Social Norms and Social Discourse A Critique of Moral Conservatism

Abstract

The emphasis of this work ls on the common theme found in the three recent works of Stuart Hampshire (Morality and Conflict), Alasdair Macintyre (After Virtue) and Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice). I call this theme "moral conservatism". While I believe that the "moral conservatives" are correct in their attempt to establish morality within society rather than in abstraction, their method of generating moral rules through social discourse seems to conflict with their own belief in certain vague notions of justice and equality. on close examination the method of the moral conservatives appears to be hermeneutic in that it involves the re-establishment of appeals to tradition and authority within the context of discourse. Given this hermeneutic element I have found that Habermas 's critique of hermeneutics can also be applied to their methodology. The result is a solution to the initial conflict. Habermas's analysis of universal pragmatics and the ideal speech situation provide a means of introducing constraints on the outcome of social discourse about norms. These constraints, because they are inherent in all social discourse, are universal. Nevertheless, they are not abstract in that they do not derive from an appeal to pure reason; rather, they are inherent in social discourse itself. This modification of the moral conservatives' approach indicates the possibility of combining the concreteness of historical relativism with a universal element usually found in a historical and indeed antihistorical ethical theories.