Absolute Values: Peter Kreeft
A Refutation of Moral Relativism. Peter Kreeft. 1999. Ignatius Press, San Francisco.
Here are the arguments for moral relativism Kreeft believes he demolishes: 1. Absolutism has bad consequences. 2. Different cultures have different values. 3. Values are socially conditioned. 4. Relativism gives people freedom. 5. Relativism is tolerant. 6. Morality is relative to changing situations. 7. Morality is relative to changing intentions. 8. Morality can be explained by evolution as a survival device.
A relativist may raise some of these issues in a discussion of how he or she thinks people arrive at their moral values, but the assertions Kreeft puts in the mouth of his opponent as “proofs” of the truth of relativism are so weak and at times sophomoric that Kreeft’s supposed refutation of them is irrelevant to the heart of the relativist challenge: No one can provide objective support for a claim to have an absolute foundation for moral values. Because Kreeft doesn’t even acknowledge this core issue, there isn’t much need to go over any of his other objections to relativism, the less irrelevant of which are covered in my original post (August 10, 2005).
Here’s an example, though, of how he approaches difficult issues. He asserts that Auschwitz is “the fruit of moral relativism,” and as “concrete evidence” he cites Mussolini: “If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth … then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity … the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.” The citation is the extent of Kreeft’s argument. He doesn’t explain how this is “concrete evidence” of historical causation, particularly of events that occurred in a nation that Mussolini didn’t rule, nor why we’re supposed to take this posturing buffoon as a historian and philosopher of such acuity and learning as to consider him an authority on the true nature of moral relativism or the driving force of fascism’s absolutist ideology. In fact, did the Nazis believe that “everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology”? Did they have contempt for the man who claimed to be the bearer the “objective, immortal truth” about the Jews among other things? Kreeft considers Nazism a form of relativism because its absolutes disagree with his, which of course are the only correct ones, a claim implicit but unproven throughout the book.
And here’s an example of how Kreeft, who claims his book offers “respectable logical arguments” from a “clear and very intelligent” viewpoint, in fact abuses language and logic. To defend the idea that changing situations “change how you should apply the rules, but they don’t change the rules” he gives the example of lying to a Nazi searching for hidden Jews: “The Nazis had no right to know that truth” so it wasn’t wrong to “deceive” them. “Lying is always wrong, and that wasn’t wrong, so that wasn’t a lie.” To safeguard the absoluteness of the rule that says “Lying is always wrong,” Kreeft redefines “lying” from “the speaking of a falsehood” to “the speaking of a falsehood when it’s not permissible to do so,” and so the rule becomes “The speaking of a falsehood when it is not permissible to do so is wrong.” Besides the irony in a professed absolutist ignoring the common meaning of a word to suit his purpose—and in particular redefining “lie” in defense of a belief in absolute truth—his raises the problem of how we’re to know, by objective standards, when “speaking a falsehood” is permissible and therefore not lying, otherwise this rule is wholly vacuous. If his semantic juggling is to be of any use, Kreeft needs to prove his claim to have such standards, and he fails to.
Kreeft’s arguments in favor of absolutism are as follows:
1. Absolutism has better consequences.
The issue of whether relativism or absolutism has “better” consequences is irrelevant to the question of which view is correct, even if one could find an objective means of weighing what consequence in a given situation is “better.”
2. Common consensus: “nearly everyone who has ever lived has been a moral absolutist.”
He acknowledges this is only a “probable,” not a conclusive argument. It’s hard to see what this could prove, even probably, even if were true: Nearly everyone who has ever lived, particularly before the twentieth century, believed in life after death. Does that make it probably true? In any event, the claim is open to more doubt than he acknowledges, and since even he doesn’t find it completely convincing, there’s no reason for someone who finds it even less so to argue it further.
3. Moral experience.
a. “The first and foundational moral experience we have is always absolutistic. Only later do you get relativism—later in the life of the individual or of the society … we can all remember what moral experience was like before we became sophisticated. It was absolute.”
Children are told what they must and must not do; early societies ruled by priests and kings laid down the law and demanded obedience. What this bit of data proves is that people and societies are told that moral rules are absolute; it doesn’t prove that they actually are.
b. “Conscience immediately detects real right and wrong, just as your senses immediately detect real colors and shapes…. Moral relativism … denies the data….Moral absolutism is empirical, or experiential. It’s data based…. we experience more than ‘what is’ as our data; we also experience ‘what ought to be’ as part of our data…we have immediate good-and-evil detectors—consciences… [This] shows that absolutism is scientific. It’s true to the data, the experience.”
The supposed data: We “immediately” know, by virtue of our God-given conscience, what is right and wrong.
Then why do people disagree? And why can’t some of them see the truth?
(The following answers aren’t quotes from Kreeft, but I think they represent fairly his approach to questions like these.) Because, although a person’s conscience is as infallible as the God whose prophet it is, people can be driven by inappropriate desires or confused by false teachings. Thus, people who say they disagree aren’t hearing clearly the voice of conscience, or are hearing it, but are lying about what their conscience tells them, and are letting things other than their conscience dictate their beliefs and actions.
How can we tell who is speaking and acting out of the genuine dictates of the one true universal conscience?
By observing whose actions are in accord with true moral teachings.
How do we know which moral teachings are true?
Our conscience immediately tells us.
But what about people who disagree with us, and make the same claim about what their conscience is telling them?
Their claims are false.
How do we know their claims are false?
Because they disagree with what our conscience tells us and with what their conscience, if they were honest and clear with themselves, would tell them.
What these data show is not that absolutism is scientific, but that Kreeft believes his conscience is absolutely infallible because he believes God made it so, and although he doesn’t tell us how he knows this is true, presumably he believes it is because the tradition he believes in told him it is, and he believes that tradition is true because his infallible conscience tells him so. And round and round, with nothing on which to rest this self-reinforcing circle of certainty.
4. How we use moral language.
a. According to C. S. Lewis, we speak as though we believe there are moral absolutes.
Even if this were true, it would hardly prove there really are such things. In addition, Lewis's standard tactic is to make it seem as though his imaginary “we’s” or “they’s” represent real-life people who of course always believe and behave as he describes—who is the universal “we” in the present assertion? The conclusions that follow from this tactic are convincing only to believers, which is what makes Lewis both a useful and useless apologist.
Christians believe in an immortal soul, but they mourn people who die, and they go to doctors when their lives are at risk; in other words, they act as if they believe a person really dies—does that “prove” the soul is mortal because people who believe it isn’t act as if it is?
b. Kreeft follows Lewis in claiming that, in essence, all moral arguments are about how to apply, in particular situations, what everyone agrees are certain universal, objective, and unchanging principles.
In addition to the weakness already mentioned of basing conclusions about the actual nature of something on how “everyone” supposedly talks about it, this version of the assertion relies on an appeal to principles “everyone” supposedly agrees on. In fact, it turns out that by “everyone,” apologists like Kreeft and Lewis mean people with values close enough to theirs for those people to be considered morally competent or reasonable. What they’re really saying is, “Based on my interpretation of what’s important and valid in the beliefs of others, I find that everyone agrees on what is right and wrong, except for people who disagree with me (for example, relativists, fascists, feminists, fanatics of relgions other than mine, sociopaths, mental incompetents, etc.), and they can be discounted because their views are obviously unacceptable to reasonable people like me,” which is hardly a convincing move in an argument for the existence of common principles.
5. “The fact that relativists act like absolutists when you do them an injustice. They say, “No fair!,” just like everybody else…they contradict themselves.”
First, acting as though there were absolute values doesn’t prove that there are. In addition, because someone’s behavior contradicts his expressed beliefs about moral values doesn’t mean his beliefs are necessarily false; it might just be difficult or inconvenient to put them into practice, or the person might indeed be a hypocrite. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t identified something true; he might be unable or unwilling to live up to it. The failure of a person to live up to his beliefs doesn’t mean those beliefs are false, something the religious apologist should be thankful for.
In addition, this claim relies on some rhetorical sleight-of-hand used by Lewis in Mere Christianity, where he describes the imaginary reactions of imaginary relativists and then claims that this is how people behave in the real world; I dealt with this in an earlier post (August 18, 2005).
And that’s pretty much the substance of Kreeft’s defense of absolute values. He throws in quite a bit of invective against people and principles he disagrees with, but he never addresses the following question: What are your objective, universal, and timeless reasons for claiming that your foundation for absolute values is true? The assertion that God came down to Abraham with the “real religion” (with the implication that Kreeft and his fellow Catholics have an absolute understanding of exactly what moral rules follow from this) isn’t good enough, and in fact, taken in conjunction with the rest of Kreeft’s performance, raises the question of just what qualifications are required to teach philosophy at Boston College.
