Abstract
The relationship between sociology and morality is a complex one. There is a vibrant tradition of moral sociology which is not moralistic in a naïve sense. It does not just want to reproduce existing conventions of society blindly as it strives to interrogate morality from the point of justice. This chapter discusses the contours of a critical moral sociology through a dialogue with Jürgen Habermas and Sri Aurobindo, and then strives to explore its limitations. It pleads for a movement from discourse ethics to spiritual transformations. It also explores new pathways of post-conventional moral development.
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Notes
- 1.
As Hosle argues, it is “clear that the increasing gap between the First and the Third world raises some of the most difficult moral questions of the modern world” (Hosle 1992: 229).
- 2.
Habermas (1987a: 77) describes for us what he means by linguistification of sacred:
The disenchantment and disempowering of the domain of the sacred takes place by way of a linguistification of the ritually secured, basic normative agreement; going along with this is a release of the rationality potential in communicative action. The aura of rapture and the tenor that emanates from the sacred, the spellbinding power of the holy, is sublimated into the binding/bonding force of criticizable validity claims and at the same time turned into everyday occurrence.
Habermas (1987a: 91), further, tells us about the implications of such an evolutionary shift:
Norm-guided interaction changes in structure to the degree that functions of cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization pass from the domain of the sacred over to that of everyday communicative practice. In the process, the religious community that made social cooperation possible is transformed into a communicative community striving under the pressure to cooperate.
- 3.
It has to be acknowledged here that there is differing interpretation of the influence of Kant in Habermas. For some, Habermas’s categories are less aprioristic than Kant.
- 4.
In this context we might take note of what William Baldamus, an insightful commentator on Habermas, writes. According to Baldamus, “[…] there can be no doubt that Habermas’ graphical diagrams are created intuitively. Ironically, in his own terminology this means they have no rational foundation, although in logical terms their credibility may be unquestionable” (Baldamus 1992: 102).
- 5.
According to David Bidney, “An individual is said to be morally free insofar as he acts in conformity with the requirements of his ‘true good’ and his ‘true self.’ Moral freedom and cultural freedom don’t coincide” (Bidney 1967: 453).
- 6.
In this context, Thomas McCarthy tells us:
If taking modern pluralism seriously means giving up the idea that philosophy can single out a privileged way of life…, it does not, in Habermas’s view, preclude a general theory of a much narrower sort, namely a theory of justice. (quoted in Habermas 1990a: vii)
- 7.
As Habermas (1990a: 109) writes:
Within the horizon of the life world, practical judgments derive both their concreteness and their power to motivate action from their inner connection to unquestioningly accepted ideas of the good life, in short, from their connection to ethical life and its institutions. Under these conditions, problematization can never be so profound as to risk all the assets of the existing ethical life, but the abstractive achievements required by the moral point of view do precisely that.
- 8.
In so far as the need for describing richly the work of intersubjectivity is concerned, the following lines of Richard Rorty are insightful: “Human solidarity is to be achieved not only by inquiry but by imagination, the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers … the process of coming to see other human beings as ‘one of us’ rather than as ‘them’ is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like and redescription of what we ourselves are like” (Rorty 1989: xvi).
- 9.
In stressing such an approach Habermas carries forward the agenda of Kant: “Thus when practical reason cultivates itself, their insensibly arises in it a dialectic which forces it to seek aid in philosophy, just as happens to it in its theoretic use; and in this case, therefore as well as in the other, it will find rest nowhere than in a thorough critical examination of our reason” (Kant 1987: 26).
- 10.
For Taylor, “To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what is not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary” (Taylor 1989: 28).
- 11.
In this regard, what Charles Taylor writes is significant: “the modern idea of freedom is the strongest motive for the massive shift from substantive to procedural justification in the modern world… And if we leap from the earliest to the most recent such theory, Habermas’s conception of discourse ethics is founded in part on the same consideration. The idea that norm is justified only to the extent that all could uncoercedly accept it is a new and interesting variant of procedural idea” (Taylor 1989: 86).
- 12.
Here we can take note of the insightful arguments of philosopher Roop Rekha Verma. Verma writes: “The dialectic by itself does not explain the possibility of cultural change or critique of culture. What is important to add in this dialectic is that the internalization can be reflective or unreflective” (Verma 1991: 534).
- 13.
Habermas (1990a: 211) himself writes: “compassion for tortured animals and the pain caused by the destruction of the biotopes are surely manifestations of moral intuitions that cannot be fully satisfied by the collective narcissism of what in the final analysis is an anthropocentric way of looking at things.” But how do we open ourselves for a dialogue with animals and the natural world while Habermas’s “communicative action theory clearly privileges interhuman speech or discourse, while adopting an ‘objectifying’ attitude to nature”? (Dallmayr 1996: 220).
- 14.
In her view,
a just procedure is the condition of the good life—of all possible good lives—but is not sufficient for the good life… The good life consists of three elements: first, righteousness; secondly the development of endowments into talents, and thirdly emotional depth in personal attachments. Among these three elements, righteousness is the overarching one. All three elements of the good life are beyond justice. (Heller 1987: 273)
- 15.
Unger’s following argument helps us understand this:
Whereas the first of these two sacreds is illusive and disputable and requires, to be recognized, the power of vision which is the ability to see the invisible, the second seems near and palpable. Whenever they can, men and women try to identify the first of these two sacreds with the second. They want to see the social world graced with the authority of an ultimate reality. But the progress of insight and the disclosures of conflict prevent this bestowal of authority. If there is a common theme in the history of human thought and politics, it consists precisely in failure to sustain claims of unconditional authority on behalf of particular ways of talking, thinking, living and organizing society. As the two sacreds lose their contact with each other, the distant one fades away into an ineffable, longed for reality without any clear message for understanding and conduct. The nearby becomes profane and arbitrary. (Unger 1987: 576)
- 16.
Prophetic criticism comes closest to the kind of critical engagement that Unger has in mind here. Not only in the traditional past but also in varieties of contemporary societies, criticisms of modern institutions of human indignity such as racism and slavery have been the work of the prophets—whether Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.—who, it must not be forgotten, have used the name of God to build their movement against forces of oppression. Even in modern critical social movements we are “back to the beginning,” to use the words of Michael Walzer (1988), where social critic is a prophet.
- 17.
Sri Aurobindo was one of the pioneers in the freedom struggle of India, and left it quite early in his life for the pursuit of his goal of the spiritualization of humanity. Based in his ashram at Pondicherry, India, Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual companion The Mother have contributed a lot to our understanding of the logic of spiritual transformation as an integral process involving both the individual and society.
- 18.
In his discussion of “the curve of rational age” in Human Cycles, Aurobindo argues that “the present age of mankind” is characterized “from the point of view of a graded psychological evolution by an attempt to discover and work out the right principle and secure foundations of rational systems of society” (Sri Aurobindo 1962: 181).
- 19.
In the words of Sri Aurobindo (1962: 183):
Reason can accept no tradition merely for the sake of its antiquity or its greatness; it has to ask, first whether it contains the best truth available to man for the government of his life. Reason can accept no convention merely because men are agreed upon it; it has to ask whether they are right in their agreement, whether it is an inert or false acquiescence. Reason cannot accept any institution merely because it serves some purpose of life; it has to ask whether there are not greater and better purposes which can be best served by new institutions. There arises the necessity of a universal questioning and from that necessity arises the idea that society can only be perfected by the universal application of rational intelligence to the whole of life xxx.
- 20.
In his words: “The reason which is to be universally applied, cannot be the reason of a ruling class: for in the present imperfection of the human race that always means the fettering and misapplication of reason degraded into servant of power to maintain the privileges of the ruling class. It must be the reason of each and all seeking for a basis of agreement” (Sri Aurobindo 1962: 184; emphasis added).
- 21.
In the words of Jonas (1984: 142): “From which direction can we expect this third degree power which reinstates man in the context of his power and breaks its tyrannical automatism? It must, in the nature of the problem, emanate from society as no private insight, responsibility or fear can measure upto the tasks.”
- 22.
Ulrich Beck (1992), for instance, argues that it is the collective power of society which can address the ecological crises confronting us today.
- 23.
I use “functioning” and “capability” in the same way as Amartya Sen does. See Sen (1987).
- 24.
A great poet and educational experimenter of modern India, noted for his Noble Prize-winning collection of poems called Gitanjali.
- 25.
Professor Robert Bernasconi (personal communication) argues that there are different kinds of silence, and one must not be insensitive to the distinction between self-chosen silence and imposed silence. What spiritual striving seeks is self-chosen silence, aiming at breaking all kinds of imposed silences.
- 26.
For Bellah and his colleagues, “Attending means to concern ourselves with the larger meanings of things in the longer run, rather than with short term pay offs” (Bellah et al. 1991: 273).
- 27.
Another pioneering spiritual seeker of modern India known in the West for his interventions in the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893.
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Giri, A.K. (2018). Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action: From Discourse Ethics to Spiritual Transformations. In: Giri, A. (eds) Beyond Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6641-2_6
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