Moral Foundations

Moral Foundations
There is a spirit in people—a light that continues to burn throughout their lives. In some it is brightly lit, but in others in glows but dimly. Even when the light is faintest, it signifies the innate values that define their humanity. We call these “moral values” because of their central place in our lives, and because they so correctly describe our character. But there is a question we need to raise with reference to our humanity: When we delineate the ethics (virtues/morality) that define who we are, must we at the same time posit their source/destination or can be escape what some call “nihilism” by merely recognizing their presence. After all, it is not their source that justifies; that is, if these values are pre-premises (or even premises) in our ethics. Of course, if they are not premises but conclusions, reached only after careful examination and reasoning, then they cannot be foundational, only our purpose (destination) is foundational—as Aristotle might say.
There is another possible conclusion that can be reached about the origin and importance of our moral values; they are sociological and perhaps psychological in nature and demand a metaphysics of “man” or “the human agent.” The logical drift, if we argue from a sociological point of view, is that of relativity which is indeed assumed by many in the social sciences. After all, if not innate, then learned (acquired) and this means that different cultures produce different values all of which have a right to their claim of being the highest and most moral.
But wait minute, cultures, societies, and people have drawn much closer since 1950. We know that murder, starvation, and genocide are evils everywhere, don’t we? Is there anyone who would agree that war is moral or that wiping out the environment for short-term profit will be, in the long run, the ethically correct thing to do? Are there not just some universal values that we can call “moral values” as distinguished from those other socio-cultural values that are relatively important in some but not other cultures?
Aristotle escaped nihilism by assuming that all humans and human activity aim toward “happiness” or the purposes of the community. But isn’t this secular humanism? What about God? The medievals reached for a more absolute foundation for ethics, but the circularity of their propositions—beginning with and ending with God—give us little hope of securing a rational and non-nihilistic version of ethics. Nihilism is a doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
That we indeed know and communicate, defeats the last part of this definition, but it’s the first part that bugs theologians—that values, especially moral values, have no foundation. Of course, the only foundation they recognize is Biblical truth (Koran truth, etc.), which posits God and heaven as both the source of our lives and the goal (purpose, meaning) to which we aim. For the religious in the Western world, ethics and salvation cannot be separated, but I’m not settling for this most circular account, although I do agree that logic is not the law of the universe, only a means of universal communication.
Where do we turn?

J. Hester