The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue. – Spinoza

Is morality a matter of opinion? Is one man’s meat another’s poison (or poisson, as the old joke goes)? Is preference the only basis for right and wrong?

The question’s as old as thought. And it’s a stumper. Who am I to brand any behavior evil? Tastes differ. Do I speak for God?

I never used to ponder such questions. Mine was a relativist generation. Our starchy elders knew right from wrong, no ifs or buts. They’d confronted evil in the second World War and won. God was on their side, q.e.d.

My dad’s code covered every aspect of conduct: what to think, how to dress, hair length, sex, Vietnam, whom to vote for, you name it. He never invited discussion: “everybody knew” right from wrong. His my-way-or-the-highway rigidity left his older son one conceivable route: the highway. My father told me if I got into Yale and didn’t go there, he wouldn’t pay my tuition elsewhere. In response, I applied to a single college – Harvard.

Age sixteen, I was ready to rumble – grow my hair, smoke pot, defy the draft, engage in promiscuous sex if I got lucky. Wasn’t my morality as valid as his? Fist clenched (metaphorically), I was ready to shatter his cocksureness! And then he dropped – dead – without my laying a glove on him – felled by disease. I was swinging at air.

I became – what else? – the son my dad had wanted. Wasn’t I “the man of the house”? (They talked that way back then.) I settled into my father’s values as into his desk chair, without reflection. My career mimicked his – until I passed the age he’d died (47). Then, yikes, I had to start thinking for myself!

Right and wrong, while easy enough to adopt, aren’t easy to discern. Who says? Toss out the Ten Commandments and other formularies and how to determine right and wrong? It’s like that profound Gershwin song:

How to tell right and wrong, if not by another’s rule? Are they a matter of preference, opinion, or are they somehow fundamental to our nature? Should we expect them from on high or from within, from revelation or illumination?

Spinoza got it right: reason is our only tool for untangling complexities. Making up one’s mind is a construction project. To build your own morality from the ground up, you must begin by asking yourself questions. For instance:

·      Is life precious? All life? Human life? All human life or only tolerable human life?

·      For whom should we live? Our self? Family? Neighbors? Tribe? Species?

·      Does freedom matter? What does freedom mean?

·      Is kindness precious? Peace preferable to war? Truth to lies?

Settle your premises, like foundation stones, and your morality will begin to construct itself. As premises differ, so may conclusions (about assisted suicide, say, or the death penalty, or abortion). About some moral choices, we may never agree (whether to have dropped the atomic bomb, say, or built it).

Want to know right from wrong? First, consult your heart, then use your head. “The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”