The purpose of this essay is twofold. First, I shall argue that the emphasis on self-evident moral principles confuses rather than clarifies the task of moral reasoning, for this emphasis prevents man from seeing what he must do if he is to deal with his moral life in a rational manner. Secondly, I shall try to make a case for the central role of a "dialectical" as distinct from a "deductive" process in moral reasoning. The view that moral reasoning moves from a major premise, "Murder is wrong," and a minor factual premise, "This is murder," to the conclusion, "This act is wrong," is a lifeless expression of such reasoning. In order to understand the nature of the cognitive issue confronting someone caught up in a moral problem, one must move beyond a simple deductive account of moral reasoning.

META-ETHICS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT

OF MORAL PRINCIPLES

The proposition, "Good is to be done, evil avoided," has often been presented as a self-evident proposition. A major difficulty with accepting this proposition as a significant moral principle is that it tells us nothing about the character of that which ought to be done, and that which ought to be avoided. It is an empty tautology which says in effect, "The good, i.e., that which ought to be done, is that which ought to be done, and evil, i.e., that which ought to be avoided, is that which ought to be avoided." Such a tautology in no way provides the aid to moral reflection that one would expect from a significant moral principle.

A possible response to this criticism is that the proposition is not useful as an aid to the discovery of good and evil, but that it shows its utility once an action has been seen to be good, by making us aware of the fact that we ought to perform that action. This utility, however, is not of the type that would give the proposition the status of a significant moral principle, for in any serious moral issue the cognitive problem revolves, not around a choice between that which is good and that which is evil, but involves rather a choice between two goods.

The man who does not know whether it is immoral to have sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife sees himself confronted with two goods, namely, on the one hand, the good of sexual pleasure and whatever other psychological values he foresees in the sexual union with the other woman, and, on the other hand, the good of being faithful to his wife. To tell him that good is to be done, and evil avoided is thus of no value in this situation. What he needs, on a cognitive level, is a perspective that will help him to decide which of the goods may be of a moral character, and which of an immoral character. The proposition under discussion fails to provide this perspective.

If the proposition is interpreted as informing us that we ought to do what is morally good, and avoid what is morally evil, it is a trivial tautology. Interpreted in this way, the proposition may be helpful as a way of explicating the phrases "moral good" and "moral evil" for a person who is beginning to learn the English language, but certainly a proposition that is restricted to such a function ought not be characterized as a moral principle, much less a self-evident moral principle.

It might be argued that the proposition that has been considered is a poor example, and that another proposition such as "Murder is immoral," ought to be taken as an example of a self-evident proposition. Because it seems clear that murder means the immoral taking of another man's life, the statement, "Murder is morally good," is a blatant contradiction. It would be easy to respond that this claim of self-evidence was a purely verbal issue, for the word "murder" means immoral killing, and anyone who says that murder is good, simply does not understand the language. A person learning English may be said to have a purely verbal problem when he united "murder" with that which is morally good in his conversation. We would inform him that the word "murder" ought not to be used as a way of speaking about that which is morally good, because in our language it is applied to immoral activity.

There is, however, more than a purely verbal matter involved in this issue. To say that murder is immoral is to place certain acts of killing within a moral context, but what I need to know is what sort of killing is to be classified as murder, and therefore as immoral. The acceptance of a proposition as morally self-evident appears to be a way of giving our ignorance the appearance of unquestionable truth. The claim that a proposition is morally self-evident contributes to the failure to realize the need to place the proposition within a specific context or framework.

If the proposition, "Murder is immoral," is to be of any cognitive use to man, it will be necessary to place the kind of killing that the word "murder" encompasses within a context and to show its immorality within that context. The proposition, "Murder is immoral," is of no help unless we know what type of killing is to be described as murder or immoral killing. Such knowledge will require an awareness of the perspective from which one judges the morality or immorality of certain actions.

Insofar as man is born into a society, he finds that society judges certain actions to be moral and others immoral, often from an unspecified perspective. If an individual wants to establish a rational grounding for morality he must try to discover what perspective or frame of reference is at work in customary morality, and submit it to rational analysis and evaluation. The point of such an analysis and evaluation is to try to find what is at the basis of the distinction between morality and immorality. It sets us on the quest for an intellectual framework which is to structure and cognitively ground man's existence as a moral being.

We are now at the heart of my opposition to accepting self-evident moral principles. Such acceptance leads us to lose sight of the importance of achieving a cognitive grasp of the framework or context within which our moral judgments are made. The acceptance of self-evident moral propositions leads us to see man's moral reasoning as a simple stringing together in mechanical fashion of a number of self-validating propositions.

A more accurate account of moral reasoning would force us to look beyond these propositions to the establishment of an intellectual perspective or framework that will furnish the context within which propositions become morally significant. This perspective may be of a utilitarian type, such as the greatest good for the greatest number, or it may be oriented to the advancement of the Communist Party, or to the pleasure of each individual. One cannot hope to mention the various possible moral frameworks men may try to establish. One's working notions of the nature of murder, or of a virtue such as justice, will depend to a great extent on the moral framework within which one pursues his moral reflections.

Because the emphasis on self-evident moral principles hides the central significance of the moral framework in moral reasoning, it would seem to me that ethicians ought to give up the search for self-evident moral principles. It may be argued that if one does not argue for self-evident moral principles, he would face insurmountable difficulties in trying to evaluate the various possible ethical frameworks, or to establish one's own. One would appear to be restricted to two alternatives in trying to decide whether any perspective is the "true" perspective which ought to constitute the moral framework within which man ought to conduct his moral reasoning. Either a certain framework is self-evidently moral, or, what amounts to the same thing for our purposes, is based on a self-evident moral truth, or the choice of a framework is ultimately a matter of arbitrary taste. In short, this position states that if one does not accept certain moral principles as self-evident, he makes ethics a wholly arbitrary affair.

There is no need to narrow our alternatives in this way. A man's ethical universe of discourse may be rationally grounded in reason's grasp of man's situation in the world. Between arbitrariness and self-evidence there is the possibility of an ethical framework being constructed out of reason's reflective grasp of man in the world. The evidence for the framework will not be such that its denial is self-contradictory, but will involve an argumentation to show that the ethical framework being defended is most in keeping with man's existential situation, and that it has adequately taken into account all that is ethically significant in this situation. For example, the utilitarian must show that the construction of an ethical framework on the central significance of consequences to moral reasoning is in keeping with reason's reflective grasp of the significant features of man's situation in the world. If he is successful, he will not have provided us with a proposition whose opposite is self-contradictory, but he will have shown the reasonableness of this framework, granted what he finds to be the human existential condition.

The reason for trying to base man's ethical framework in a reflective grasp of man's situation in the world is that morality concerns the way in which man is to act in the world. Because his moral existence is in the world, man's reason must look to this situation in the world in order to find the material out of which it will structure the context within which he will carry on his moral reflections.

This emphasis on a reflective return to man's existential situation may seem to involve an identification between the world of fact or the situation in the world, and the world of morality or what ought to be. Far from being decided by the emphasis on a reflective return, this is one of the issues that must be decided by this return. If such reflection sees man as existing in a world that is closed or given once and for all, then perhaps man can only repeat the factual order. If, however, man is discovered to be living in an open world whose character is to some extent determined by his activity, then the question of whether one ought to simply repeat what he finds will become more complex.

Another issue that must be considered in the course of a reflective analysis of man's situation in the world is whether man's basic transactions with the world are purely cognitive affairs in which the world confronts man simply as an object of knowledge. If this were the case, a reflective analysis of these transactions could reach factual conclusions only. Such a state of affairs would also mean that no statement of value could validly arise out of the reflective process.

In facing this issue, we must avoid becoming so entranced by man's scientific achievements in an area such as physics, that we reduce the rich variety and complexity of his existential situation to an experience that is directly involved in the work of the physicist. Man's basic transactions with the world are value-charged; they are full of frustrations and fulfillments. We experience the frustrations of hunger and the fulfillments of food, the agony of losing a loved one and the joys of reunion, the frustrations of failing in one task and the fulfillment of successfully completing another. This dimension of man's existence in the world must be emphasized because a totally valueless world would not yield an ethical framework for reflective analysis. Granted a value-charged world, however, it is possible for reason to work in this world and to come to the conclusion that this general perspective rather than that offers man the best promise of distinguishing between those values that are moral and those that are immoral. In turn, this distinction involves the realization that certain goods are good within a limited context, but lose much of their value when seen in the light of a more comprehensive and/or profound grasp of the human condition in the world.

Undoubtedly, there are other issues which man must face in his attempt to establish an ethical framework. Hopefully, however, the two which I have mentioned will give some substance to the types of problems that will be involved in such an attempt.

Up to this point, the outcome of the discussion is that the issue of discovering the general principles that are to function in moral reasoning is a much more complicated affair than the question of whether these principles are self-evident would lead one to believe. If principles are to have any utility in the process of moral reasoning, they cannot be treated as bearing the marks of their truth wholly within themselves. It is necessary to try to establish a rational ethical framework and to be able to see such principles as, "Lying is immoral," or "Justice ought to be done," within the context of this framework. If one can reflectively ground an ethical framework in the existential matrix of man-in-the-world, he will be able to substantiate his moral principles, not by appealing to the logical connections between subject and predicate, but by placing them within the context that has been established by man's reflective scrutiny of his existential situation. The contextual view of moral principles presented in this section may not give one the sense of security, of clarity and precision present in an ethics grounded upon self-evident moral principles, but it has the advantage of providing a sense of the continuing and unfinished character of the ethical enterprise, i.e., of the attempt to achieve cognitive control of the complexities and obscurities of man's moral life.

THE EXISTENTIAL MATRIX OF MORAL REASONING

The preceding section may be understood as trying to make a case for the importance of "meta-ethics" in the establishment of moral principles. We must look beyond given moral principles to the existential matrix of human life in the world to discover the material which reason may use to construct a basic ethical framework. Having reflected upon basic features of an ethical frame, we may move now to the properly ethical level of moral reflection which is concerned directly with the rational grounding of moral principles. Working on this level, reason attempts to explicate the character of virtues such as justice, and of vices such as injustice or intemperance. This is also the level on which one tries to establish a general rational perspective with regard to such issues as abortion, capital punishment, and war.

At this point we undertake a "dialectical," rather than a "deductive", process of moral reasoning. An example may help to clarify the character of this distinction. The word "justice" usually carries the meaning of a morally proper ordering of the relations among men. Having established a moral framework, the ethician must try to provide general criteria that will serve to specify the character of justice within such a framework. During this attempt he will treat the accepted framework as a working hypothesis. This implies that what is open to question is not only the character of justice but the ethical framework itself, inasmuch as it is possible that a serious shortcoming may be discovered in the framework as we reflect on the question of justice.

This openness of the framework to possible change must be retained because the framework functions at every level of moral reasoning. It is always possible that as we try to use it in exploring the morality of such issues as abortion or war, we will come to the realization that a dimension of man's situation in the world had been overlooked or misinterpreted in our meta-ethical reflections. Such a realization may require a slight or a more radical alteration of the framework, if not a total rethinking of the previous set of meta-ethical conclusions. Referring to this process as a "dialectic" emphasizes that the relationship between the ethical framework and moral principles is not a linear one in which the movement of reason is from the framework to the principles. Instead, in the process of reasoning the ethical framework sheds light on the concept of justice, and on the formation of a principle of justice, with the latter reciprocating by illuminating the character of the framework.

In this light, the relationship between the ethical framework and issues such as the nature of justice or murder within that framework, or the morality of such activities as war and capital punishment, is analogous to the relationship between hypotheses and experiments in the sciences. The ethical framework is used to establish a notion of justice that will help man distinguish between just and unjust behavior, just as a general scientific hypothesis is used to help him deal with certain concrete facts of nature in a more efficient manner. Just as in the latter case, putting the hypothesis to work may uncover something that leads to questioning the hypothesis, so also in moral reasoning we may come upon a factor that leads to a re-examination of our framework.

Thomas S. Kuhn has done an excellent job of describing the character of this interplay as it occurs in the sciences in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Using the word "paradigm" in a manner similar to the use of the phrase "ethical framework" in this essay, he points out that such paradigms play a determining role in what the scientific community at any given time may consider to be the proper methods, problems, and standards of successful investigation in the scientific enterprise.¹ Although he sees such paradigms as important to the continued progress of the sciences, he also points out that their uncritical and unreflective acceptance by many scientists has led to mistaken opposition of the use of other paradigms that have proved themselves to be scientifically more fruitful than those previously established.²

As in science, so also in moral reasoning, man needs some sort of framework, context, or paradigm, if he is to deal with problems in an orderly and systematic fashion. However, whereas science may be able to make great strides in predicting and controlling natural phenomena because the majority of working scientists are willing to accept in a rather uncritical way the dominant scientific paradigm of their own day, and conduct their research within the context of this paradigm, the ethician must be critically and reflectively aware of the way in which his ethical framework determines his ethical principles. It is difficult to present the reasons for this difference between the scientific and ethical enterprises. However, one major factor in this difference certainly must be the fact that science is concerned with predicting and controlling natural phenomena, whereas ethics is concerned with how man ought to act, and the rational justification for saying that man ought to act in this way rather than that. It is directed to helping man come to an orderly, coherent, and systematic rational awareness of himself as a moral being.

Professional philosophers in the United States have been very much aware of the importance of the meta-ethical task of critically reflecting on various possible ethical frameworks. However, the discussion of ethical issues in the philosophical community has suffered, because philosophers have failed to move seriously and systematically from the level of discussing competing ethical frameworks to such issues as the morality of war, capital punishment, and socialism or capitalism. Not only has this failure meant that society at large has been deprived of what the ethician could add to the dialogue concerning moral issues, it has also involved a loss for the philosophical community itself. A more thorough and systematic exploration of the type of issues mentioned will introduce the benefits of a type of experimental inquiry into the exchange among ethicians. For example, an exploration of the way in which utilitarian and deontological frameworks deal with the issue of the morality of capitalism and/or socialism would add substance to these frameworks and might aid in weighing their adequacy for ethics.

PRACTICAL WISDOM

Up to this point, the discussion has been concerned with moral reasoning seen on the meta-ethical and ethical level. Another level that ought to be considered is that of practical wisdom. The man of practical wisdom knows the concrete line of action he ought to pursue at this time, in this place, under these circumstances, and who is able to carry out that action. Here again, the reasoning is not simply a deductive movement from principles to the conclusion, "I ought to do x", but involves the same sort of dialectical character described above.

On the level of practical wisdom, the issues are immensely more difficult for human reason to handle than those on either the meta-ethical or ethical level. The man of practical wisdom is confronted with all the complexities, contingencies, and nuances of a concrete, existential situation. On the levels of meta-ethics and ethics, human reason finds a congenial environment, that is, a conceptual environment involving abstract or general issues. When it moves to the concrete and existential order, reason is pushed to the very limits of its capabilities. Hence, in the last analysis, man cannot always depend on his reason alone for the actual resolution of his concrete moral issues. Often he must bring the full resources of his character to bear on these issues. This implies that he must depend on his appetitive as well as his cognitive responses to the given situation. Undoubtedly there is much truth in the view that in the crucial moment of moral decision the man of character or "good moral instincts" is more likely to hit upon the morally proper line of conduct than is the ethician who has studied ethics for years, but whose character is the result of one immoral escapade after another.

One need not have great powers of imagination to picture a situation in which an individual may find that after examining as many sides of the issue, and as deeply as possible, he is unable to present a rationally decisive argument to justify the decision that he ought to pursue this alternative and avoid that. Granted a good intention on such an individual's part, whatever he decides to do will be morally proper for him. However, to admit that there may be times when one finds himself in situations that are beyond his rational capacities to comprehend, does not necessary imply that reason with its moral principles is absolutely useless and irrelevant to man's concrete moral decisions. Such a conclusion is no more justifiable than the conclusion that the scientific enterprise ought to be surrendered because there are certain features of nature that appear to fall outside the present capabilities of science.

Having become aware of the pit-falls of an imperialism of reason, let us not succumb to an imperialism of the emotions. The proper remedy to the imperialism of human reason is not a retreat to an amorphous notion of love, that tries to hide one's inability to deal rationally with the complexities and nuances of human existence. One can sympathize with such a retreat, but must at the same time point out that without reason commitment can easily degenerate into a blind fanaticism or a bumbling and morally ineffective sentimentalism. The alternative is to accept the challenge offered by life's complexities to reflect upon our ethical framework and upon the principles developed within that framework. In this manner it should be possible to fashion a systematic and unified moral perspective providing principles that will prove useful for rationally illuminating the scope and limits of man's responsibilities and obligations in the existential order.

An example of the type of reflection that is needed may be helpful in clarifying my point. At times it seems obvious that we should act contrary to what would appear to the moral principles found in almost every ethical framework. For example, lying is forbidden in most, if not all, ethical frameworks. However, it would appear that we ought certainly to lie to a potential killer in order to save the life of his intended victim. A person working out of a utilitarian framework would not have much difficulty with such a situation because his framework is flexible enough to look beyond the given activity (in this case, telling a falsehood to one who wants to murder), to the consequences (in this case, saving the life of an innocent human being). The utilitarian perspective views all moral principles as "summary rules", that is, as rules that one ought to follow in most cases, because they usually lead to good consequences. Seen from this perspective, the moral principles developed by human reason do not comprehend anything of intrinsic moral value.

This is not the place to undertake a critical comparison between the utilitarian and deontological frameworks. However, I shall try to show that another way of reasoning is possible for dealing with those situations in life in which it appears that we ought to act directly contrary to moral principles. Admitting the possibility that such a situation will bring out the need for a radical change in one's ethical framework, I shall try to point to a way in which such a situation may lead to a development but not the rejection of such a framework.

Are we to say that there are times when we ought to steal? For example, ought one to take something from another person who has more than enough for his subsistence without his permission in order to give it to a person dying from starvation? Certainly, one is able to dramatize his position by saying, with an eye to such a situation, that stealing is at times morally justified. However, it seems to me that such talk serves only to obfuscate man's moral situation. To say that stealing is sometimes morally permissible is to say that it is sometimes moral to perform an immoral act, for, whatever the word `stealing' may mean, it is clear that in our language it carries with it the notion of something immoral.

A route that would be more profitable inasmuch as it might serve to clarify man's moral situation, would be to ask what one means by `lying' and `stealing' as words which carry a connotation of immorality. For example, does lying simply mean telling falsehoods? Whatever meaning `lying' as a description of immoral behavior may have, obviously it must be more complex than this. I may tell a falsehood unintentionally while thinking I was speaking the truth, or I may be playing a game in which contestants are expected to mislead one another.

Turning to the specific problem at issue, are we to say that a falsehood told to a man who intends to use the truth to kill another is an immoral action? It seems to me that the telling of a falsehood to such a person ought not be characterized as a lie on the grounds that an ethical framework ought not commit one to cooperating directly in the immorality of another person. One would be cooperating with the man committed to murder by telling him where his intended victim is to be found. In such a situation one must ask himself whether his ethical framework demands that he knowingly make himself an accessory before the fact in the act of murder. One must ask whether the falsehood he is considering telling the potential murderer should be characterized as lying within his ethical framework in view of the fact that the very act of telling the truth in this situation places him in the position of helping a man commit murder.

Such re-thinking may well indicate that we may have been working with an excessively narrow or a simplistic conception of lying if we understood it to involve only the intentional telling of falsehoods. Moreover, it will serve to call attention to the need to develop an integrated ethical framework. What sort of order are we to establish between, for example, not telling deliberate falsehoods and not cooperating with a murderer? The world in which we live forces us to confront such issues because existential problems do not present themselves in neatly isolated and self-contained packages. If one's ethical framework is simply a catalogue of self-enclosed propositions, as I believe it tends to be in a position that accepts self-evident moral principles, it will not be of much use in helping the man who must make a moral decision in a complex existential situation. Hence, many today seem to consider moral principles to be of little if any practical value to man in his moral deliberations precisely because they see them as a mere string of propositions with no central unifying perspective.

This paper has tried to indicate, in a general way, the central factors that ought to play a role in the process of moral reasoning and the type of interplay among these factors that ought to be engendered in such a process. Its basic thrust has been to emphasize that moral reasoning cannot depend on the so-called self-evidence of certain general moral propositions. Instead, it must be grounded in human reason's reflection upon man's situation in the world. This must include a consideration of the ethical framework developed from meta-ethical reflection, the principles developed within this framework, and the concrete moral situation in which the man of practical wisdom finds himself.

Saint Louis University

Saint Louis, Missouri

1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 102.

2. Ibid., pp. 59-61, 78-79, 159-72.