CHAPTER XII

SEEKING HARMONY IN AUTHORITY:

THE REASON AND VALUES NECESSARY FOR CIVIL SOCIETY

RICHARD A. GRAHAM

[I would like to begin with a personal note, going back over my own search for authority and obligation. About 45 years ago, when at 30 I was leading a dis-cussion group on "The Great Books", I decided to follow the Greek model for a good life, which I took to be divided into four periods of 20 years each: the first 20 years as student, the second as family and busi-nessman, the third in service to one’s state and, from 60 to 80 as writer-philosopher. It worked out that way for me and, after 20 years as engineer inventor and co-founder of a company making industrial servo-me-chanisms, I entered foreign service as Peace Corps Director in Tunisia. During the "Great Society" years of the 1960s and early 70s, I served as a Com-missioner on the first U.S. Equal Employment Op-portunity Commission and Director of our National Teacher Corps. Then, as a Fellow at the Brookings Institution, in an effort to understand why programs for large scale social reform sometimes over-correct and become unstable, I drew upon the methods of systems analysis employed in the design of military and industrial servo-mechanisms. And later, as Exe-cutive Director of the Lawrence Kohlberg’s Center for Moral Development and Education at Harvard Uni-versity, I helped with research on how individuals in some 50 societies throughout the world develop, reason about values and act upon their judgments.

Nancy, my wife, shared our overseas Peace Corps responsibilities and did most of the raising of our five children. She too then entered public service to become deputy to the Vice President for Education at the National Urban Coalition, director at the Peace Corps, Director of Peace Links (an international women’s organization), co-founder and director of the Institute for Soviet-American Relations, and now an editor for the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy.

Today the United States seems less confident of its prospects for the future than at any time in its history. There is widespread fear that people in the United States, as individuals and as a society, have lost their sense of moral authority and there is little confidence that they can find a way to restore it. So, three quarters through this last period of my hoped for life, I thank you for this opportunity to join you in drawing upon moral and political philosophy to con-sider what can be done to reconstruct the culture and values that foster a good society.]

THE SEARCH FOR MORAL AUTHORITY

            In an effort to identify the reason and values that provide a foundation for a good society, I shall draw upon research that comes partly from the Center for Moral Development and Education at Har-vard University. That research provides insight regarding the quality of reason and the foundations for values that are necessary for a civil society. It helps to explain why some of the reasons, values and pas-sions that create a civil society are not the same as those that sustain it. It bears directly on how and why one seeks harmony in the moral authority of one’s culture and religion, in the authority of one’s country, and in the authority of one’s inner self. For if we are to recreate a harmony of moral authority in ourselves and in our societies, we need a better understanding of how one comes to create one’s own intern-alized combination of authority out of the traditions and moral precepts of one’s culture and faith, the history and laws of one’s state, and the dictates of one’s conscience. We need a better culture, religion and country.

            I say culture and religion though it is not easy to separate them. Even for those who think of themselves as non-believers, religion is imbedded in their culture, in friends and associations, in literature and art, in admonitions and aphorisms, in customs, courtesies and cere-monies, in the marker celebrations of one’s life--at birth, adulthood, marriage and death--and in the inescapable mystery of ultimate authority.

ARISTOTLE’S OBLIGATION

            One’s internalized amalgam of authority imposes a sense of obligation to others which, for most people, is not far from the way Aristotle described it in his Nicomachean Ethics:

In our relation to our kinsfolk, our fellow tribesmen, our fellow citizens, and all other people, we should do our best to render them their due and to estimate their claims by considering the nearness of their con-nection with us and their character, or the services they have done us.

            Although Aristotle’s sense of obligation is more or less shared by most people in most societies, there is considerable difference within and between societies on the meaning of what others are "due", and on how to estimate the "nearness of their connection with us". We in the United States are now hotly debating what an individual is due from society, and, in much of the world, people are still brutally distancing themselves from one another because of differences in race, ethnicity, religion, class, ideology or culture.

            In speaking of one’s culture, I think mostly of the values and beliefs that largely shape the identity of one’s society and, in turn, shape large parts of one’s own personal sense of identity. These values and beliefs are, at first, mostly transmitted by one’s family and by childhood friends and teachers and, later, by other associations and experiences. For the fortunate, these include the experiences of lite-rature which, according to a definition that I particularly like, is "writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, history, biography, essays etc." This, of course, includes the great religious texts, the national epics, and much of philosophy. For I believe that it is through the experiences of literature, as much as it is through personal experience, that nearness of connection is extended to others who outwardly seem apart. And it is a certain nearness of connection and a certain harmony of moral authority that provide the necessary foundations for a civil society and its institutions.

THE MORAL AUTHORITY OF RELATIONS

            BETWEEN PERSONS

            John Dewey noted in his Freedom and Culture that:

Political institutions are an effect, not a cause . . . the relations which exist between persons, outside of po-litical institutions, relations of industry, of communication, of science, art and religion, affect daily asso-ciations, and thereby deeply affect the attitudes and habits expressed in government and rules of law.

            Yet many of the world’s societies are now attempting change in their economic and political institutions without much regard for tra-ditional relations between persons and without much regard for the moral authority of cultural values, religious belief and aesthetic sen-sibilities. Meanwhile, the relations between persons in industry, com-munication and science are changing at a furious rate. The lesson to be learned from recent movements for large-scale social change is, I believe, that the necessary force for a lawful civil society can be found only in harmony between the several sources of moral authority; without this harmony a society loses its force for connection and in-dividuals lose a moral sense of what is due one another.

            Some of these movements for economic development have been dedicated, as Robert K. Merton expressed it, "to finding more effective means to carelessly examined ends". Some have become more dedicated to a market economy and to increased wealth as a source of greater power or well-being, than to the freedom and dignity of the person as the foundation on which the well-being of an individual and a society alike depend.

            What then is to be done to foster the moral authority that is necessary for a civil society? Putting aside for now the issues of cul-tural preservation as affected by family stability, religious faith and formal education for responsibility and initiative, I would use Dewey’s terms in examining the "relations between persons in industry" as they affect "the attitudes expressed in government and rules of law." I will concentrate briefly on the subject of business ethics and how it affects the broader ethics of a society and its moral authority, and this for three reason: One is that, in many societies, the relations between persons in business and industry are changing at an unprecedented rate and the traditional foundations for business ethics must be shorn up or replaced. A second reason is that the ethics of business does much to confirm or corrupt the moral authority of a society. A third reason is that enough has been learned about the ways business ethics are cor-rupted and enough has been learned about ways to reestablish moral authority in business to guide action that can be taken now.

FROM THE TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY OF

            VILLAGE MARKETS TO THE UNCERTAIN AUTHORITY

            OF NATIONAL MARKETS

            In the village market a wary "nearness of connection", along with traditional standards for how much one is "due" in the way of fair dealing, tended to establish obligations for business ethics that had little need of support in law. But in national and international markets, as obligations of connection all but disappear and as the services done or received create less personal obligation, the need for obligation under law increases. In some newly created market economies where cultural traditions and religious precepts have lost force and laws are not yet enacted or enforced, a kind of economic feudalism becomes a law unto itself. It eats away at personal security, civil authority and national cohesiveness. The current state of economic and social affairs in many parts of Russia provides an all too graphic example of a lack of moral authority in business and, increasingly, in society itself. According to David Remnick’s report in the New Yorker magazine of February 1995:

It has turned into what Russians call bespredel, meaning anarchy, lawlessness, limitless greed. . . . In the standard sense of the word, honesty does not--cannot--exist. . . . Bribery is a fact of business life. Under both czarist and Soviet rule, bureaucrats always took bribes and accepted certain privileges as their due. But there were limits. . . . Now there are no such limits. . . . The "privatized" bureaucrat de-manding cash for a signature is sometimes the least of a tycoon’s concerns. The more dangerous question is one of protection. Russian bankers, especially, often worry about the threat of violence, even of con-tract killers hired by organized crime figures or per-haps by a rival banker. "Ten to fifteen thousand dollars and you are gone," one financier told the weekly Moscow News recently. . . . Millions of Russians feel that they are worse off now than they were before and they deeply resent these new masters of the Moscow universe . . . in which politics is played out according to the economic interests of bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, and mafiosi. . . . (This is why) the new wave of Russian entrepreneurs craves a legal order; chaos is bad for the country and bad for business.

THE SEARCH FOR MORAL AUTHORITY NEEDED FOR

            CIVIL SOCIETY

            I would like to turn now from the Russian example to the findings of recent research in moral development, much of it originating at the Kohlberg Center at Harvard University. It is research that bears on how relations between persons provide moral authority for business and society and how to enhance such authority. Briefly summarized, it includes the following three findings:

            - For most people in most societies, moral authority is founded in part upon the power of sanctions, whether of state or religion; but it is founded primarily upon the values of one’s culture or sub-culture that are transmitted through relations between people in family life and through membership in communities of social life and faith. For many adults in modern societies, cultural authority is augmented by civil authority that does not exclude cultural and religious values. And for about a fifth of the older adults in a civil society, moral principles that are confirmed by one’s own self-developed power of reason provide support for corresponding cultural and civil authority.

            - One’s capacity for the level of abstract reasoning that is re-quired for technical or social responsibility in a modern civil society is developed, from infancy to adulthood, in a sequence of discrete pat-terns of reason and judgment that are found in all societies. One’s progress to the next more abstract structure of reason is driven by a sensed dissonance or disequilibrium, by a sensed need to form and test hypotheses that can reconcile conflicts of perception or judgment. Thus, in the moral domain, one’s early perceptions that what is right is established by the authority of the traditions and customs of one’s own community tends to be challenged, in disparate societies, by the perception that other communities which differ in ethnicity, nationality or religion may hold to the authority of customs and traditions that are quite different. The search for harmony in one’s own perceptions leads, for many, to the judgment that a disparate society requires overarching civil authority that respects diversity but can establish common ground. But not all the members of any society develop the higher levels of reasoning required for abstractions such as "civil society" or "market economy". Indeed, in a homogenous rural com-munity where there is not much exposure to conflicting interpretations of ideas of permanent and universal interest, as these are introduced by literature and by the social issues of most modern civil societies, one’s conflicts of perception are more rare and so is an individual’s progress to the higher levels of abstract reason on which a civil society is founded.

            - Whether or not one acts according to one’s reason and values depends much upon one’s strength of character and one’s ability to establish priorities for one’s self responsibilities for others, especially as these responsibilities may conflict with the drive for the preservation of one’s essential self.

            Perhaps the most significant outcome of this research is a kind of confirmation of the fundamental force for human life that is made manifest from infancy on. Almost from birth the infant embarks upon a search for security of self by means of discovery and predictability. The child and adult continue to seek security for their selves through predictability, through their search for reasons or belief. It is a search that produces the "eurekas" of life, the self-assuring fitting together of one’s reason and beliefs. It begins as a search for the proximate causes of observed effects and becomes a search for ultimate pur-pose and authority that will support one’s sense of being in this life and, as the concepts are developed, one’s being in the life hereafter. This search for reason and authority creates a preserving force for being that is stronger than the preserving force for life itself.

            A second, highly significant outcome of this research is its implications for an "authority of reason" that will provide support for a civil society. It is a quality of reason that enables one to take a step beyond the point of one’s own perspectives so as to consider justice from the points of view of others of a different culture, class or ethnicity. This involves the ability to perceive how others perceive and the deve-lopment of reasoning that achieves equilibrium between what one is due and what is due to others. But, since many people in modern so-cieties and most people in village societies, have not yet developed reasoning of this kind, one’s sense of national identity, provided it is not inconsistent with one’s cultural identity, must be counted upon to help maintain a civil society. For a civil society can be maintained only by general agreement on what a citizen should render to one’s nation and on what one’s nation should render to its citizens.

            Perhaps the most important implication of these findings is that a rapidly changing society needs not only to reconstruct its found-ations for moral authority as new relations develop between persons, but to reaffirm the cultural foundations of personal identity that em-power one to act upon one’s own internalization of moral authority.

THE MORAL AUTHORITY NEEDED FOR BUSINESS ETHICS

            Turning again to the more immediate concern for the ethics of business as it affects, and is affected by, moral authority in a civil so-ciety, a threefold effort to find harmony between the principal sources of moral authority now seems both urgently needed and seemingly practical.

            First, the values of culture and faith can be strengthened in relations between persons as they are formed in new, business-re-lated associations that are dedicated, at least in part, to moral au-thority. Almost all professional societies, trade associations and labor organizations publish standards for ethical conduct but almost none impose effective sanctions for violations. They can do better.

            Perhaps the most effective force for business ethics lies in the interests of well-established businesses themselves. For they have learned that the forceful commitment of business management to a code of ethics, and its prompt imposition of sanctions for violations of the code, can forestall corruption within their business and its outside dealings, either of which, in time, will destroy their business.

            Second, a civil society can strengthen its sanctions on economic corruption. The risk of penalties can outweigh the chance of gain from illegal or even from unethical business dealings. Loss of respect in one’s associations can be as certain and as much to be avoided as loss of freedom or property. Perhaps the most telling lesson Ame-ricans have learned about the role of government in business ethics is that the process for enacting laws and for creating the regu-latory agencies that help to enforce them must include participation by those concerned, otherwise neither the laws nor the regulations will command the respect necessary for adherence. But the experience and commitment most needed to foster compliance with the ethical standards that are established by government or professed by most businesses and business-related associations lie not in government as much as in a great variety of non-governmental organizations--charitable, cultural, educational, international and religious. Many are willing and able to respond to requests for help in applying higher standards for business ethics at home and abroad. Among these, multinational corporations or non-profit foundations associated with them may be the most willing and able to help. They know, as does the new wave of Russian entrepreneurs, that it is not just that chaos is bad for a country and for business, but that corruption in business leads to chaos.

            - Third is the need to strengthen education that fosters de-velopment of the internalized moral authority of people in business. This begins with the moral education of family life and continues in the childhood associations of school, neighborhood and religious faith; in youth groups, sports and the arts. The Harvard research confirms the importance of early foundations for moral judgment since a child’s judgment at 13 years is a good predictor of his or her later judgment as an adult and, from studies elsewhere, it seems clear that persistent traits of character are shaped even earlier. The admonitions and examples of mentors, heros and saints--in life and in literature--pro-vide force for the transmission of values, but one’s need to belong to associations with others provides an even stronger force. More has been learned of late about ways to create communities that establish a sense of belonging and of responsibility to others. As the importance of membership in these communities increases, so too does the foundation for commitment to a moral code and to a process of sanc-tions for violations of that code, especially when both the code and the process for sanctions are developed by the community itself.

            These ideas are not new. Emile Durkheim spelled them out around the turn of the century and the Russian, Makarenko, applied them in his schools in the 1940s and 50s. They have long been the makings of a good scout troop, a good summer camp, a good military unit and a good work group. They are beginning to find their way into schools through the help of newly developed measures of group soli-darity and measures both of the strength of commitment of group members to its moral code and of the adequacy of the concept of justice imbedded in the code.

            The means is solidarity; the end is adherence to a highly developed concept of rectitude. The new measures of solidarity, com-mitment, and adequacy, along with the guides for program develop-ment, seem to help avoid the common failing of achieving community without moral foundation.

            I say that all this is seemingly practical with greater assurance than I feel, for there is no way of assessing how much American com-mercial television is "dumbing down", and "culturing down" and "moral-ling down" the members of our society and of other societies through-out the world. Certainly commercial TV is the most pervasive moral messenger of our age and its insistent messages are that self-gratification is life’s purpose, that celebrity is character, and that vio-lent revenge is justice. We do not know what to do about it.

            Still, I believe that there is much that we do know about better ways to do business. More generally, we are learning more about ways to foster harmony between the moral authorities of our cultures and faiths, our countries and our inner selves. I believe that in joining together to think afresh how to render to the members of our societies what is due them we will increase our nearness of connection one to another.

Assist Secretary for Research,

The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy

DISCUSSION

            1. As moral authority dissipates, it seems true that there is a moral crisis in the United states. But it should be asked to what degree this is a problem and to what degree it is an issue of will. That is, should it be seen as a problem of knowledge of what is right in a society that has become too complex to be able to identify with surety the goods and moral purposes of life, or should it be seen as a problem of im-plementing what one knows to be right? While life is increasingly com-plex, even where we do know a course of action to be necessary, e.g., moral education, as a society we lack the will to implement it.

            2. But this is not merely a matter of the first level of freedom, namely of searching for a beneficial pattern of goods or possessions as a matter of utilitarian calculus. In order for the issues truly to engage human freedom we need to turn directly not merely to the objects chosen as on the first level of freedom, but to the reality of human free-dom itself.

            On a second, Kantian level, freedom is the power to choose as I ought. This requires a deep appreciation of the unique importance of human freedom in the world and the need to protect and promote it and its exercise as humanity’s greatest possession, indeed, as the es-sence of humanity itself.

            But beyond this is the third level of freedom in which a person or a community constitutes itself. This is the appropriate level of freedom at which to consider civil society as a human creation and the ethical issues this involves. Here a basic consideration is that ethical (or un-ethical) action not only accomplishes external objectives, as on the first level of freedom, but makes the acting person him- or herself to be a good or wicked person as one acts in accordance with--or against the dignity of one’s nature or against this. This is the question of what I make of my life. Similarly, if society is a joint creation of human beings then as one interacts with others to form various areas of association and interaction the fittingness or unfittingness of this action creates a society that is or is not worthy of its participants. As one acts according to, or against, one’s nature in conjunction with others one creates a society that is or is not ethical.

            In this light the ethical qualification is not an external denomina-tion applied from without according to one or another cal-culus, but the inner quality of interaction itself at the heart of the society which this constitutes. This takes the issue beyond questions of what externally will be allowed or prohibited and places it precisely where it belongs, namely, in the quality of the operation of human freedom as creative of the social world we inhabit, indeed, of the social life in terms of which we exist.

            At this point of juncture of ethics and metaphysics, ethics takes on its true seriousness, beyond casuistry and utility, as the issue of what we will make of ourselves as persons and societies. Here there is no escape, for any compromise is a compromise of our own reality and that of others with whom we are bound and interact. Ethical knowl-edge guides the exercise of our freedom by pointing out goals and means that promote personal and social life, and warning us away from behavior which is self-destructive of us whether as persons or as peoples. It is in these terms that we are fully engaged in the human project.

            In this there are difficulties which can be seen from the stages of moral development. At earlier stages one can be focused more upon, and protective of, one’s own interests. At higher stages one’s horizon is more extended to include a broader range of persons. This in-creasing universality could be developed in abstract terms, but this entails the danger of a perverse dynamism, namely that the more one abstracts from, or leaves out of consideration, the particular identities of those to whom one’s concern is extended the less one is able to respond to their needs or to respect the identity they have created through the exercise of their creative freedom as persons or societies. Indeed in some ideologies these cultural and ethnic identities are considered to disrupt the recognition of basic human rights. The result is that the attempt to protect and promote all humankind is carried out in term which suppress what is most central to their humanity; a process of dehumanization becomes a prerequisite for being included in such a world.