Kenneth Barnes
Nov,1963
Morality: The Confusion in Our Judgments
Statements about sexual conduct and standards are rarely received with cool rationality. Sexual energy is explosive and the necessary control of it always produces a degree of tension that is bound to be reflected in any discussion. Only this will explain why the notorious pamphlet on sexual morality was judged by some readers as confused and confusing and by others, including people of acknowledged distinction and discrimination, as admirably lucid. But we must try to be cool, and what follows is an attempt to state the problem that moral judgment sets. The Friends responsible for the pamphlet carefully examined evidence of the predicaments and conduct of a wide variety of people and found them-selves unable to make categorical judgments, i.e. judgements that sorted out actions into two clearly defined groups to be labelled right and wrong. We have been charged with confusion, but I think the truth is that the situation in society is in fact confused; the confusion exists out there and it was our task to show that the confusion could not be resolved by simple moral judgments.
I have no “solutions” but I want to try a new way of showing what the difficulties are, even if – as necessarily in too small a space – it may seem crude. I am going to use two kinds of distinction; moral and ethical. The word moral has come to be used very loosely and it does not help much to be told by the text-book that ethics is the science of morals, or that morality is a pattern of action and ethics the principles associated with it. There must be a certain independence in ethics; if an ethical judgment does not spring from something deeper and more universal than morality, then there is nothing to choose between the great and conflicting variety of moral systems existing in different cultures.
For present purposes, I shall hold morality to its origin in mores the customs of a people, a generally approved pattern of conduct. I shall use ethical judgment to mean a judgment about a person’s conduct or relationships based on what we know of the intimate quality of the conduct or relationships and on a conviction about what is good. “Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself” is, in these terms, an ethical requirement; it compels us to examine relationships and it affirms love as the ultimate good. It is not a moral command because it does not begin from a desire for conformity or group pressure.
How do we apply a moral judgment, in the sense defined above, to sexual conduct? Surely by means of a sharp line that divides the married from the unmarried.
A
Unmarried Married
l
Morally bad Morally goodl
B
In this pattern sexual intimacy among the unmarried is wrong; between the married it is right. For some people, especially in earlier generations, this was a sufficient judgment. Once you got your daughters married, after careful chaperonage, you could close the doors on that problem, sigh with relief and turn your attention to other matters. But a greater awareness of difficulties within marriage compelled Christians and others to distinguish between one marriage and another. Some relationships were seen as cold, brutal, bitter or destructive. This is an ethical judgment. Husband and wife were not loving each other as neighbours should. So now a line C D has to be drawn. In the area I, people are morally good and ethically good. In ll they are morally good and ethically bad.
A
I
Morally good
Ethically good
Morally bad C
II
Morally good
Ethically bad
B
Many people are content to go this far. The area to the left of this line A C B contains people simply outside the pale. But though you may be shocked by what you hear of the conduct of young people in this age, you may perhaps pick up a paperback in a bookshop and read be persuaded to read the story of Abelard and Heloise. Perhaps you will make yourself open to the impact of these two sensitive, intelligent, tender spirits, and you will see that they were, right from the beginning, servants of God and Truth. Tutor and pupil shared a love of knowledge, an intense joy in learning; and they shared a common faith. Everything that today we should regard as the foundation of the best of all sexual relationships was there. They became intimate before marriage, and even when Heloise knew she was with child, she was exultant, for the child was the child of a very great love. But then the world took a hand. Although Abelard married Heloise, Fulbert, the uncle of Heloise, could not contain his anger and jealousy; he had Abelard savagely castrated by a hired gang. This tragedy and all its consequent development cannot be thought of in terms of sin and punishment; we are taken beyond all thought of sin to a place where we can only feel compassion – at the foot of the Cross.
So now we find we must extend the line D C to E. For we have found that there is at least one immoral relationship that is ethically beyond criticism. We need not be shaken in this judgment by the self-recrimination of the Abelard of later years, mutilated in body and ravaged in mind.
l
A
III I
Morally bad Morally good
Ethically good Ethically good
E C D
IV II
Morally bad Morally good
Ethically bad Ethically bad
B
l
Now let me say that the great majority of sexual relationships outside the moral pattern are ethically bad; they are trivial, greedy, exploiting or destructive. They fall into the area lV. But suppose we are moved to examine the lives of people who are willing to be frank about their own experiences. If we are the kind of people to whom others make intimate confessions we shall find that among the marriages that we most respect – in which there is warmth, open-heartedness, liveliness and complete committal – there are partners who were intimate before marriage. We can find nothing in the inherent nature of the relationship to criticise. Knowing this, even to entertain the idea of moral judgment seems an impertinance.
We turn our thoughts back again into history, to the lives of a number of creative artists, musicians, poets, writers. In their sexual conduct many seemed to have been little concerned with morality. Some loved deeply and sincerely, but outside the pattern; so they join Abelard and Heloise in lll. But some have had to plunge impulsively, passionately, recklessly into life, to hurt and to be hurt, to court physical or spiritual destruction, perhaps in order to know and speak of life in all its dimensions.
Wild men, who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gently into that good night.[1]
We must put these into the left hand bottom corner, reserved for the morally and ethically bad. Yet it is with a lurking uneasiness that we do so. The thought stirs that there was something in them here and there that we cannot claim, and that humanity is somehow richer for their lives.
The whole left hand side of our diagram is becoming heavily populated. Not only do we find many very significant people there, but also the homosexuals; some of these will be in the area above the line, for undoubtedly there are homosexual relationships that are tender, committed and creative, whatever also they may lack.
Now let us look at the morally and ethically good. The area l contains many very fine people, a large proportion of people we know and love, and many throughout history whom we esteem and whose lives have helped to shape our own. There are marriages whose liveliness and wholesomeness are a tonic to the community. But here and there we find a married couple about whom we begin to have doubts. They are, it would seem, loving and devoted; they are very responsible and their family life appears to be all it should be. But we have reason to doubt their imagination and compassion; they cannot generously accept the waywardness of others. They seem too pleased with themselves. Perhaps worse, they congratulate themselves that they are not as other men are. We have to find a third dimension in our diagram in which to move them, for their condition is more hopeless than any we have described so far; they have committed the deadly sin of pride. So out they have to go, to join those to whom Jesus said: “The publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you.”
We must look more carefully at section lV. We have already begun to be uneasy about it for there are some interesting people there. We find among them another well-known person: the woman of Bethany, a woman of the streets. In one of the most beautiful stories in the gospels she is described as coming to Jesus and anointing his head with oil and washing his feet with her tears. Jesus accepted her “great love” without question. Where shall we find a place for her? And it seems that Jesus was especially interested in the lost sheep of this area of our diagram. Why? Was it merely that he wanted to move them across to join those in section l? We are quick to assume that when Jesus went out to find the one stray sheep, he intended, after bringing it back, to make it just like the ninety-and-nine. But did he? Or did he see some unusual opportunity here? We are so often presented with the paradox that those who plunge waywardly and painfully into life, like the Prodigal Son, are the people who will enter the Father’s house first. Indeed a bewildering and confusing mystery, for it does not in fact provide us with an excuse to be unprincipled.
So often those who are much concerned with morality speak as though our aim should be to persuade everyone to conform to the moral pattern and then achieve ethical excellence within it; thus moving everyone eventually into section l. But can we really visualise a society in which there is no waywardness, no rebelliousness? Could such a community retain any originality? Could we achieve complete moral conformity without at the same time destroying the ability to be intrepid and original in, for instance, the arts? It seems to me that Christianity, more than any other faith, sees the tremendous latent possibilities in the waywardness of man.
[This document appears to be a reply to some of the comments made concerning the
pamphlet “Toward a Quaker view of Sex” of which Kenneth was a co-author.]
Archive reference PP/KCB 6/6/4 document