Note: In this chapter I have deliberately avoided using the term ethics and its derivatives, preferring the term morality. Indeed, I believe that ethics concerns theoretical reflection on good and evil, whereas I am interested here in discussing the practical and psychodynamic aspects related to these concepts.
Moral judgments are very important in social relationships and apply only to these. The exception is religious contexts, where moral judgments also apply to the relations between the subject and the divine or spiritual entities in which he or she believes.
Moral judgments constitute factors of social cohesion in that they prompt individuals to behave according to certain rules necessary for the survival and functioning of communities as cooperative environments. Since humans, because of their interdependence have a need for community, and morality is indispensable for community life, humans also have an innate need for morality. It could also be said that the need for community also contains the need for morality or coincides with it.
Moral judgments, which differ qualitatively and quantitatively in different religious or secular ethical doctrines, basically deal with the following aspects of individual mentality:
- selfishness
- ignorance
- wickedness
- indifference
By selfishness I mean the tendency to pursue the satisfaction of one’s own needs without concern for the satisfaction of others’ needs, where fully satisfying one’s own needs entails, to some extent, the frustration of others’ needs. This happens, for example, when there are limited and insufficient resources for all, and one does not want to give up even part of the desired resources.
By ignorance I mean, in this context, culpable non-knowledge, that is, not wanting to know the needs nor desires of others, nor the circumstances of their satisfaction or frustration.
By wickedness I mean the pleasure associated with the suffering of others, that is, exerting violence on other people in order to gain advantage, or to take pleasure in seeing others suffer.
By indifference I mean a lack of empathy regarding the suffering or joy of others, and consequently a lack of motivation to help those in need.
We can qualify the above judgments as negative.
A single positive moral judgment is sufficient to represent the opposite of all the negative ones:altruism. The altruist, in fact, is not selfish, nor ignorant, nor evil, nor indifferent.
Moral judgment thus serves to qualify a person as more or less altruistic, or selfish, ignorant, evil, indifferent, or a combination of these qualities.
What can be the consequences of such a judgment?
I have already mentioned that moral judgments are factors in social cohesion. In fact, the more an individual seeks to merit positive moral judgment, the more altruistically (i.e., cooperative and noncompetitive) he or she behaves and the more he or she promotes the common good of the community, that is, the greatest possible satisfaction of the needs of the greatest number of community members.
This idea corresponds to the thought of Jeremy Bentham summarized in the expression “the greatest happiness for the greatest number [of people],” and John Stuart Mill, who defines his utilitarianism as “that doctrine which accepts as the foundation of morality utility, or the principle of the greatest happiness, (and which) holds that actions are lawful in so far as they tend to promote happiness, and unlawful if they tend to generate its opposite.” In both quotes I mean by “happiness” the satisfaction of a person’s needs.
An individual who habitually or normally behaves in an immoral way does not contribute to the common good, but constitutes a burden or harm to the community, which therefore tends to punish and/or expel him. This eventuality is for the individual something fearsome indeed, terrifying, consciously and even more unconsciously, partly because it opposes the innate need for community.
Relativity of morality
Moral judgment can be very complex, as well as subjective, because an individual can behave differently morally over time and with different people. That is to say, one can sometimes be more moral and sometimes less so toward the same person, and one can be more moral with some people and less so with others. Moreover, each person may give different weight to the different rules that characterize his or her moral paradigm.
Another cause of complexity and subjectivity of morality concerns attitudes toward communities other than one’s own, and toward minorities within one’s own, who are often regarded as other communities. I refer to the dimensions of “us” and “them” as opposed or antagonistic.
Indeed, history has shown us how naturally or trivially (as Hannah Arendt would say) a community does not consider it necessary to behave morally toward other communities or toward minorities within its own, if they are considered enemies of their own community. Just think of the Holocaust of Jews during Nazism, where even a tolerant attitude toward this minority was considered immoral.
Prohibitions, obligations and duties – Subjectivity of morality
Moral prescriptions can be divided into three categories: prohibitions, obligations and duties.
Prohibitions are by far the easiest to understand and comply with. They are injunctions such as “do not kill,” “do not steal,” “do not do to others what you would not want done to you,” and the like. Indeed, it is normally easy and objective to determine whether one has killed or stolen.
Obligations are also relatively easy to understand and comply with. These are legal or contractual injunctions such as paying taxes, paying the price of a commodity or service, and the like. To prove that an obligation has been fulfilled, a receipt is sufficient in many cases.
Moral duties, on the other hand, are much more vague and subjective. They are in fact about helping others meet their needs and coming to their aid in case of need or misfortune. In other words, it is about being supportive of others. Vagueness and subjectivity concern both the identification of people to be helped or rescued and the extent (in quantity and duration) of help. How many people does an individual have to help, and to what extent, in order to be considered moral, that is, to be able to say that they have done their duty? Nowhere is it written (and it could not be otherwise), so everyone can set these limits as he or she likes and at his or her convenience. And indeed everyone tends to adopt the moral system (and measures of duties), which absolve him.
There are situations where it is very difficult to determine whether a certain behavior is moral or immoral. For example, paying a worker a “starvation” wage (although peacefully agreed upon) thanks to the fact that, due to high unemployment, many people, in order to work, make do with very low wages. Such an example refers us to a more general and larger moral problem of whether it is right, that is, moral, for some to be much richer than others.
Double constraint in moral judgment
Since the obligations, duties and prohibitions of one are linked to the rights of the other, moral judgment affects all human beings and constitutes one of the strongest pressures in determining human behavior in both a coercive and inhibitory sense.
Indeed, we are all very concerned (consciously or unconsciously) about how others judge us morally, and since no one can consider himself or herself completely blameless (partly because of the relativity and subjectivity of moral judgment) we are almost all literally afraid of being judged negatively. Exceptions are certain mentally ill people and certain criminals.
Because of this fear, we tend to avoid discussing morality, or even thinking about it, except in cases where we are absolutely certain of our innocence, that is, that we are clearly better off, in a moral sense, than those we are judging negatively.
Because of the dynamic described above, a situation of double constraint can result: on the one hand, the need to behave morally in order not to be punished or excluded from the community to which one belongs, a need that would require a lucid and rational analysis of one’s behavior; on the other hand, the fear of being at fault, and the related cognitive biases, which prevent the subject from rationally addressing and investigating the problem.
To resolve this double constraint, the subject should find the courage to reflect on his moral duties, possibly helping himself by reading texts dealing with morality and ethics, in order to judge himself rationally and responsibly.
Next chapter: Superego and unconscious self-censorship.