MORALITY AND WORLD VIEW

When I was taught French as a child, I learned that ‘Louis’ was prononounced ‘Lew-ee’.  When I read Huckleberry Fynn and saw ‘St Louis’, my inner mind pronounced the name in the way I had been taught. 

            When I saw the film version, however, I realised that the Americans pronounced it ‘St Lew-iss’. 

            Who owns the word ‘Louis’: the present or the past, the Americans or the French?

            The answer, of course, is ‘both’, and one must simply learn to be bi-lingual.  When the French founded the settlement, they pronounced it ‘Lew-ee’.   When the Americans took it over, it became ‘Lew-iss’.   Hence, also, Joe Lew-iss and Lew-iss Armstrong.     

Is ‘Paris’ pronounced ‘Par-ee’ or ‘Par-iss’?  That depends on whether you are in Paris or London: pronunciation is the decision of a particular speech-community.  In an oligarchy, it will be decided by  the cultural elite (or élite); in a democracy, by the usage of the majority. Power decides how a word should be pronounced, but the decision is arbitrary. The word could – as we have seen –  be pronounced differently. 

            Consider however, the case of Louis XIV. Suppose the Americans took over French culture and French history, and he became Lew-iss XIV. This is not quite the same situation as with St Louis.  St Louis, as a living, evolving entity, can legitimately change how it is pronounced.  Louis XIV, by contrast, is fixed in time.  When he was alive, he was called ‘Lew-ee’.   To say otherwise would be factually wrong. 

            Now consider a car designed to run on diesel.  Suppose six people agree that it can be run on petrol.  Despite this uniformity, it will still conk out.  The same result will happen, despite the contrary opinion of six hundred or six million.  We are up against the brute fact of how the engine has been designed; opinion doesn’t come into it.  

            Let us now take the case of murder.  There is general agreement in our culture that murder is wrong.  Probably – although much less clear cut – there is also majority opinion against adultery. 

But if the majority were to decide that murder and adultery were right, would they indeed become so?  Or is there a binding universal law that murder and adultery are wrong whatever we may say?   To what may morality be best equated:  pronunciation, or the design of the car engine? 

 

Here we are at the crux of the problem.  If we are creatures that emerged by chance, then so did our moral systems.  They can be changed according to circumstance, like Par-iss or Par-ee.  But if we are the result of design, then some behaviour is really right for us and some is really wrong: like trying to run on petrol when you were designed to run on diesel. 

            That is why our current moral divisions run so deep.  For behind our ethical convictions, whether we realise it or not, lies a wider belief about our origins, and about the nature of the universe itself.