Jurisprudence Assignment 1.5

On Whether there is Moral Progress

There is no moral progress. Whether there is moral progress can be judged in three possible ways: either we recognize more virtues, we have a more sophisticated ethical discourse, or we better live up to the virtues we have. None of these criteria show any moral progress.

First, the claim is that we recognize more virtues. This claim is either irrelevant or false. Assuming we recognize more virtues, this does not make us more ethical. A society that recognized all the same virtues we do, plus recognized cruelty as a virtue, would not therefore be more ethical. And it’s not clear in any case that we recognize more virtues than the ancients did. While there are things we think of as virtues that they did not, there are also things they thought of as virtues that we do not. Rather, the better claim is that we are more correct in our recognition of virtues. That is, where we differ from the ancients about whether or not something is a virtue, we are more often correct.

However, it is hard to see why this must be the case. Take magnanimity, the virtue of profligate spending by the rich. It is recognized as a virtue by Aristotle. Most of our contemporaries, however, would not recognize it as a virtue. But it’s hard to give a principled reason why it should or should not be a virtue. Most contemporaries would say that it requires wealth, and wealth has no necessary connection with virtue. But that again is an assumption, as is the related assumption that there is no such thing as moral luck. At the end of the day, it seems that different systems of virtue are incommensurable.

Second, we might claim that moral discourse has grown more sophisticated. This is perhaps disputable, but seems likely. We have grown a veritable hedge maze of ethical concepts to enrich our discourse. But it’s far from clear what relation there is between talking about ethics and actually being ethical. Some would probably even claim that there is an inverse relationship between the two!

Third, we might claim that we are better at living up to the virtues we have. But first, there is little evidence for this claim. We simply don’t have enough information about the life of the average Greek, or Roman, or Frank, to compare their ethical life to the ethical life of the average American. And second, it’s not clear that, based on what evidence we do have, that this is the case. There were many violent Franks (even by their standards); there are also many violent American. There were many venal Romans, but there are also many venal American. There were many unreflective Greeks; there are probably more unreflective Americans. So it seems there is no reason to think that we are any better at living up to our own standards than the ancients were.