John Grey review of new book The Quest for a Moral Compass: a Global History of Ethics by Kenan Malik:
The Quest for a Moral Compass is a rationalist history of ethics in which all of the repugnant and troubling elements of rationalism have been airbrushed, Soviet-style, from the record. To be sure, the absence from the book of the sleazy side of rationalism may come in part from mere ignorance. In any event, it’s clear that Malik prefers not to know. From one angle this may be the normal dishonesty of an evangelising ideologue: Malik has a world-view to promote, and he’s not going to let awkward facts get in his way. From another perspective, The Quest for a Moral Compass is a testament to the perplexities of secular faith. Like Lecky, Malik writes in order to prop up a belief in moral progress. The difference is that while the Victorian sage appears to have had few doubts regarding the creed he was promoting, Malik often seems as anxious to persuade himself as to persuade his readers.
If you strip away religion and metaphysics and think of the human species in strictly naturalistic terms, you will see that “humanity” – the universal subject, together with Marx, that Malik inherits from monotheism – is a figment of the imagination. “Science cannot determine values,” Malik writes, “because one cannot determine what is right and wrong without already having constructed a moral framework within which to evaluate the data.” True enough; but if you cannot call on any conception of humanity from an area of knowledge outside science, what reason could there be for thinking that one and only one system of values is peculiarly human? Or for thinking of history as a process in which these values are gradually unfolding?
The Quest for a Moral Compass is a rationalist history of ethics in which all of the repugnant and troubling elements of rationalism have been airbrushed, Soviet-style, from the record. To be sure, the absence from the book of the sleazy side of rationalism may come in part from mere ignorance. In any event, it’s clear that Malik prefers not to know. From one angle this may be the normal dishonesty of an evangelising ideologue: Malik has a world-view to promote, and he’s not going to let awkward facts get in his way. From another perspective, The Quest for a Moral Compass is a testament to the perplexities of secular faith. Like Lecky, Malik writes in order to prop up a belief in moral progress. The difference is that while the Victorian sage appears to have had few doubts regarding the creed he was promoting, Malik often seems as anxious to persuade himself as to persuade his readers.
If you strip away religion and metaphysics and think of the human species in strictly naturalistic terms, you will see that “humanity” – the universal subject, together with Marx, that Malik inherits from monotheism – is a figment of the imagination. “Science cannot determine values,” Malik writes, “because one cannot determine what is right and wrong without already having constructed a moral framework within which to evaluate the data.” True enough; but if you cannot call on any conception of humanity from an area of knowledge outside science, what reason could there be for thinking that one and only one system of values is peculiarly human? Or for thinking of history as a process in which these values are gradually unfolding?
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