Critiques of Subjectivism, Relativism, and Utilitarianism

Eighth chapter of the series. Before: I have implemented the Maricarmen Longevity Decree at home, This is my vote in the elections, thinking about longevity, Guide for my daughter on housing, victimhood, effort, and longevity, , ,  and .

In April 2005, the day before the conclave that would make him pope began, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered a homily that went around the world. In it, he warned that a "dictatorship of relativism" was forming: a society that recognizes nothing as definitive and in which the only measure is the self and its desires.

Twenty years later, the phrase still causes a stir. And it interests me especially, because in the I told you that I consider myself a moral skeptic. And in the I applied that skepticism to my own theory.

Today I want to do something that seems more honest to me than defending my position: show you the best criticisms that exist against the ideas that tempt me the most. Subjectivism, relativism, and utilitarianism. And, in the end, tell you which ones affect me and which ones do not.

A quick reminder of each:

• Subjectivism. Good and evil are each person's opinions. Like a taste for chocolate.
• Relativism. Good and evil depend on each society or culture. Like the side of the road on which one drives.
• Utilitarianism. What is correct is what produces the most well-being for the greatest number of people.

Critiques of subjectivism

1. Disagreements disappear. If "slavery is wrong" only means "I don't like slavery," then whoever says it is right is not contradicting you. They simply have different tastes. Just like you don't argue with someone who doesn't like chocolate. But when we argue about morality, we feel that one of the two is wrong. Subjectivism cannot explain that feeling.

2. Nobody is ever wrong. If what is good is what I feel is good, as long as I describe my feelings well, I will always be right. A murderer convinced that he is doing right would, from his point of view, be right. That clashes with something we have all experienced: realizing that we were wrong about something moral.

3. There is no way to improve. If I change my mind about a moral issue, subjectivism says that I have simply changed my taste. Like someone who goes from hating olives to loving them. But when someone stops being a racist, we don't say that they have changed their taste. We say they have improved.

Philosophers A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson proposed a finer version, emotivism: moral phrases do not describe what we feel, they express it. "Stealing is wrong" would be something like "Stealing, boo!" This solves the second criticism, because an exclamation cannot be true or false. But it makes the first one worse: if morality is exclamations, arguing about morality would be like competing to see who boos the loudest.

Critiques of relativism

Before the criticisms, a distinction that is almost always overlooked and is fundamental.

One thing is describing that morality changes according to society and culture. That is a fact. Anthropologists have been documenting it for over a century, and no serious person disputes it. It is called descriptive relativism.

A very different thing is thinking that, for that reason, good is what each society approves. That is no longer a description; it is a moral thesis: normative relativism. And it does not follow from the former.

One can acknowledge that in other eras and in other countries it was seen as normal to marry off twelve-year-old girls, and at the same time believe that it was wrong. Observing that morals are different does not force one to give them all the reason. Just as observing that each culture has its remedies does not force one to think that they all heal the same.

That is exactly my case. When I say that, in practice, the good and evil we handle are the opinions of people and groups, I am describing how human morality works. I am not saying that what each group opines is the good. The criticisms that follow are against that second idea.

1. Reformers are always wrong. If what is correct is what one's own society dictates, anyone who goes against it is, by definition, in error.

Think of Clara Campoamor. In 1931, with the Second Republic just proclaimed, she was one of the only three female deputies in the Cortes who were going to draft the new Constitution. Women could be elected, but they still could not vote. And Campoamor insisted on changing that.

She had everything against her. A good part of the left feared that women would vote for what the priest told them and give victory to the right. Even Victoria Kent, another of the three deputies, asked to postpone the female vote because she believed that women were not yet prepared. Even in her own party, they turned their backs on her. Even so, on October 1, 1931, the Cortes approved women's suffrage by a narrow margin. Spanish women voted for the first time in the 1933 elections. And it cost Campoamor dearly: she lost her seat, and many of her own blamed her for the defeat.

For a strict relativist, in 1931 Campoamor was wrong, because she went against what a good part of her society thought. And she only became right when the majority agreed with her. Almost no one is convinced by this. Today we think she was right from the beginning, even if she was almost alone.

2. Nothing can be criticized. Neither other cultures nor one's own. If Nazi Germany approved of what it did, a consistent relativist could not say that it was wrong, only that we see it differently.

3. It contradicts itself. Many relativists argue that one must respect all cultures. But "one must respect all cultures" is a universal norm, valid for all societies. Exactly what relativism says does not exist.

4. It does not follow from disagreement that there is no truth. That cultures disagree on morality does not prove that there is no correct answer. For centuries, different cultures disagreed on the shape of the Earth, and that does not mean they were all right.

5. Which society? Each of us belongs to many groups at once: a country, a region, a religion, a generation, a profession. If each group has its own morality, which one rules when they clash? Relativism has no answer.

And Ratzinger's criticism goes even deeper: a society that does not believe in any truth remains defenseless against whoever has the most power. If nothing is true, only force remains.

Critiques of utilitarianism

1. It allows sacrificing innocents. A surgeon has five patients who will die without a transplant. In the waiting room, there is a healthy person, compatible with all of them. If only total well-being counts, the surgeon should kill them and distribute their organs. We almost all feel that this is monstrous, even if the math adds up.

2. It ignores that we are different people. John Rawls explained it very well in A Theory of Justice: your suffering is not compensated by someone else's happiness. A person can sacrifice themselves today to be better tomorrow. But that does not justify sacrificing one person so that another is better off.

3. Happiness cannot be measured. How much is a joy worth? How much does grief weigh? How do we compare one person's pleasure with another's pain? Nobody has that calculator.

4. The utility monster. Robert Nozick imagined what he called the utility monster: a being who enjoys every resource they receive so much that utilitarianism would force us to give it all to them, even if others went hungry. It sounds absurd, but that is what the math says.

5. The repugnant conclusion. Derek Parfit demonstrated that, if only total well-being matters, a world with billions of people who barely have a life worth living would be "better" than one with fewer, very happy people. Almost no one accepts this, and decades later it remains one of the great problems of ethics.

6. It demands too much. Peter Singer gives a famous example: if you see a child drowning in a pond, you would jump in to save them even if you ruined your suit. But then, why don't you give the money for that suit to save a child dying of malaria thousands of kilometers away? Taken to the extreme, utilitarianism forces you to give almost everything. Bernard Williams added that this leaves no room to have projects, commitments, and a life of one's own.

Liquid truth and the world without commitment

There is a criticism that does not go against a specific theory, but against the climate left by subjectivism and relativism when they become common sense.

The Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman christened it in the late nineties as liquid modernity, the title of his best-known book. In the past, he said, life was solid: a job for life, a marriage for life, an ideology, a religion, a neighborhood. Today everything is liquid. It changes shape, slips through your fingers, commits to nothing. In Liquid Love, he applied it to relationships: we no longer look for bonds, we look for connections. And a connection, unlike a bond, can be undone with a click.

He was not the only one to see it:

• Jean-François Lyotard announced in 1979, in The Postmodern Condition, the end of the grand narratives: no one believes in a story that explains everything anymore, neither religion, nor progress, nor Marxism.
• Gilles Lipovetsky, in The Era of Emptiness, described an individual who tries everything and ties themselves to nothing.
• Byung-Chul Han, the Korean philosopher based in Germany, speaks of the disappearance of rituals and a society exhausted from constantly choosing.
• And in 2016 the Oxford Dictionary chose as word of the year post-truth: a climate in which facts weigh less than the emotions and beliefs of each individual.

It is, at heart, the world Ratzinger feared. If there are no firm truths, there are no firm commitments either. Why tie yourself to something that may cease to be valid tomorrow?

Here I want to be very clear, because one could think that a moral skeptic like me is the perfect liquid citizen. I am not. And I think it is exactly the opposite.

Not having the truth does not mean not committing. Sartre, who did not believe in any good given in advance, defended precisely commitment. If the universe does not bring an instruction manual, the only things that give shape to your life are the things you choose to commit to. Skepticism is not an excuse to not tie yourself to anything. It is what makes each commitment truly yours. He explained it in a 1945 lecture that became a book, Existentialism Is a Humanism.

And there is something else. I think commitment feels good to our genes.

We are a species with a very long childhood. A human infant needs years of care before fending for itself, and that has selected us to form stable bonds: with a partner, with children, with the tribe. Our brain is made for attachment, not for disposable connections.

The data confirms it. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been following hundreds of people for over eighty years, reached a conclusion that surprised its own authors: what best predicts a long and happy life is not money or fame, but the quality of relationships. A large 2010 analysis that gathered nearly 150 studies found that people with strong social relationships had about 50% more probability of still being alive over the course of the follow-up. And loneliness is associated with a health risk comparable to smoking.

The same happens with purpose. Several studies have found that people with a clear sense of why they live have lower mortality. It is no coincidence that in the blue zones, the regions of the world with the most centenarians, the same thing is always repeated: family nearby, strong community, and a reason to get up every morning.

So, as skeptical as I am about truth, I am not about this. Committing to a partner, to children, to friends, to a project, or to a way of life is not just a moral option. It is probably one of the best longevity strategies that exists. As important as sleeping, training, or eating well, which is what I proposed to you in the Maricarmen decree.

Of course, I don't want to idealize the solid world. Liquidity also brought freedom: being able to divorce, change jobs, cities, or ideas without being pointed at. The challenge is not to go back. It is to choose well what we tie ourselves to, knowing that we could choose not to.

Which ones affect me

As I told you in the , I am not a subjectivist, nor a relativist, nor a pure utilitarian. I am a moral skeptic who is guided by virtue ethics. But that does not exempt me from all these criticisms.

The ones I dodge. I don't say that my opinion is the truth, so I don't fall into the subjectivist's infallibility. I also don't say that each culture is right within its borders, so I don't fall into the relativist's contradiction. And since I use utilitarianism as a tool, not as a rule, I am not obliged to agree with the surgeon. A compassionate and upright person, which is who I want to be, does not kill a healthy patient no matter how the math adds up.

The ones that reach me. The hardest one is that of the reformers. As a skeptic, I cannot prove that Clara Campoamor was right and those who opposed women's voting were not. What I can say is that I would have been on her side, and that she is the type of person I want to be. But I acknowledge that that is not a proof. It is a choice.

Ratzinger's also reaches me. If there are no moral truths that we can know, what protects us from the strongest? My answer, curiously, comes from another philosopher, Karl Popper. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, he defended that the open society, with freedom, democracy, and separation of powers, exists precisely because no one has the definitive truth. If someone had it, they would have the right to impose it. Since no one has it, we need institutions that protect us from whoever thinks they have it. Moral humility, well understood, does not lead to tyranny. It leads to freedom. It is what I told you about in the .

And there is one criticism that affects me for being a follower of virtue ethics: that it is too vague. "Do what a virtuous person would do" doesn't say what to do in a specific dilemma. And the virtues I value, such as taking care of my life, enjoying, or being compassionate, may also be conditioned by my genes and my culture. I accept it. It is part of accepting my humanity.

What I accept from these criticisms

• That when I argue about morality, I behave as if someone is right. Even if I believe that we cannot know it.
• That I cannot prove that slavery is wrong. I can only say that I would never accept it and that I would fight against it.
• That adding up well-being is a useful, but dangerous, tool if it becomes the only rule.
• That my skepticism forces me to defend freedom with more strength, not less. Because if no one has the truth, no one should be able to impose it.
• That the liquid world is a real risk. And that my answer is not an imposed truth, but chosen commitments.

Ratzinger I think was right about one thing: a society with nothing firm remains defenseless. But I think that what is firm doesn't have to be a truth that someone possesses. It can be an agreement: that no one possesses it, and that for that reason no one can impose it on others.

But there is a question that has been haunting me since I started this series, and it is not philosophical but domestic. If I am skeptical about the good, how do I teach it to my daughters? Do I tell them that lying is wrong, or that it depends? That is what the next chapter is about.

A hug,

Gonzalo

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