A Gift for Atheists (and other secularists)
all who seek a non-theistic approach for just governance
Spoiler: it’s just what they have always needed, an “ought” from “is.”
I am not an atheist. I believe there is a God that created the Universe and all that is in it — to include human beings, with our rational capacity. Why some religious people think it is morally questionable, at the least, to use the rational capacity the Lord gave us to understand how Creation works and to solve problems that arise in the course of our material existence as part of Creation is beyond me to know. The thing is, when it comes to solving the problem of justice — how we humans should govern our relations with one another — though atheists (and other secularists) claim to be rational, to date they have been in a different compartment on the same boat in which theists are sailing.
Religious people look either to holy books/holy individuals or direct access to the spiritual realm for guidance in ethics. Atheists reject holiness — in that sense, at least: they reject the existence of a spiritual realm with which any mere mortals can interact.
The problem for atheists (/secularists) — one that, in my experience, they all refuse to acknowledge — is that, though they claim to be ‘rational’, they depend for ethics on an equally immaterial realm to which they appeal. Immanuel Kant, in his strictly secular philosophical work, called it the noumenal realm. He referred to the content of that realm that (he insisted) can be accessed by rational beings as “intuitions.”
[For Kant, in the ‘real world’, the phenomenal realm— material existence — we only have access to the immaterial impressions that phenomena generate, not “the things in themselves”; the intuitions to which he refers are the equivalent impressions we get from noumena — meaning we cannot ‘know’ either phenomena or noumena directly, but can only experience either through the impressions they transmit to our consciousness.]
G.W.F. Hegel’s philosophy followed from his conclusion that Kant had removed materiality too far from consciousness — then his student Karl Marx made immateriality, including, as he saw it, ‘justice’, irrelevant to the human condition. The effort being related here makes justice a material thing.
Whether we call all noumena “intuitions” or distinguish between those and secular beliefs, flights of fancy, creative impulses, insights, (secular) epiphanies, etc. is beside the point. The point is that such sources of information are every bit as immaterial as any information gleaned by any person from the spiritual realm of religion is. To claim that any such secular information is somehow inherently more valid than is any religious information is to privilege arbitrarily the former, with no rational basis for doing so. Yet, that is precisely what atheists (and other secularists) have always done.
Secular beliefs that have been used to determine what justice must be have included an assertion of moral equality among human beings and a belief in the existence of a priori Rights, such as “Natural Rights” (both beliefs shared by some religious folk). The label given such Rights is irrelevant. What matters is that they are said to exist prior to experience, not to follow from a perceived need for governance — that they were discovered by human beings, not conceived or invented by people. Again, to base justice on such beliefs is no different from basing it on any religious beliefs.
What atheists (/secularists) need — have always needed — is what David Hume called an “ought” from “is.” They need an ethic that is entirely located within the realm of material reality: both its determiner, i.e., the source of the ethic, and its referents, i.e., the particular forms of conduct to which it applies. [It was Hume’s critique of philosophy that inspired Kant’s efforts to derive a universal, immaterially-sourced-yet-uniquely-rationally-valid ethic of justice — i.e., his famous “categorical imperative.”]
I have developed such an ethic. Since both its determiner and its referents are entirely located within the ‘real world’, I call it (together with its implications for humanity) ‘real justice’. It is summarized here in the seven paragraphs that follow.
In real justice the ethic of justice follows from the observation that human beings have no choice but to effect choices (i.e., choose among perceived alternatives and take action to bring that choice to fruition). Those choices can range from the trivial to the life-altering. [I learned about that from Warren J. Samuels, in “Welfare Economics, Property, and Power” in Perspectives of Property, Gene Wunderlich and W.L. Gibson, eds.: he all but defined “social power” as the ability to effect choices.]
That observation is the determiner of justice in real justice. It identifies choosing as being integral to being human. It makes the referents of real justice — the domain of justice — the area of life to which real justice applies — actions that are undertaken in effecting any choice that involve any other human being(s) in any way. Any judgments of any human activity outside that domain are matters of personal morality only.
So whenever we are effecting any choice we must respect the capacity of all other people to choose for themselves, beginning with choosing whether/how/to what extent to be involved whenever any choice is being effected. That applies whether the choice being effected is for ourselves or on behalf of any other person, or business, or government, or any other entity, or society as a whole. Respecting others in that way is the ethic of justice (technically, the definitive, sufficient, prescriptive ‘condition of justice’). To act in accordance with that ethic is to recognize others as fellow human beings; to fail to respect the capacity of other people to choose for themselves is to deny, to some extent at least, their status as fellow human beings. (Inevitable cases in which one person can legitimately override another person’s capacity to choose due to the particular circumstances of their relationship, such as parent/child, boss/subordinate, teacher/student, caregiver/patient, etc., are easily taken into account.)
Since both the determiner and the referents of real justice are contained within material existence, going outside material existence, to any immaterial realm, to justify violating the ethic of real justice is legitimately de-legitimated. Violating this ethic of justice cannot be justified without claiming some knowledge that is outside of material existence, i.e., a matter of personal belief. All such knowledge is always perfectly valid for any people who believe it, but never necessarily valid for anyone else. To act contrary to the ethic of real justice on the basis of such knowledge is to privilege personal — radically subjective — knowledge over the knowledge, known by every human being to be known to every human being (and obviously true of any person(s) who would deny its validity), that choosing for ourselves is integral to being human. It is to act arbitrarily.
A requirement to respect the capacity to choose of any people who might be involved in any way when anyone is effecting any choice might appear to be a paralyzingly onerous ethical burden, but it only requires, at a minimum (the minimum, necessary, proscriptive ‘condition of justice’), refraining from co-opting or (otherwise) preempting the capacity of any other person(s) to choose when effecting any choice. That boils down to a handful of absolute prohibitions — so there is no ‘moral relativism’ here: no killing, harming, coercing, stealing, or manipulating (which includes lying, cheating, etc.) in our relations with other people in effecting any choice. Anyone refraining from such actions in effecting any choice is being just enough. (“Harming” is the only injustice that we can commit without knowing it or intending it; ascertaining and judging harm is the — legitimate — purpose of a society’s system of criminal and civil justice.)
I have worked through the implications of real justice for society as a whole. A society governed by it would have the maximum liberty that coexisting human beings can share simultaneously. It would have a democratic political process (which process is after all, if you think about it, the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole). I have learned that its economy, i.e., the process of producing/acquiring goods/services (which is nothing but people effecting choices), would have to have a ‘democratically distributed income’ (which could be a guaranteed — sufficient — minimum income or extended to be paid to every person employed in any business or office of government — with or without allowing for differing, unlimited, in-kind benefits — which in turn could eliminate exploitation while retaining the existing economic system, i.e., without doing away with private property — or for that matter imposing any limit on income/wealth — while still relying on markets to set prices, which in turn would determine the allocation of capital expenditures).
So respecting one another’s capacity to choose is the ethic of justice that is wholly contained within material existence, making it utterly atheistic but without involving any secular beliefs (intuitions, etc.). Beyond that, it is universally known and can be universally applied. It cannot be said to be arbitrary in any way. Moreover, at no place can any contradiction arise with respecting others’ capacity to choose as the ethic of justice: unlike making liberty the predicate of justice, there is no limit that must be placed on respecting others; there is no limit to how justly a person can choose to act. All of that makes respecting one another’s capacity to choose a purely just, absolutely atheistic (/secular) ethic of justice.
Atheists (and other secularists) of the world, you’re welcome.
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for the curious, some options for further reading (all here in Medium, but nothing of mine is behind the paywall):
“From the Golden Rule to Mutual Respect as the Ethic of Justice” (but be sure to follow it with “Correcting an Inaccuracy,” but only a “3 min read”)
since a requirement to respect others does follow from a belief in equality: “Equality Is All We Need” (for a fully just Liberal society, which must include maximizing liberty)
“From ‘Rights’ to ‘Conditions of Justice’”
“Beyond Liberalism” (how mutual respect translates to the political process and the economy — also related, maybe better, in “Equality Is All We Need”)
“Democracy: So Much More Than ‘Majority Rule’” (an explication of the democratic political process; and I also have a proposal for a single national political party to make any democracy function better)
“One Economic Proposal, Four Possible Choices for the Nation” [any nation] (several links to articles, with links in them, for more about the proposal)
for (primarily) economists: “Paradigm Shift” (a generic, technical rendering of the economic proposal, with a strictly economic raison d’etre)