This is a linkpost for https://kevw.substack.com/p/15-a-parable-of-realism-and-relativism?r=lesswrong
I love the idea of new vocabulary to express a moral system beyond right and wrong. There are many places where this language has already been created, and I'm only drawing from English. In other languages there are sure to be concepts that provide further clarity to personal expression of morals.
The most obvious example is Utilitarianism, where morally "right" actions are those which lead to the greatest utility. This allows a framework of objective analysis from the perspective of the utility of society. This is already easy to apply to our existing laws and establishes a center of truth for the wavering.
Game theory in the sense of Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" provides another alternative to objective morality. In contrast to utilitarianism, the focus is the individual, and anything they do which is optimal to their well-being and the passing down of their genes could be considered morally right. The important distinction from anarchy is that you assume everyone else is also acting in their selfish interests, hence the game theory.
Kierkegaard provides very clear examples of how to express yourself with the Ethicist and the Aesthetic. I (and probably most people on this site) am a strong ethicist and believe that I am defined not by my beliefs but by my actions and words, and that those can be used to judge me. The greatest moral failure in the case of the ethicist is to act in a way that contradicts your beliefs.
Finally, you mentioned that we inherited Nihilism from Nietzsche, but we also inherited existentialism, which is much easier to work towards and see the positive results of. I think the language you seek has been created, the harder work is disseminating it.
In the beginning, in the times before time, there was a law which was always there. The lawgiver was universal and absolute, Nature itself, or a King or Priest, acting on the authority of the one and only omnipotent omniscient God. God’s laws were brutal, unwavering, seemingly unfair. But we were all God’s subjects equally, so it was just.
Whatever goodness and badness is, it was due to the world’s inherent moral order, because God created this world. It was there before we were born and remained after we died. Morality was a fact about the world, verifiable in the same way “this apple is red” is verifiable by looking at the apple.
For generations, this simple picture sustained us. It gave us clarity and hope. Simple and digestible truth, guidance for our daily decisions. A structured ordered universe which we lived fully inside, which injected meaning into our life.
And then, our worlds expanded, and then collided. We met people from other worlds. They talked differently, dressed differently, believed differently. If morality was engraved into our souls when God created the one world, surely we would agree on everything. But what was natural/abhorrent to us was the opposite to them. Our disagreements ran deep. We found no path to mutual understanding. So the universal moral order began to crumble. Slowly but surely. As our worlds expanded, our claims to universal morality shrank. No longer did we proclaim what God wants for us all (yes, some of us still do). Instead, we wavered and vacillated. We made morality about opinions instead of truths. Our moral assertions became weak, ungrounded. Every moral statement became qualified and caveated: “that’s just what I think but everyone has their own opinion”.
We live deep in the doldrums of relativism these days, in the long shadows of Nietzsche, Kirkegaard, and Sartre. God is dead. Our search for meaning is, in every moment, a radical leap of faith. We are condemned to be free.
Our inheritance is nihilism, anxiety, despair. A God-shaped hole at the center of our souls. The burden to create meaning from our existence, morality and values from nothing. It is an unbearable burden. We are crumbling under the weight. We are unmoored, circling aimless spiraling. We yearn to be told what to do. To be told what is right and wrong. We search for Gods where they are not and we come up empty handed. Or, in our desperation, we fill the God-shaped hole with an idol, an ideology that totalizes and dominates, gives order and meaning, but eventually immolates itself, and us along with it.
Our situation is untenable. We cannot keep going like this. One day, we will shoulder the responsibility of living authentically, living in alignment with our values. But today is not that day nor is tomorrow.
We are trapped in an inescapable spiral, a poorly framed “two sides” debate between false comfort and despair. Realism insists on truths carved into the world but cannot explain why we are obliged to agree. Relativism offers only mirrors and we vanish in our reflections. The frame itself is broken. The categories we inherited are failing us.
What we need is a new grammar, a new language, a new theory. A grammar that allows us to speak thoughts we have not yet known how to think. A theory that isn’t imposed from without, nor summoned from the void, but born of the marrow of our being. For we are living agents who deliberate, who act for reasons, who take responsibility. To act at all is to step into a space of normativity that is not optional. In our agency we are already bound.
This is the path beyond the spiral.