We’re complex moral beings in a world of complexity.  There’s no one rule to rule them all; there’s no one highest good which is best for everyone all the time.  Different cultures work out the moral code in different ways, while different individuals hear different calls, and also different calls at different times in life.  Therefore, diversity in moral standards is an unqualified good. 

 

But remember that a highest good is a jealous god, because for every individual, only one good can be in first place at any given time.  Hence conflict, therefore argument.  The abortion debate is a conflict of goods.  Caitlan Flanagan wrote an excellent article in the Atlantic called The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate.  Per Ms. Flanagan, back in the day when abortion was illegal, women resorted to nasty and deadly homemade abortions.  There are lots of good reasons for a woman not to want a baby at a particular time in life.  And personal autonomy is a fundamental moral good.  All true…but there’s a conflicting moral good: protecting a baby.  We tell ourselves that an early trimester fetus isn’t really a person, but “what grows within a pregnant woman’s body is a human being, living and unfolding according to a timetable that has existed as long as we have.”  Abortion is a conflict of fundamental moral goods, and while each side of the debate wants to destroy the other, they’re both right.  Ms. Flanagan says, “The truth is that the best argument on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowledge that fact, you aren’t speaking or even thinking honestly about the issue.”

 

Ethics is like that: things get real complex real fast.  Dr. Charles Taylor in Sources of the Self, says that “My conceited confidence that there is only one moral issue at stake here gives way to an appreciation of the legitimacy of other demands as I mature.” 

 

When we argue, the real issue isn’t whether a particular moral position is wrong or right, rather, the issue is whether it’s right or wrong within a particular context.  C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, “Think of a piano.  It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the right notes and the wrong ones.  Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another.”  Right and wrong exist in context, in complexity.  And once we understand this, we see that diversity ≠ relativity.  Morality exists independent of the individual, which means we can talk about it, I can listen to you, and we can agree on common-sense basic principles.  Then we can agree, or agree to disagree, about the relative rankings of the goods and how to best express them in any given situation. 

 

Complexity is new to science, but it’s old news in ethics.  Aristotle frequently said that ethics isn’t about making rules but about understanding a situation with all its nuances.  Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean puts moral goods on a spectrum between too much and too little, based on context.  Be neither timid nor rash, neither stingy nor wasteful.  Even anger has a place on the spectrum: try to be patient, but some circumstances will require anger.  Or think of Aristotle’s principle of justice: equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally, because it’s unfair to prefer one equal over another, or to treat unequals exactly the same.  Treat me as me, you as you.

 

So, I look at context and relationships and I decide what really matters and why.  I remember as a youth reading Aristotle and thinking, how the hell am I supposed to do this?  I demand a simple rule!  Aristotle won’t give it; he said, “it is a mark of an educated person to look in each area for only that degree of accuracy that the nature of the subject permits.” 

 

OK, Mr. Aristotle, in all this complexity, how do I do right?  Aristotle’s answer is, do what a virtuous person would do in your situation.  When in doubt, think of the best person you know and imitate him.  If I want to learn how to live, I should imitate the person who lives best, because the proof is in the pudding.  Robert Louis Wilken said in his essay, The Lives of The Saints: “Of the several paths that lead to virtue, the broadest and the most promising is the way of imitation.”  And thinking of the life par excellence, Aquinas said that “every one of Christ’s actions is instruction for us.”  Be that person; do what he would do.  Social reality is too complex for us otherwise. 

 

Be that person.  I remember when my mom died, she left an empty place in the care of my children, and I filled that empty place by trying to be like her.  In my heart, I was her, and I loved my children as she had loved me.  I heard something similar from Justice Clarence Thomas in his autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son.  Justice Thomas explained the title of the book: “I was nine years old when I met my father….ultimately, my grandfather was my father.” (From the 2018 Supreme Court Fellows Program Annual Lecture).  In the process of creating himself, Justice Thomas tried out the various masks that blacks wear in America, like angry radical, but ultimately he learned to be himself, his grandfather’s son.  The grandfather was a poor, humble, religious, hard-working man, who came up hard and whose favorite saying was, “play the hand you’re dealt.”  Justice Thomas said his grandfather was his hero, and Justice Thomas became himself by becoming his grandfather.  Grandfather once said to young Clarence, “I will never tell you to do as I say, I will always tell you to do as I do; watch me.”