can imagine an ideal condition in which those oppressions are overcome, and we can use those ideals as ends to inspire us toward their realization and fulfillment. Moreover, in the process of doing so we can be personally uplifted and we can grow.

I lament that today, as mentioned, we seem to be greatly lacking that idealism. We lack belief in better possibilities, especially as they pertain to the traditional American ideals of freedom and liberal democracy.

But for such idealism to emerge, for a re-engagement with ethics to occur, we need inspired leadership, which is in very short supply. Perhaps we have grown too cynical to accept such leadership if it were to appear. Perhaps the cacophony of voices coming through an overabundance of media would drown out any single voice and forestall such leadership from capturing the necessary attention. Media personalities abound, but their presence is transitory and their appeal superficial and most often not serious.

Yet I continue to believe that if the right person or persons would appear bearing a morally prophetic message and speaking powerfully to the greatest malaise of our time – and I identify that challenge with the looming demise of democracy – then large sectors of the American populace would be ready to hear it. I believe that the need for moral substance is a deep need of the human soul. It is deeply rooted in our natures. It takes the right circumstance and the right leadership to nurture it and bring it forth.

We see a glimmer of that side of us in response to the current plight of the Ukrainians, who in their courage and stubborn yen for freedom and democracy, underscore the essential importance of those ideals. If Ukrainians are prepared to die for them, Americans need to ask ourselves if we are ready to let those ideals readily slip away.

Ukrainians are dying and suffering under the assault of a cruel despot for reasons that they did not create nor deserve. We witness their suffering, but we witness the convictions and ideals they are willing to die for also.

Perhaps emerging from their tragic circumstance – their commitment to democracy and freedom and the ethical ideals which they embody – their example will spread. Perhaps it will inspire us to push back against the authoritarianism and divisiveness that so darkens the political landscape. Perhaps their example will reignite a commitment to ethical values and democratic ideals that will vouchsafe our freedom at a moment when the need for such revival could not be greater. I hope.