Is Disagreement in Ethics a Virtue?

The most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreements; and the most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character. I do not mean by this just that such debates go on and on and on – although they do – but also that they apparently can find no terminus. There seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture.”

– Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981), p. 6

This quote points to two large question which loom over any ethical discussion, and which moral philosophers often try to ignore. Why is there disagreement in the first place? and What would it even take for one of us to win? I suspect most moral philosophers take it for granted as an unavoidable fact about human culture that there will be different conceptions of good and bad, right and wrong, and also that reaching some sort of consensus on these issue is really beyond the grasp of humanity. The best moral philosophy can do is try to control the tide, and be a means of recommending certain ethical theories over others; or give a rational and articulate voice to people’s present desires. However, if you let these two questions sink in a little bit, they become disturbing and uncomfortable.

MacIntyre suggests that the reason for the confusion, and the reason for the interminable nature of the debate is due to the Enlightenment. During this movement, Christian and Greek ways of talking about ethics were rejected, but the vocabulary was kept – justice, virtue, good and evil. Removed from their context, these words quickly became fluid and muddy, to the point where no-one was really sure of anything in ethics anymore except that there was disagreement, and the prospect of reaching a universal consensus was laughable.

Christianity presents an alternative to contemporary moral debate. It holds that many important meta-ethical and normative concerns are able to be resolved, and that this result would be of great importance to human life. It also suggests that the present confusion about moral issues is not a natural thing, and reaching clarity and consensus on a number of moral issues is a possibility for humanity.

Confusing disagreement with the virtues of open debate, many believe that disagreement qua disagreement is a valuable thing. Perhaps it is time to ask – where has moral disagreement got us as a culture? Why do we have the knee-jerk reaction to value disagreement, and be skeptical of consensus?