Overcoming ethical relativism

Understanding the Good as Teleological Harmony

 I will try to show that the good is real and not merely “in the eye of the beholder,” and that our task as human beings is to nourish the good. Near the end of his life, American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 -1914), founder of pragmatism, semiotics, and much of modern logic, wrote to his friend Josiah Royce and lamented that his own logic emphasized security but was lacking in uberty. By security he meant that it provided a method of avoiding error. He invented the word “uberty” from the Latin word ubertas, which he translated as “the full-breasted richness of life.” He meant that logic should be fertile and nourishing, as a mother is to a child.

Royce agreed and worked at applying the notion of nourishment to his three ethical categories: autonomy, duty, and the good. The paradox of autonomy and duty is balanced by the cardinal virtue of loyalty, which serves as a foundation of all virtue. Royce developed a notion of the good that is rich in psychological and metaphysical insight. His idea of the good cannot be understood apart from the developmental process by which we come to know the good. For the present we can jump ahead to a description of good as harmony that overcomes evil disharmony. The good not only brings together the conflicts that we experience between autonomy and duty, but constitutes the ethical purpose of our personal life-plan and our social interactions.

Since the good, as harmony constitutes our purpose, we may call it “teleological harmony’”   Human beings have the duty to work toward the greatest possible harmony, or integration, of free autonomous individuals. Following this insight, the task of any writing or teaching on ethics must go beyond helping the reader or student avoid moral error. Ethics must also and more importantly clarify the meaning of good and develop ways to promote the good. The ethical insights of Josiah Royce can take us a long way to achieving this goal.

 Like the pragmatists, William James and Charles S. Peirce, with whom Royce was closely associated, Royce maintained that ideas are purposeful and serve as tools for handling the issues that confront us. Like James and Peirce, Royce followed the pragmatic axiom that thoughts are meaningful only if they are purposeful as plans of action. The philosophical insights called on here, and in future posts, are not limited to those of Royce. Ancient and contemporary thinkers will also be cited, but the guiding principles will be those of Royce. Royce’s ethical insights provide an eminently clear and attractive idea of the good, along with an admirably integrated approach to individual flourishing and communal responsibility.

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