Reclaiming Moral Knowledge in Law and Society

I said well you are yeah as a matter of fact I do believe that the law of God is higher than the law of the land I I went on to say I can't readily envision a way where those two would conflict in this case but the fact that he vinay asked the question I thought was indicative of the kind of conflict that you cited between Holmes and Brandeis. [00:01:50]

Fuller I think argued and in my view very persuasively that the distinction between law and morality may not be the most helpful way to frame this but instead he proposes a distinction between order and good order that the law provides all law produces order yet in his view there's a clear difference between the order produced by the law and a good order in which individual citizens recognize that the law that provides such an order is necessary right and just. [00:04:04]

In bioethics that the the body of moral knowledge although calling it a body of moral knowledge thinks probably a little that's a bit of a stretch but first but for some time has been the four-fold statement of principles articulated by Tom Beecham and James Childress known for a long time as the Georgetown mantra these four principles as you may be aware consist of autonomy beneficence non-maleficence and justice which looks on the surface to be a pretty solid lead anta logical system that gives direction to clinical ethics at the bedside. [00:05:20]

In fact in my view it's very rare that physicians at the bedside will make decisions counter to the autonomy of the patient or in the case of a child counter to the autonomy of the parents you know I spent about 15 years consulting in several healthcare systems in the area and we tried for years and years to get physicians to actually go against a family's wishes for inappropriate levels of aggressive treatment at the end of life on the basis that it's morally wrong to impose burdens on patients for the benefit of their family members. [00:06:52]

In public policy in bioethics too I would suggest a bit of a an alteration Steve to what you suggested about the utilitarian framework that is that seems to be one of the avenues for making public policy in the absence of or in the loss of moral knowledge I would I would refer to this as a truncated utilitarianism that's used in most public policy areas in bioethics but it's an extension of the primacy of autonomy that we see at the bedside. [00:08:16]

I think Steve is actually right I think the public discourse screens out normative convictions or requires that they be translated into alien vocabularies it seems to me the reason for this is one of moral epistemology and this I think Greg reflects back to your for a category number two of what's meant by the disappearance of moral knowledge that morality in general is not thought to be a domain of knowledge in the same way that other domains of knowledge are. [00:18:09]

I think - one I think one IQ member who made the point earlier in your paper but it is you know we are we are the public discourse on morality today has been reduced to either power or questioning of motives today and I don't see there's much there's I don't see there is as much space for rational argument which is what for the idea of morality as as knowledge presumes that we would have at our disposal. [00:20:25]

I think the only note of optimism I think for a recovery of moral knowledge I think according to Stephen I think I think he's right about this is to unshackle religious communities and institutions to be themselves and in doing so enabling them to be the kind of lights to the culture at large that they were designed to be strikes me that this is strangely reminiscent of how the early church in the first century did this since the the opportunity to have a public say in the first century was essentially off the table. [00:21:33]

Guilt they spent years of quote translating Christian ethics into publicly accessible terms on the council and and he finally admitted that in the last phase of his professional life he was committing himself to being unabashedly Christian regardless of the setting and letting the impact chips fall where they would now I I heard this for one as sort of a weariness in the idea of translating Christian ethics into appropriate levels of public discourse but I also heard this as I think Bob would suggest to toward the end of your discussion as an implicit trust in God for the impact on the culture and underscored the importance of being who we are regardless of a setting that we are in. [00:23:36]

Hunter suggestion is short of a significant cultural culture wide religious revival hopes for a renewal of character and morality and I would suggest hopes for a renewal of moral knowledge in our time are not particularly bright he met he states this really starkly in his book and the death of character he puts it like this I quote we want a renewal of character in our day but we don't really know what we're asking for to have a renewal of character is to have a renewal of a Creole order that constrains limits binds obligates and compels this price is simply too high for us to pay as a culture. [00:24:22]

We want character but without unyielding conviction we want strong morality but without the emotional burden of guilt and shame we want virtue but without particular moral justifications that invariably offend we want good without having to name evil we want decency without the authority to insist on it we want moral community without any limitations to personal freedom in short we want what we cannot possibly have on the terms we want it it strikes me that the death of character and the disappearance of moral knowledge go together in some pretty significant ways which I think lends urgency to our task and to a lot of our discussion about the recovery of moral knowledge. [00:24:41]