Pluralistic Moralities Needed for Democracies?

I had to read H. L. A. Hart in law school. I never got very far with him. 

Then I get an issue of Jstor Daily with the article Does Law Exist to Provide Moral Order? and there is Professor Hart at the center. The more I read, the more relevant felt the article to current American politics.

Let me give a few highlights to an argument really needed to be read in full.

But the problem Hart had with Devlin’s argument were deeper than Mill’s doctrine and his separation of law and morality. Hart was also, along with his great friend Isaiah Berlin, one of the most important twentieth century liberal philosophers who believed in an open, free, democratic, and plural society. Within these societies, both Hart and Berlin argued, are differing moral codes and beliefs. Berlin articulated what was a constant theme in Hart’s writings: that moral principles are incommensurate and often come into direct conflict with one another. One example of this conflict can been in the debate around abortion: pro-life and pro-choice (among others) are conflicting positions, but they both come from a recognizable moral framework.

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 To this problem, both philosophers suggested that an open, tolerant, and democratic society was the only moral solution (ironically). “Plural moralities in the conditions of modern large scale societies,” Hart wrote, “might perfectly well be mutually tolerant.” And in fact, “there actually are divergent moralities living in peace” in almost all open democratic societies.

For social cohesion to exist in a society, Hart argued, there is no need for the law to impose a singular “seamless web” of morality over its people, as Devlin had claimed. In fact, to live in a state of freedom, we must be allowed to choose our own moral systems. The law should not impose one way of life on people, a way of life that denies them perfectly harmless and consensual actions in private. As Hart argued in his Liberty, Law and Morality, the private sphere is neither the law’s business, nor society’s. 

My own two cents worth of interpretation: keep the law from imposing one group's morality on another group because in a democracy the different moralities must respect one another and domination excludes respect.

Domination means a totalitarian government. Moral totalitarianism makes a religion of politics. Religion has an either/or mindset: one cannot be Muslim and Christian at the same time. And American politics have become a religion - particularly on the far right.

Americans need to decide if they want to keep their democratic ways. If so, they better gear up for a fight.

sch

12/18/21