by Carissa Mulder
As part of Ethika Politika‘s 2012 initiative on education and morality, I’ve been asked to write a few posts discussing whether or not government is able to speak as a moral authority. If it can, should society desire government to speak as a moral authority? And if society does not wish government to speak as a moral authority, what institutions or bodies should serve as moral authorities?
When the government speaks as a moral authority, it does so in at least two ways. First, some actions are always and utterly forbidden, for instance, willful murder and forcible rape. In speaking against such acts, the government confirms that they are always and everywhere wrong. Government’s claim to the universal evil of these actions can be seen in a myriad of ways, from states prosecuting murders to the Secretary of State condemning the latest instance of genocide.
Any good Thomist knows the maxim: “Never deny, seldom affirm, always make distinctions.” There’s no question that Gilson was one of the finest Thomists of the 20th century; thus, his propensity to clarify the terms of his critique of the decline of morality is not surprising.
Yesterday, America marked the 39th year of legal abortion as a protected right under the US Constitution.
Since the 1970s there has been a thriving trade in “business ethics” courses, so that by now they are required in nearly every business program and there are numerous textbooks, societies, journals, and centers of business ethics. Despite all these efforts, a glance at the business headlines reveals that nothing much seems to have changed since the days of the robber barons, and the proliferation of business ethics courses hasn’t done much to change the actual practice of business.
