The Greeks Showed that Objective Morality Is Possible

This quotation below, demonstrating the ancient Greek philosophers' proof of an objective foundation for ethics, is dedicated to atheists who think that since in a godless world values must be subjective, we can establish morality with only an arbitrary starting point, say, the maximization of well-being or minimization of suffering. (See my "Should Humanists Be Utilitarians?") Because this is an admittedly arbitrary starting point, it surely cannot serve as a launch pad for a rational morality, for as Hume would say (erroneously), although reason can tell us if our means will get us to our ends, it can be no help in saying if our ends are worthwhile. Or: reason is merely a "slave to the passions" and ought to aspire to be nothing more.)

Fortunately, an alternative is available to us, which is rooted in the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. The quote is from Roderick T. Long's Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action, chapter 10 (draft).

All human action is driven, according to Socrates, by agents’ beliefs about what is good. But how are we to conceive of these “goods” that all human beings necessarily pursue? Is Socrates conceiving of ... value in subjective or objective terms? 

Well, it depends. Socrates ... accepts value-subjectivism in the following two senses: first, he thinks actions must be explained in terms of the beliefs and desires of the agents themselves; and second, he thinks that agents can be described as mistaken only in their choice of means, not in their choice of ultimate ends....

But ... there is another sense in which Socrates is not a subjectivist about value at all. First, among the mistakes of knowledge that Socrates recognizes are not only mistakes about instrumental means but mistakes about constitutive means; we can be wrong not only about what will cause us to achieve a certain goal but about what will count as achieving the goal....

...[W]hatever I pursue, I pursue only because I believe that it is good; but if in fact the object of my pursuit it is not really good, then in achieving that object, I have not really attained the object of my ultimate desire....

...Socrates clearly intends what he says to apply to ultimate goods as well: 

Don’t we have to arrive at some starting-point which will no longer bring us back to another beloved thing, something that goes back to the First Beloved, something for the sake of which we say that all the other things are beloved too?… Not that we don’t often talk about how much we value gold and silver; but that’s not so and gets us no closer to the truth, which is that we value above all else that for the sake of which gold and all other provisions are provided, whatever it may turn out to be.… When we talk about all the things that are beloved by us for the sake of a further beloved thing … what is truly beloved is surely the point at which this chain of so-called lovings comes to an end. (Plato, Lysis 219c-e.)

The First Beloved, the terminus of all our means-end schemes, is simply goodness itself. (This should not, however, be interpreted as some sort of metaphysical thing, as Plato later seems to take it in the Republic. It is simply a property that all our desires track, because that is what desiring is.)....

...[A]nyone who thinks normative statements are not subject to empirical test needs to think harder....

...[T]he Socratic tradition – as it is the position of the entire tradition of classical ethics that Socrates inspired, from Aristotle through the Stoics to Aquinas – is grounded in an understanding of the logical structure of action itself. For the Socratic tradition, an objective ethics is founded on praxeology [i.e., the conceptual analysis of action itself]. 

My summary: action has a logical structure, and anything that fails to conform to that structure simply does not count as action. To act is to demonstrate a preference, a desire, for something. The agent therefore necessarily regards the object of action as good. Further, to act is to select means estimated to be capable of achieving the end, or good. 

Some ends are not desired in themselves but as means to other ends, or other things regarded as good. An infinite chain of ends leading to nowhere would make no praxeological sense; rather, our lesser ends logically must aim at an ultimate end, which has been labeled variously as the ultimate good, happiness, the good life, eudaimonia, and so on. (Socrates called it the First Beloved.) When we choose between two lesser ends, we deliberate on which one better serves our ultimate good. 

Moreover, some means are instrumental to the realization of the ultimate good; they are external to it, like a bridge to a destination. But other means are constitutive of the end; they are internal to it--that is, the very pursuit of the lesser end constitutes an inherent part of that ultimate end. As an analogy, consider the distinction between buying a tuxedo, an instrumental means, and wearing a tuxedo, a constitutive means, to dressing for a formal event. Wearing a tuxedo is just part of what it means to dress formally. 

In the Greek conception, exercising reason is not just an instrumental means to the ultimate end -- the good life -- but a constitutive means. Part of what it means to live the good life is to live by reason, including in all one's dealings with others. (Logically, this would bar the initiation of force.) The other classical virtues are also constitutive of -- internal to -- that life. To be sure, we can err in what regard as proper means -- that is, objectively speaking, a means may not really serve the ultimate end. The rational person, a social animal after all, is thus open to argument, evidence, and persuasion in this respect (as in others).

But we cannot err about the ultimate end because that is already built into the structure of action itself. To act is to pursue an ultimate end, which is the good. We can only make a mistake about means.