Basic Moral Values Research Articles

Religion in Public Life: A Dilemma for Democracy

Prayer in public schools, abortion, gay and lesbian rights - these bitterly divisive issues dominate American politics today, revealing deep disagreements over basic moral values. In a highly readable account that draws on legal arguments, political theory, and philosophy, Ronald F. Thiemann explores the proper role of religious convictions in American public life. He proposes that religion can and should play an active, positive part in our society even as it maintains a fundamental commitment to pluralist, democratic values. Arguing that both increased secularism and growing religious diversity since the 1960s have fragmented commonly held values, Thiemann observes that there has been an historical ambivalence in American attitudes towards religion in public life. He proposes abandoning the idea of an absolute wall between church and state and all the conceptual framework built around that concept in interpreting the first amendment. He returns instead to James Madison's views and the Constitutional principles of liberty, equality, and toleration. Refuting both political liberalism (as too secular) and communitarianism (as failing to meet the challenge of pluralism), Thiemann offers a new definition of liberalism that gives religions a voice in the public sphere as long as they heed the Constitutional principles of liberty, equality, and toleration or mutual respect. The American republic, Thiemann notes, is a constantly evolving experiment in constructing a pluralistic society from its many particular communities. Religion can act as a positive force in its moral renewal, by helping to shape common cultural values. All those interested in finding solutions to today's divisive political discord, in finding ways to disagree civilly in a democracy, and in exploring the extent to which religious convictions should shape the development of public policies will find that this book offers an important new direction for religion and the nation.

Framing the Health Reform Debate

President Clinton's health reform speech to Congress in September 1993 was notable in two ways. Besides being the first U.S. president since Truman to recommend a major overhaul of the American health care system, he also took care to identify the most important moral values that served to justify his proposal. In part, his statement of values was based on the deliberations of an ethics advisory group, one of the thirtyfive working groups convened in the spring of 1993 to advise the White House on the substance of health reform. The optimistic voter tends to assume that the health reform debate is about the policy and economics of health care; the pessimistic voter tends to assume that the debate is a smoke screen behind which the various powerful interest groups will assure that no change in health care cuts too deeply into their profits or privileges. Either way, ethics appears to be a foreign language to the debate. There are, however, important reasons to follow in President Clinton's footsteps and to continue to frame the debate in terms of the moral values at stake. One reason is the greater likelihood of principled compromise. All agree that the health care system eventually resulting from today's debate will be some sort of compromise plan rather than the full implementation of any current proposal. In playing the inevitable game of mix and match, we might end up with a practical plan that continues to promote the most basic moral values at stake; we may end up with a plan that best suits the interest groups with the most power; or we may end up with a plan whose individual elements are defensible, but fail to cohere into a meaningful and workable whole. Continuing to remind ourselves which basic values are at stake, and continuing to hold feet to that fire when important decisions must be voted on, seem a good way to raise the odds of a desirable outcome. Another reason to frame the debate in moral terms is that it ought to engage the public at large and not just the so-called wonks. The technical terms of reform are unfamiliar to even the educated voter--not surprisingly, since we have not seen such a debate in the American political arena within the past fifty years; as recently as the summer of 1991 no one would have predicted that health reform would be a major issue in the 1992 presidential elections. By contrast, the moral values at stake--universal access, reasonable equality of benefits, fairness of burdens, quality and efficiency of care, and so forth--are readily grasped by most people, and form the basis for a serious community discussion of what sort of system would best suit this nation and what sorts of trade-offs ought to be made in implementing it. Starting with the Oregon Health Decisions project and spreading to numerous other states through the grassroots bioethics movement, numerous citizens and communities have become educated participants in the debate, and elected officials have been served notice that thoughtfulness and not mere rhetoric will be demanded of them. …

Evolutionary theory and the foundation of moral principles

Evolutionary biology is supposed to be relevant to ethics by a number of authors. Some of them believe that it may provide and justify basic moral values. Others argue that evolutionary biology is relevant only in a negative way. They assume that it reveals the illusory nature of any attempt to justify basic moral values. In this paper one example of either approach is criticized. An analysis of examples can hardly offer sufficient grounds for a general conclusion. Nevertheless I believe that evolutionary theory is of little help when we deal with the most basic ethical questions. Three themes which are often though to provide a link between evolutionary biology and (meta)ethics — altruism, sociality and human nature — do not in fact establish that link.

The Return of the Master: An Interpretation of Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals"

i) Nietzsche has taught us to be wary of origins, and to despise every account which recalls 'the origin' as the ideal moment of some essential value or truth. In the very first aphorism of Human, All Too Human, for example, he exposes the glorification of the origin as a metaphysical subterfuge. For he claims that one evades all the complex problems of historical emergence'How did reason come from unreason, or altruism from egoism, or disinterested contemplation from out of covetous desire?' when one assumes the conceptual and historical priority of the favoured term as a privileged origin which precedes all dissociation. In The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche tells us a story of Masters and Slaves to describe the origin of our most basic moral values. But given his earlier strictures against 'the origin', I think we have good reason to maintain an ironic distance from Nietzsche's account. Even though Nietzsche seems to praise the Master far more highly than the Slave, we cannot read the Genealogy as if it were a straightforward historical narrative which laments a lost origin. Nietzsche certainly does use the conflict of Master and Slave as an analogue to specific historical situations where, for example, the triumph of Christianity over the classical ideal is said to embody the triumph of the Slave. But as I will suggest, in a deeper sense the terms 'Master' and 'Slave' refer to basic modalities of individual existence, and in this respect they are 'types' which still concern us all. In fact, Nietzsche makes it clear from the very beginning of the Genealogy that in this enquiry the issue of the origin is entirely subordinate to the issue of value. And so he poses his guiding question as follows:

Secular Transcendence: The American Religious Humanists

IN THE LATE 1970s THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IN AMERICA FINALLY IDENTIFIED THE source of all moral corruption and religious skepticism that had plagued country since middle of twentieth century: humanism. Secular humanism, was a the most dangerous religion in America, some claimed. It did not always call itself a religion, however, and, in various disguises, had managed to penetrate most areas of American life: courts, foundations and research institutes, higher education, entertainment and news media, and, most alarming of all, public schools. Secular humanism rejected God and worshipped man, denied moral absolutes, rejected truth of Scripture and championed theory of evolution, advocated sex education in schools, and created an atmosphere of unbelief and permissiveness in which God was denied and in which pornography, homosexuality, and other evils were openly tolerated, even encouraged. The notion of secular humanism and its subtle invasion of our public life proved extremely useful. Tantalizingly vague, influence of secular humanism could be seen everywhere while aways just out of sight. On other hand, secular humanism provided an identifiable enemy to whom one could point. For example, in 1933 and again in 1973, a number of intellectuals had signed documents known as Manifestos I and II. These documents extolled scientific method, denied claims of supernaturalism, and exalted human nature, affirming that man was on his own in universe. Although connection between handful of people who signed Humanist Manifestos and secularization of institutions was at best tenuous, it was now possible to see makings of a conspiracy, a scheme to destroy republic by insidiously undermining its basic religious and moral values.'

Values Education: Extending the View

A number of values education strategies have recently been developed for use in the classroom. The Shaver model described here incorporates a rational decision-making process based on basic moral values. That process involves identifying and clarifying values, value labeling and generalization, examining the possible consequences of value decision, recognizing and resolving value conflict, and forming qualified decisions. It is not, however, necessary to proceed through that exact sequence of steps. For example, values discussion may begin with the teacher helping a students to recognize a value conflict. From that point, the discussion may move the identification and labeling of values. Consequently, there is flexibility in how this model may be used in the classroom. This model is developed on the premise that people who use such a process in making decisions relating to social-ethnical issues enhance their functioning within a democratic society. It is suggested that people who utilize this process in relation to health issues can likewise enhance the effectiveness of their health-related decisions. Hopefully, there will be a yield of postive health behaviors.