Political and social commentators regularly bemoan the decline of
morality in the modern world. They claim that the norms and values
that held society together in the past are rapidly eroding, to be
replaced by permissiveness and empty hedonism. But as Edward Rubin
demonstrates in this powerful account of moral transformations,
these prophets of doom are missing the point. Morality is not
diminishing; instead, a new morality, centered on an ethos of human
self-fulfillment, is arising to replace the old one.
As Rubin explains, changes in morality have gone hand in hand with
changes in the prevailing mode of governance throughout the course
of Western history. During the Early Middle Ages, a moral system
based on honor gradually developed. In a dangerous world where
state power was declining, people relied on bonds of personal
loyalty that were secured by generosity to their followers and
violence against their enemies. That moral order, exemplified in
the early feudal system and in sagas like The Song of Roland, The
Song of the Cid, and the Arthurian legends has faded, but its
remnants exist today in criminal organizations like the Mafia and
in the rap music of the urban ghettos. When state power began to
revive in the High Middle Ages through the efforts of the European
monarchies, and Christianity became more institutionally effective
and more spiritually intense, a new morality emerged. Described by
Rubin as the morality of higher purposes, it demanded that people
devote their personal efforts to achieving salvation and their
social efforts to serving the emerging nation-states. It insisted
on social hierarchy, confined women to subordinate roles,
restricted sex to procreation, centered child-rearing on moral
inculcation, and countenanced slavery and the marriage of
pre-teenage girls to older men.
Our modern era, which began in the late 18th century, has seen the
gradual erosion of this morality of higher purposes and the rise of
a new morality of self-fulfillment, one that encourages individuals
to pursue the most meaningful and rewarding life-path. Far from
being permissive or a moral abdication, it demands that people
respect each other's choices, that sex be mutually enjoyable, that
public positions be allocated according to merit, and that society
provide all its members with their minimum needs so that they have
the opportunity to fulfill themselves. Where people once served the
state, the state now functions to serve the people. The clash
between this ascending morality and the declining morality of
higher purposes is the primary driver of contemporary political and
cultural conflict.
A sweeping, big-idea book in the vein of Francis Fukuyama's The End
of History, Charles Taylor's The Secular Age, and Richard Sennett's
The Fall of Public Man, Edward Rubin's new volume promises to
reshape our understanding of morality, its relationship to
government, and its role in shaping the emerging world of High
Modernity.
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