Or if it fails utterly to move us, then it cannot be that we accept that conception of the good. This humanism is less far from the Kantian than it may think.
Or course, another important change has occurred with the immanenti zation: the empowering motive has changed from love to respect. Or perhaps we might say that from the mixture of love and awe which the God of Abraham commanded, only some of the latter is left in face of our own powers of disengagement. Here is another reason to mark this by a break in our vocabulary. And once again, I don't mind such a break, provided we don't lose the continuity from view. I don't mind if one says that modern immanent humanism has no more place for constitutive goods, that nothing functions quite like the moral sources of premodern theories. But what remains true is that something still functions analogously. That is, there is something relation to which defines certain actions and motives as higher, viz., our capacities as 'thinking reeds'; and our contemplation of this can inspire a motive which empowers us to live up to what is higher.
But this is precisely what we are tempted to forget in the climate of modern moral philosophy. The eclipse of our whole awareness of qualitative distinctions carries with it the neglect of this whole dimension of our moral thought and experience.
For this reason, I shall elect to speak still of moral sources even in connection with modern immanentist theories, and even of the most severely disenchanted kind. I will try to do justice to the differences and not fall into too seamless a picture of the continuities. But all things considered, I think this danger is the lesser one in our times.
If we return to the issue of articulacy, we can see that one of the important discontinuities is that we often feel ourselves less able than our forebears to be articulate. I mentioned in the first chapter how people are often at a loss to say what underpins their sense of the respect owed to people's rights (section
1.1),
and later( 1 .4)
how traditional frameworks have becomeproblematic for us, and how much our articulations are exploratory. Iris Murdoch, who defends a view which has plainly drawn a great deal from
�
lato, stresses that the good is something which is "non-representable and lndefinable. ,,4And it emerges, too, in the way that empowering images and stories function in our time. Some of the most powerful have their roots in religious and philosophical doctrines which many moderns have abandoned. One may n�t .be able to substitute for the theological or metaphysical beliefs which
�
nglnally underpinned them; but the images still inspire us. Or perhaps etter, they go on pointing to something which remains for us a moral source, sOrnething the contemplation, respect, or love of which enables us to get96 .
I D E N TI T Y A N D THE G O O D
closer to what is good. Murdoch's theory of the "sovereignty of 'good' ",
JUSt
mentioned, is a case in point. No one today can accept the Platonic metaphysic of the Ideas as the crucial explanation of the shape of the cosmos. And yet the image of the Good as the sun, in the light of which we can see things clearly and with a kind of dispassionate love, does crucial work for her. It helps define the direction of attention and desire through which alone, she believes, we can become good.5
Another example, this time from the Jewish and Christian religious traditions, has been explored by Michael Walzer.6 The story of the Exodus has inspired movements of reform and liberation throughout the centuries, even those which claimed to reject the theological outlook which the original story proclaims. Sometimes some clear alternative secular theory has been substituted, e.g., a Marxist picture of humanity's advance towards socialism. But it is also clear that the story has tremendous power even for those who have no definite norion of a God or a History which is freeing them from bondage. To see one's story in this light can be inspiring and empowering, even though one might be puzzled if asked to state what underlying doctrine about humans, or God, or history one relies on to make sense of this. The fact is, seeing one's life in this pattern carries tremendous moral power. Even where the theology is lost, the story marches on. Northrop Frye shows how the Bible as a whole has been a tremendous source of such empowering stories in Western history.7
So articulating the good is very difficult and problematic for us. Is that a
reason for eschewing it? In one way perhaps it might be, as I shall mention in a minute. But first there seem to be very strong reasons in favour of articulacy wherever a constitutive good serves as a moral source. Moral sources empower. To come closer to them, to have a clearer view of them, to come to grasp what they involve, is for those who recognize them to be moved to love or respect them, and through this love/respect to be better enabled to live up to them. And articulation can bring them closer. That is why words can empower; why words can at times have tremendous moral force.
And of course not just any articulation will do. Some formulations may be dead, or have no power at this place or time or with certain people. And in the most evident examples the power is not a function of the formulation alone, but of the whole speech act. Indeed, the most powerful case is where the speaker, the formulation, and the act of delivering the message all line up together to reveal the good, as the immense and continuing force of the gospel illustrates. A formulation has power when it brings the source close, when it makes it plain and evident, in all its inherent force, its capacity to inspire our love, respect, or allegiance. An effective articulation releases this force, and this is how words have power.