Thank You, ‘Judeo-Christian Tradition’
rationality must take it from here
It is often said that the Judeo-Christian tradition provided the framework for governing the governance of Liberal society. Specifically, it accounts for equality and liberty as the ‘twin pillars of justice’ for any society. I agree.
In philosophical terms, “for any society” is the most significant for justice. That prepositional phrase connotes universality. Universality is necessary to avoid arbitrariness.
John Locke, the original Liberal, equated arbitrariness with injustice, in point of fact famously defining injustice as any human(s) being “subject to the arbitrary will” of any other human(s) [leaving his parochial genderism out of it]. As a framework for governing the governance of a society, universality negates the possibility of arbitrariness.
Unfortunately, in turning to equality and liberty Liberalism reintroduces arbitrariness. It does that because in it those terms depend on beliefs.
Any belief is an assertion of a truth that is not amenable to being evaluated, much less proven or disproven, in the context of material existence. No evidence can be garnered either to support its validity or to invalidate it (without presupposing that truth to explain some phenomenon as proof of the truth in question — as in a physical ‘miracle’ attributed to a religious figure).
Make no mistake: every belief is absolutely true for whoever holds that belief. On the other hand, it is equally true that no belief has any significance whatsoever for anyone who does not happen to hold it.
It is the nature of any belief that it could be universal. Being an abstraction, any belief can be held simultaneously by any number of people.
I seems fair to say that there is no belief that has ever been held by all human beings. Moreover, beliefs are not more ‘true’ or less ‘true’ by virtue of how many people share one or how fervently any belief is held by any number of its adherents.
From the point of view of any human being, then, the beliefs of any and all other human beings are utterly arbitrary. So to base the framework for governing the governance of society on any belief(s) is to make it arbitrary — and to be arbitrary is to be unjust. If that framework is deemed to be what justice is, then, to paraphrase Jesus, when the justice in a society is injustice, how great is the injustice!
Equality, as a value, can only be a belief. Either a person believes that all human beings have, merely by virtue of being human, a moral equality that must be respected by all other humans, or one does not. It cannot be ‘proven’ one way or the other, to be or not to be the case.
In Liberalism, liberty also involves a belief, the belief in an a priori Right to liberty. An a priori Right is one that, it is claimed, was discovered to exist, not one that is acknowledged to have been an invention of human beings — like, say, the right to vote.
That both liberty and equality were seen by Locke and other early Liberals as coming from the Bible reinforces their status as beliefs. It is true, though, that Liberalism attained (for some percentage of its adherents) a secular status. For them neither equality nor liberty comes from the Bible or any other sacral source. Yet, to assert human moral equality or liberty as a Right is to assert a belief, regardless of the source of that belief, be it sacral or secular.
Another problem in Liberalism is that neither equality nor liberty is an ethic, a rule to govern human conduct. Justice requires a rule, not because everyone would abide by it, but because we can always know when a person is abiding by it or not. So justice requires a rule of conduct that is universally valid for all human beings.
Liberty is in fact the opposite of a rule to govern conduct — it is the absence of such a rule. Within Liberalism equality is invoked to limit liberty: the permissible exercise of anyone’s liberty must be commensurate with an equal liberty for all.
Yet, equality is not a rule of any kind. It is, for those who hold that belief, a condition of human existence.
Still, as indicated by its proscription regarding liberty, equality does imply an ethic, a rule to govern conduct. That ethic is mutual respect.
We’re talking here of respect of a basic kind — taking one another into account. To be sure, there is respect that must be earned. The mutual respect implied by equality, though, is that due any human being merely by virtue of being a fellow human. Even when a fellow human acts unjustly, that person must be respected as a human being in determining guilt and meting our punishment. That is the ‘due process’ in a Liberal society’s criminal (and civil) justice system.
Moreover, mutual respect is all that is really needed to maximize liberty in any society. If everyone were respecting all others in that basic way, that would ensure the maximum liberty that co-existing human beings can share simultaneously. So, thanks to the Judeo-Christian tradition, mutual respect stands as an ethic of justice for Liberalism.
We still, however, have a justice problem. Equality implies an ethic that itself maximizes liberty, but equality is still a belief — whether sacral or secular.
Enter rationality. It is the only possible means we humans have of arriving at a really universal ethic to govern conduct — a real ethic of justice.
To be strictly rational such an ethic can involve no beliefs. It must follow, instead, from universally verified observation within material existence.
I have discovered such an ethic. It is, it so happens, none other than mutual respect. For Liberals, a strictly rational approach to an ethic of justice, involving no beliefs, reinforces the ethic their ideology already provides — whether they have recognized it or not
To start exploring how rationality makes mutual respect a truly universal ethic of justice — and its astonishing implications for society (especially the economy) — start here: “Real Justice: Goodness without Limit” (in Medium).
To go directly to the implications for the economy, there is “For Crying Out Loud, Accept That A Solution Actually Exists” (also here in Medium).
To learn more about mutual respect as a product of equality, there is “Equality Is All We Need” (also here in Medium).
For more about mutual respect and Locke’s thought, there is “Re-thinking Individualism” (also here in Medium).
The essential conservatism of all this is emphasized in “Towards a Conservatively Progressive Revolution in America” (also here in Medium).