Moral Communication in Modern Societies

Abstract

The title for this lecture should read both more modestly and more accurately Observations on Some Forms of Moral Communication in a Modern Society. I hope that I shall be pardoned for having avoided such an awkward title but I feel obliged to alert the hearer, or the reader, to the fact that the actual title promises more than I can deliver. One of the obvious ways for a social scientist to talk about morals in any society is to talk about the ways the members ofthat society moralize; it is only a slight exaggeration to say that in modern society the only way to talk about morals is to talk about moral communication. I shall try to explain why this is so, and if I succeed, much of the task I set myself for this lecture will be accomplished. The other part will consist of the description of some key features of modern morality.2 Although I shall not attempt a definition of the terms, it may not be entirely unnecessary if I indicate what I mean when I talk of morality and morals and what I understand by communication and moral communication. First, I view morality as a reasonably coherent set of notions of what is right and what is wrong, notions of the good life that guide human action beyond the immediate gratification of desires and the momentary demands of a situ? ation. Such notions, as all notions, are of course held by individuals, but they do not originate with the individual. They are intersubjectively constructed in communicative interaction, and they are selected, maintained and trans? mitted in complex social processes. Over the generations they come to form distinct historical traditions in which a particular view of the good life is articulated. This means that some conceptions of what is right and what is wrong are canonized and others censored. Thus a certain coherence between the notions is achieved. Once the path to reach that ideal is marked, the foun? dations for the moral order of a society are laid. Following that path is de? fined as life's ideal, and the ideal serves as a norm in the organization of collective life. When serious deviations from the norm are systematically pun? ished, the society's moral order is fully established. Second, when I speak of communication, I do not ?as some would ?refer to intraorganismic, intercellular processes. Nor do I have in mind inner speech. *