A recent curiosity of mine concerns the conditions of the possibility of moral assertions. What does it take to be able to say ‘X is good’ or ‘X is bad’. It seems clear that a statement of the form must have universal import if it is to remain meaningful, nevertheless we seem to be in agreement that these do not carry a universal force. To say that ‘X is good’ at best appears only to carry the force of ‘X is good – for Y’ or even more strictly, ‘X is good – for Y, at t’. That is, that every statement concerning a good is concerned only with a certain act at a certain time. It gets worse since even ‘X is good – for Y, at t’ does not fully define what is asserted, what it means amounts ultimately to the supremely weak, ‘X is good – for Y, at t, in Z’, where Z amounts to the speakers moral framework or intuitions.
This is deeply unsatisfactory, and equally unsettling. If our moral assertions do not carry the universal force of ‘X is good’, then they amount to little if not nothing. The dissatisfaction stems from a desire to be able to make moral assertions. We want need to be able to say that oppression is bad and that justice is good. For our current purposes, let us say that it is sufficient to say ‘X is good – for Y, at t’ since the additional operator is what limits it in its scope, rendering it useless.
The question is one of the capacity to make universal moral assertions. We often appeal to religion, to humanity, or to culture, replacing Z. The problem with this is precisely that the operator remains. It is my intuition that so long as the possibility of such a characterization remains open, there remains the possibility of its being replaced. We cannot meaningfully speak of morality so long as we do not move beyond our appeals to a Z. Nietzsche has a neat answer to this, Z he tells us is God. That god is dead amounts simply to saying that no longer are we capable of saying ‘X is good at Z’.
To say that this is the end of morality though is insufficient. It is difficult, if not impossible to deny Nietzsche the death of God. This though does not suffice to say that the remainder of our assertion, ‘X is good – for Y, at t’ is invalidated, this remains. We have not stopped saying ‘X is good’. Even when without Z, it should carry nothing – it should have no grounds. It does though mean something – when I say that ‘Saving a life is good’, this is not only agreed on, it is meaningful. What though is it that makes it so?
This is our primary question, how after the death of God do we remain capable of saying ‘X is good’. It is here that I find the Nietzschean response unsatisfactory, for he argues that we simply cannot, that we must move beyond the moral or as he puts it, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, experience tells me that this is unnecessary, we do not need to do so, what we do need is to understand that God (Z), as Nietzsche puts it did not only die, but also was born. The assertion ‘X is good’ remains valid absent Z, the qualification has always been a false intuition – morality never has been about reference to a particular structure.
What then is it that constitutes our statement ‘X is good’? The answer must necessarily lie in unpacking what it is we mean by good, and this must be absent any reference to an external source (Z). Plato describes to us the mechanics of this, in the allegory of the cave he tells us of the Good which is ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας, that it is beyond being. Every statement that invokes morality is thus grounded in what is beyond ousia (being).
Our task therefore, if we are to take Plato seriously is to not only inquire into what this amounts to, but to posit a framework under which such an inquiry is in the first place made possible. It is clear that Plato’s Good is a deeply moral notion, what is unclear is what it is – precisely because it ‘is’ not. The intuition I hold at this moment is that our flaw is precisely that we attempt to find an ontological or otherwise metaphysical explanation, wherein the Good necessarily escapes all such attempts at definition. The entire enterprise has a flawed starting point. We have never seriously inquired into the Good, and it is this Good which is the most fundamental thing (insofar as one may call it a thing). Our inquiry must be negative – there is nothing to point at, only its effects. It stands as testament to this fact that though we can agree universally on moral facts (killing an innocent is bad), we cannot come close to doing so on moral frameworks. The latter attempt to reduce the former to its effects. One does not understand light by reference to shadows.