Ethics without ideology or a new theory of synderesis

Brodskii Aleksandr Iosifovich Doctor of Philosophy Professor of the Department of Ethics at St. Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, Sankt-Peterburg oblast', g. Saint Petersburg, nab. Universitetskaya Nab., 7-9 abrodsky59@mail.ru Other publications by this author

1. Morality and ideology

The correlation of morality and ideology is one of the most difficult and unresolved problems of ethics. The fact is that morality and ideologies deal with the same "material": values and norms (i.e. general requirements, obligation). It is extremely difficult to separate in terms of content which values and norms are moral and which are ideological. Differences can be made, rather, at the level of their genealogy. But the "genealogy of morality" to this day still does not have a "reliable" theoretical basis. Therefore, there have been and are theorists who consider morality to be part of ideology or completely identify these forms of consciousness. There have been and are theorists who consider morality to be an independent or even opposing ideologies way of human interaction with the world.

The thinkers who fully identified morality and ideology include, first of all, Karl Marx and his followers. For Marxists, ideology is a distorted, illusory perception of reality that expresses the interests of the ruling classes.It is a manifestation of the complete social conditioning of human consciousness and thinking. The proletariat, which, as Marx taught, is interested in the destruction of class society as such, does not need any ideology, but only social science.Therefore, as the German follower of Marx V. Sombart argued, "there is not a grain of ethics in Marxism from beginning to end." V. Lenin quoted this phrase with approval in Russia: "It is impossible not to recognize ... the validity of Sombart's statement that "there is not a grain of ethics in Marxism itself from beginning to end": in theoretical terms, he subordinates the "ethical point of view" to the "principle of causality"; in practical terms, he reduces it to class struggle" ^{[5, pp. 440-441]}.

The same views were held by many researchers of the ideologies of the XX century, such as, for example, K. Manheim or T. Parsons, although, unlike orthodox Marxists, they did not attach exclusively negative meaning to ideology. The function of ideology, in their opinion, is to protect institutionalized values and strengthen the role obligations of individuals in a post-traditional society, i.e. in a situation of loss of religiosity and class status. (The estate is not only an element of the social hierarchy, but also the "program of life" set at birth.)  It is probably unnecessary to explain that public morality in such a concept is also completely dissolved in ideology.  

In the second half of the XX century, the understanding of ideologies has changed significantly. In poststructuralism, ideology is no longer a "collection of ideas", but a certain use of language, a discourse that by its very semiotic structure forces a person to think in a certain way. Ideology is considered here as a kind of force that "constructs" a person of a particular epoch or civilization. Poststructuralism, in fact, became the logical conclusion of the Marxist idea of the social conditionality of consciousness. (It is no coincidence that many of the "classics" of this philosophical movement – Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu – were direct students of the largest Marxist of the second half of the last century, Louis Althusser). In this philosophy, a person is not an autonomous thinking and moral subject, but a passive agent of culture, understood as a system of "anonymous" linguistic practices.

The fact that ideologies always rely on morality is, of course, indisputable. But does morality have any properties independent of ideology that would allow it to be distinguished into an independent form of a person's relationship with the world? Probably, most people will answer this question that such a property of morality is its universality: moral values are universally valid for people regardless of their class, ethnic, cultural or state affiliation. In principle, this is true. However, the indication of universality in itself does not mean anything, and rarely any ideology does not claim that the values it postulates are universal, universal. Therefore, we must strive to find some more reliable grounds for distinguishing morality from ideology. Let us consider several such grounds known from the history of ethics.

The first foundation is freedom. An action can be called moral if it is the result of a conscious and free choice. This is not about external coercion. Ideologies also do not always resort to external coercion. Freedom of morality means that at the decision-making stage a person does not know any necessity at all, excluding other possibilities of behavior. The desire to find some "true" grounds for our moral decisions that exclude alternative forms of behavior, which is characteristic of any ideology, contradicts the very essence of morality. As K. Popper argued, "if this could be done, we would thereby be freed from all personal responsibility for our actions and, consequently, from all ethics in general" ^{[6, p. 295]}.

Some theorists believe that the same can be said about law. The well-known logician and lawyer of the XX century H. Perelman wrote that if the legal norms were not arbitrarily established rules, but true judgments, then the activity of judicial bodies deciding on the legality or illegality of certain actions would not be necessary. "What is a matter of rational decision cannot be a matter of truth. The truth leaves no basis for decisions: I cannot decide that two plus two equals four or that Paris is the capital of France" ^{[15, p.172]}.

It follows from what has been said that the norms of morality and law are our so-called "arbitrary institutions, and nothing prevents us from changing them if they cease to suit us. However, if the norms of morality and law are "arbitrary institutions", then the question arises, when and why did we establish them? Obviously, some interpretation of the socio-historical situation pushed us to this, i.e. again, some kind of ideology. In addition, these arguments relate to personal moral choice, but not to public morality, focused on stereotypes and habits. And then, either we must reject public morality as something alien to morality in its true sense, or still recognize it as part of some institutionalized system of values, i.e. religion or ideology.

The second base can be called negativity. In this case, the difference between ideology and morality is seen in the fact that ideology operates with affirmative statements, whereas morality - if, of course, it is really morality, and not a hidden ideology – consists exclusively of negative statements. Morality does not speak about what we should do, but about what we should not do. Many moralists insisted on the negative character of morality. L. N. Tolstoy, for example, repeatedly stressed that all the commandments of Christ are "negative, and show only what people can no longer do at a certain stage of human development" ^{[8, p. 80]}. And the Russian philosopher of the second half of the XX century Yu. Schrader rightly noted that "positive moral values... they cannot unconditionally qualify as a moral (i.e. absolute) good, because they lose their moral value in the case when they require the use of bad means" ^{[12, p. 255]}.

This criterion, if taken in isolation, is also insufficient. Firstly, the judgments of ideology are also often negative (prohibitive) in nature. Secondly, if morality speaks only about what we should not do, then its addition by ideology becomes inevitable, because otherwise morality is deprived of the possibilities of its social realization. In this case, the idea of the social ideal completely disappears from the sphere of morality.

Finally, the third basis for distinguishing between morality and ideology – perhaps the most controversial and difficult to define – is its so-called naturalness. Natural morality is called norms of behavior that are not related to society, culture or religion in any way. Explanations of such independence of morality from society can be very different: from "the gift of God" to "the evolution of the instincts of herd animals." And since this basis is the most important for this article, we will focus on it in more detail.

2. Synderesis

In the XII century, when rewriting the works of blj. Jerome (late IV — early V century) "Fourteen books of interpretations on the prophet Ezekiel", an error crept into the source text: in one place, synderesis (preservation, maintenance) was written instead of the word syneidesis (Latin transliteration of the Greek word , meaning "conscience"). This mistake turned out to be very significant for subsequent scholastic philosophy, as it allowed us to distinguish between conscience proper (conscientia) and synderesis – a kind of "pre-conscience", the original moral intuition. Synderesis is what remains in us after our likeness of God was lost as a result of original sin, a spark of divine light in our soul. Synderesis is present in all people, as it is inherent in their nature. The grounds for this statement were found in the famous words of the Apostle Paul: "For when the Gentiles, who have no law, by nature do what is lawful, then, having no law, they are their own law" (Rom. 2:14).Synderesis is never wrong, whereas conscience can be corrupted by bad surroundings, upbringing, etc.

This scholastic distinction between conscience and moral intuition is quite relevant today. Conscience is indeed unreliable, and we know from history that people who committed the largest crimes against humanity were convinced that they were acting in accordance with their conscience, since these actions corresponded to the system of values that had been instilled in them by upbringing and ideological propaganda. Of course, we cannot say for sure that there are some initial intuitions of good and evil in a person. But the belief in the existence of such intuitions suggests that conscience cannot be the last resort for all our moral decisions. Therefore, although the term "synderesis" is almost not found in modern ethical literature, many philosophers are still looking for such foundations of morality that would not depend on society, culture, traditions or ideologies.

Medieval scholastics have already diverged in their understanding of which sphere of the human soul synderesis belongs to. For example, Bonaventure and Henry of Ghent believed that synderesis refers exclusively to the will.  Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scott – to reason. And Alexander the Gaelic, Albert the Great erected synderesis to both reason and will, considering it a kind of "concentrate from ratio naturalis and voluntas naturalis" ^{[4, pp. 79-80]}. With some degree of conditionality, we can say that this division persists even today. More precisely, some theorists consider "natural morality" as a manifestation of the exclusively affective and volitional part of our Self, others associate it mainly with reason, rationality, and others believe that our "natural morality" implies a synthesis of various abilities.

The first (affective-volitional) point of view is mainly related to evolutionary theory and neurophysiology. Back in the XIX century, many theorists (Ch. Darwin, G. Spencer, T. Huxley, P. Kropotkin) believed that mutual assistance, solidarity, altruism and other moral properties of people arose as a result of the evolution of species and natural selection. In the XX and XXI centuries, these properties began to be explained by various genetic transmitted neurophysiological processes, most often related to the care of offspring, since it is in the care of offspring that the ability to sacrifice something for someone else's good is most clearly manifested. Of course, affects are the basis of natural morality here. "Having gradually emerged," V. P. Efroimson, a domestic supporter of this approach, wrote in the 70s of the last century, "the totality of altruistic emotions can be fixed as a norm of behavior and transmitted further according to the laws of social continuity. But without a genetic basis, this social continuity would not have universality and persistence" ^{[13, p. 196]}.

Both proponents and critics of the biological approach to morality often point out that it excludes the so-called "free will". In my opinion, this statement is some kind of misunderstanding. One of the staunch supporters of the neurophysiological approach to ethics, P. Churchland, shows by concrete examples that a person is constantly in a situation of choice precisely because of the presence of certain initial moral intuitions. It is a choice between what is "dictated" to him by an "evolutionarily given" concern for his neighbors, and what various rationalistic systems, such as Kantianism or utilitarianism, inspire him with, which by their origin are the same ideologies. For example, following the utilitarian principle of bringing the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people, "I should put financial assistance to orphans on the other side of the planet above the need to provide for my own children. And my elderly mother, based on this principle, should mean to me less than five homeless people, exactly five times" ^{[11, 203-204]}. According to the author, the very formulation of such dilemmas is "ideological" immorality. "Ideology and the eternal desire to bring an ideological base under any immorality — that's what I'm most afraid of in the social sphere" ^{[11, p. 241]}.

At the same time, P. Churchland criticizes the rationalistic approach to morality, believing that we should trust only our "natural feelings", although the examples given are, in my opinion, the results of rational choice, too, and are not explained by empathy for others in themselves. This is, for example, the point of view of the criticized P. Churchland T. Nagel, who can be considered a vivid representative of the second (rationalistic) view of synderesis.

According to Nagel, looking for a biological evolutionary explanation for ethics is just as stupid as looking for such an explanation for physics. The development of physics is an intellectual process, which, presumably, was in some way a consequence, or perhaps only a side effect of the process of biological evolution. But this fact cannot give any explanation to physical theories. Approximately the same thing, only on a "more primitive level", takes place in the sphere of our moral decisions. Our moral faculties seem to have a biological basis. But the history of the use of these abilities and their constant re-use to criticize and revise their own products is not part of biology. "Biology can tell us about perceptual and motivational starting points, but in its current state it has little effect on the thought process by which these starting points are overcome" ^{[14, p.146]}.

At the same time, Nagel emphasizes that the moral rules that "reason discovers" are independent not only of biological instincts, but also of the so-called "social instincts", i.e. from society, culture, ideology. But where did the ability to rationality, independent of culture, come from in a person? If we do not proceed from the religious understanding of man (and Nagel, apparently, does not proceed from this), then we have to admit that rationality, like affects, also has an exclusively biological and evolutionary origin. Consequently, the study of the biological prerequisites of morality is still essential for morality itself, since it allows us to draw the so-called "demarcation line" between what is genuine morality and what is generated by culture and ideology.

Of course, there are many theories that combine both an affective and a rational approach to "natural morality" simply on the principle that in some cases it is better to rely on emotions, and in some cases on reason.  Such theories include, for example, the ethical concept of neuroendocrinologist R. Sopolsky or psychologist R. F. Baumeister. But it would be much more important to create a theory that would allow us to explain both our moral intuitions and our rationality evolutionarily, and at the same time be able to include the principle of "free will" in this explanation. In our opinion, the starting idea of such theories could be the concept of generative grammar by N. Chomsky and his followers, which has been insisting for more than half a century that the basic intellectual abilities of a person, and, above all, that "instrumental system" of thinking called language, are the product of biological evolution, not culture. The main feature of this "instrumental system" is that both at the level of syntax and at the level of semantics it allows a person to "formulate new statements expressing new thoughts in relation to new circumstances." Human language in its "normal use" is free from control by external stimuli or internal states and is not limited to any practical communicative task in contrast, for example, to the animal signaling system. "Thus, language can be freely used as an instrument of unlimited thinking and self-expression" ^{[10, 7]}. And our morality is part of this instrumental system. This conclusion is no longer made by Chomsky himself, but by modern analytical philosophy (represented, for example, by J. Searle). Obligations are initially woven into the structure of speech and the basic rules of linguistic activity are the remote basis of non-linguistic institutional structures, including morality ^{[7, p. 201]}. In this sense, our ability to act contrary to our desires is part of our so-called "general rationality" and is as free from external stimuli and internal states as our ability to formulate new descriptive statements about reality is free from them. Freedom is, as it were, embedded both in our mind and in our moral intuition from the very beginning.

3. From intuitions to constructions

However, it is impossible not to remember that there is not only theoretical, but also practical use of reason. There is a significant difference between rational descriptions (descriptions, explanations) and rational prescriptions (requirements, values) in the purposes and methods of semantic evaluation: the former aim to bring words in line with the world and, therefore, can be evaluated as true or false; the latter aim to bring the world in line with words about it and, therefore,, as true or false cannot be evaluated. And since logical following is defined in terms of "true – false", to the extent that many philosophers, starting with D. Hume, have believed and believe that in relation to values and norms, it is generally impossible to use logic or, more broadly, rationality, and morality is based solely on irrational emotions. 

However, in the second half of the century, logic significantly expanded its semantic apparatus, introducing, along with the values of "true–false", a number of other meanings. With respect to value and normative statements, such meanings can be "doable–impossible". Of course, with this approach, we consider values as something identical to norms: any value presupposes a norm, and a norm implies a value, so that the difference between, for example, the assessment "Murder is evil" and the imperative "Don't kill!" turns out to be purely stylistic.

  Back in the 70s of the last century, the well-known methodologist of science and ethicist St. Tulmin noted that both supporters and opponents of the rational justification of morality "proceed from the false premise that only the truth value of descriptive statements establishes the meaning in which it is generally possible to talk about rational validity" ^{[16, p. 28]}. Later, the largest representative of moral philosophy, R. Hare, argued that it is a mistake to believe that "reason manifests itself only through cognition, i.e., the establishment of facts or the discovery of truths," and that "to be a rationalist in the understanding of morality means necessarily to be a descriptivist (i.e., to believe that there are moral facts that are subject to cognition)" ^{[9, p. 9]}. However, neither Toulmin nor Hare have answered the question of what the rational justification of morality should be.

About twenty years ago, based on the above considerations, I proposed T. S. a "constructivist" understanding of rationality in ethics, which, of course, I cannot repeat here and will limit myself to references ^{[1, pp. 134-139 ;2]}. The basis of this proposal was a comparison of ethics with mathematics, or rather, with mathematical intuitionism by L. E. J. Brauer, G. Weil, A. Geiting. The most important thesis of intuitionists was that existence in mathematics is the same as constructiveness or "constructibility". "In the study of mental mathematical constructions," A. Geiting wrote, "'to exist' should mean the same thing as 'to be constructed'" ^{[3, p. 10]}.  Mathematical objects are not given all at once and do not really exist, like, for example, physical objects. All of them are the results of construction processes carried out by means of certain constructive operations. And the very possibility of carrying out such an operation is here a form of substantiation of certain conclusions. In our country, the intuitionistic program in mathematics developed under the name "constructivism". Here the doctrine of constructive processes has been refined with the help of algorithm theory (A. A. Markov, N. A. Shanin, etc.).

These arguments, in my opinion, are quite applicable to ethics. Mathematics and ethics are similar, at least in one thing: the objects of both disciplines do not exist in reality, like physical objects, and, moreover, are not "metaphysical entities". In both cases, it is more about the results of constructive intellectual processes. In other words, in ethics, as in intuitionistic mathematics, "to exist" means "to be constructed". Therefore, it is possible to allow the creation of a certain intuitionistic (constructivist) ethics. An analogue of mathematical constructiveness in it can be the concept of feasibility:the existence of a norm is determined by its fulfillment; there cannot be a norm that could not be fulfilled. Therefore, feasibility should be considered as a proof of the norm. Moreover, it should be not only about the physical possibility of carrying out the prescribed action, but also about its consistency (consistency) with already established moral requirements. Such a requirement, the implementation of which would exclude the fulfillment of any already existing moral norm, should be considered impossible. Accordingly, a code in which the fulfillment of one norm excludes the fulfillment of another should be considered contradictory.

Moreover, as in the case of intuitionistic (constructivist) mathematics, constructivist ethics should proceed from some intuitions of our mind, which probably arose evolutionarily. In mathematics, intuition is the visual evidence of certain intellectual constructions; in ethics, intuition can be understood as the direct experience of states of empathy or freedom of choice. Therefore, constructivist ethics does not contradict the idea of synderesis, and its conclusions, like the conclusions of mathematics, will be completely independent of society, culture and ideology, although they will necessarily take into account all these factors as "conditions of feasibility".

Conclusion

Thus, the addition of modern ethics by some new theory of synderesis is ethically justified and theoretically possible.

Its ethical justification lies in the need to distinguish the set of our goals and decisions generated by the always fluid and changeable socio-historical context from the natural moral intuitions embedded in us by evolution or, if you like, by the Lord

Its theoretical possibility lies in the fact that moral intuitions do not exclude freedom of decisions, since they include rationality inherent in our nature (again by evolution or God), the main property of which is precisely the ability to make decisions regardless of external stimuli and internal states.

In addition, in the case of ethics, these intuitions of human nature are not indifferent to the content of our actions, since, unlike the natural (neurophysiological, for example) prerequisites of descriptive sciences (physics, biology, sociology, etc.), they are part of the construction of content, i.e. not only a prerequisite, but also a necessary element of the final result.