The dangers of misused moral authority are myriad and are often a central focus of contemporary thought (although perhaps more so in the mid-20th century). However, at times, a fear of the misuse of authority seems to become skepticism about moral authority itself, and we can add here moral evangelism as well. Sometimes both are grouped under the banner of “moral imperialism.” To be fair, this skepticism isn’t generally of all moral authority or evangelism, but certainly it can manifest as skepticism of authority across vast expanses of human life.
There are indeed many good reasons to be skeptical of “moral imperialism.” Yet, since these tend to be well-worn paths, I wanted to focus on what I take to be pathological skepticism, and another issue, voluntarism.
Skepticism:
For a broad rejection of moral “imperialism” as such to make sense, it would seem to need to be the case that:
A. The problem is not that the “imperialists” are merely impeded by vice (improperly motivated), else the solution would be formation in virtue); and
B. Likewise, the problem cannot be that our imperialists are merely ignorant of the good, else the solution would be knowledge.
Rather, a rejection of authority and evangelism (even if delimited to some particular sphere) seems to require that either:
A. There simply is no good to know (at least within the spheres in question);
B. That men are incapable of knowing the good decisively, or decisively enough to warrant action within the spheres in question. I would say that the more modest sounding “reasonable people acting in good faith will disagree,” actually requires this more forceful prior claim. If “reasonable people” cannot, in principle, come to understanding, then they cannot know the good decisively (whereas if it is merely an observation about what is true today, this is arguably just a symptom of the pathology in question); and
C. Or that what is best for each is irreducibly plural, with no unifying principle (perhaps because each person creates their own good).
This set of concerns is, interestingly, itself more of a Western European set of assumptions. More importantly however, although theses that are “skeptical” about our own knowledge or the object of moral knowledge, they are all are gnostic claims about the nature moral knowledge itself (i.e., substantive positions masquerading as neutral methodology, and also first-order claims dressed up as meta-positions).
Now, depending on which spheres this sort of skepticism is applied to, it might be more or less problematic. When broadly applied, such a position will tend to be self-undermining to the extent that it condemns moral imperialism as bad, since this would seem to require the very sort of authority and moral knowledge it denies, and participation in the sort of evangelical activity it denies.
Voluntarism:
There is another way a similar problem manifests. This is the claim that moral authority is bad, per se, whenever it trespasses on issues of the good outside a narrow range (generally a reduced set of “public goods”) in virtue of the fact that authority, if exercised, necessarily constrains freedom. The problem is that such claims themselves presuppose (and often enforce) a particular view of freedom (i.e., as primarily choice, choice as divorced from the good–this again being primarily a Western view). For authority, be it teaching authority, or strong formative authority (authority used to help people conform to the good) to be bad per se, it must be the case that:
A. Freedom (defined as choice) is actually the true or highest good, a good higher than “the good” mentioned in other moral contexts; and,
B. That freedom is thus not defined in terms of the good (e.g., as the power to actualize and communicate the good). This will be either because sheer choice is itself the highest good, or because there is no “good” and thus sheer choice must create what we call “good.” I call this choice “sheer” because, in this context, it cannot be determined by reasons about what is better or worse, since unrestrained choice is held above (or is said to determine) what is “better or worse.”
The Minor Problems:
The problem I see here is that either problem, if held expansively enough to be politically relevant, becomes self-refuting. First, because the political efforts to support policies that flow from either position must do the very thing they decry, blocking off some understandings from becoming dominant (and thus imperialist, i.e., shaping policy, civic life, and formation). Second, in the voluntarist case we face the problem that, if freedom is ordered to nothing but itself, it’s unclear why anyone should care about imperialism so long as one maintains one’s own power. Indeed, the voluntarist view of freedom puts the freedom of any in competition with all others (which is precisely why voluntarist theology tends to deny creaturely freedom, because any freedom comes at the expense of divine sovereignty). This creates a dialectic where the highest good—freedom—is one that diminishes when shared, quite the opposite of the classical framing where the Good is diffusive (a black hole versus a super nova if you will).
Of course, there are obviously genuine concerns over the use of moral imperialism for ends determined by vice or dictated by ignorance of what is actually beneficial. That can justify restraint, and policy structures that motivate restraint, etc. But at the same time, this would only seem to make virtue and moral knowledge more important (indeed, even the skeptical and voluntarist positions rely on gnostic claims about moral knowledge, and presumably the virtues needed to assert them).
The Bigger Problem:
The bigger problem is that I don’t think voluntarism or skepticism actually leave themselves the resources to justify any sort of concrete ethics or politics at all. Rather, they have to rely on stolen capital from prior generations (even as they erode it over time as they make their own claims the norm), or to smuggle in more concrete moral assumptions implicitly. The latter tends to become the site of power struggles, power struggles that can only be resolved through more power, since any ground of discourse has been denied in either position. Indeed, skepticism tends to collapse into voluntarism, since the person who denies any guiding knowledge still has to act, and so appetite remains as their only guide.
Conclusion:
These are of course, problems of extremes. That’s precisely why they are pathologies. Yet extremes tend to become the norm in a punctured equilibrium. I’d say though that a problem of our era is that it tends to conflate prudent caution and such pathologies, collapsing them.
Actually, it seems that fears over moral authority and evangelism (or “imperialism”) are less acute then they were a half century ago. Yet I don’t think this is because we have moved further towards health, but rather that the pathologies have done their work, so that now moral claims are increasingly asserted as power claims. This is a common theme I see in Christian nationalist rhetoric. Rarely do I see, “we ought to live and be ruled this way because it is truly wise and just,” but rather, “because we are traditionally this people with these norms, we ought to hold sway.” Those sorts of claims, framed in the language of “identity politics” (for lack of a better term) seem more common than traditional groundings (perhaps because they require less work in the current context). Plus, such claims are easier to defend. With the former, you need to explain why a given structure of rule, or formation, is truly wise and just, whereas in the latter one can simply appeal to the communal will (itself a voluntarist move). I think you can see this at work all throughout the “gender wars” as well.
