Bourgeois morality

Bourgeois morality

Bourgeois morality is discrete: the individual is the quantum of bourgeois morality, the indivisible unit.  Bourgeois morality can only calculate in whole numbers of persons.  This is, of course, what is meant by "individual" - for bourgeois morality, a person has no parts, and cannot be divided.  One might say that in bourgeois morality, an individual is a "body without organs."  In this sense, the individual - the quantum of bourgeois morality - is ideal, and ideological, rather than material.

For bourgeois morality, individuals are conceived as separate.  That is their essence.  They are fundamentally, unbridgeably distinct.  One individual can never merge with another individual, and one individual is never inside of another individual.  Which raises the question: where did these individuals come from?  Have they always existed?  Are they eternal?  Will they always exist?  But these questions are beyond the scope of bourgeois morality.  

(I'll note in passing that the issue of abortion ultimately has nothing to do with religion or the Bible, but rather has everything to do with bourgeois morality and liberalism.  You might say that abortion is the edge-case, or one of the many edge-cases, of bourgeois morality.  Is an embryo an individual person, in its own right, or is it a part of another person?  That is the question.) 

Moreover, in bourgeois morality, individuals are conceived not only as separate, but as independent.  One individual does not depend in any way on any other individual.  

It is this very independence that allows us to claim that all individuals are equal.  If one individual depended, for its existence, upon another individual, then it would not truly be individual, and the two of them would not be equal.   

But the fundamental axiom of bourgeois morality is that all individuals are equal, indeed, equivalent.  One can simply swap out one individual for another individual, and morally, this makes no difference.  That is to say, we are all, or at least we all should be, equal before the law. 

This fundamental replaceability of any individual with any other individual forms the basis of bourgeois ethics, in perhaps something like the way that the principle that the laws of physics should be the same in every reference frame forms the basis of Einstein's theory of relativity.

Whatever moral duties and obligations A owes to B, one should equally be able to say that B owes them to A.  Or if we replaced them with any random C and D, the moral obligations should still hold. 

Finally, the summum bonum of the bourgeois morality is consent.  Whatever interaction happens between consenting individuals is good, whatever interaction happens between non-consenting individuals is evil, or at least bad in some sense.

Clearly, the concept of the "original position" and its "veil of ignorance" in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice conforms to the contours of bourgeois morality that I have sketched so far.  But I have long maintained that Rawls did not invent this kind of morality - he merely articulated, in a fairly rigorous way, what had been the vague moral understanding in his society for centuries.  This in itself is no small accomplishment -  "its own time apprehended in thought," as it were.  Rawls himself identified as a Kantian, but I think bourgeois morality even considerably precedes Kant.

Now, at this point, one might be wondering, with some justice - what, exactly, is bourgeois about any of this?  Doesn't this kind of moral thinking simply follow from some fundamental principles that are not restricted to the bourgeois mode of production, but which are, in fact, trans-historical, eternal principles?  Such as the Golden Rule, or the Categorical Imperative?

It's an important point, and in a way, that's not far off.  The critique of bourgeois morality is not the assertion that individualism is wrong, or bad, or that it is morally wrong to be selfish or greedy.  I, for one, consider myself a proud individualist - an egoist, even.  However, it is during the era of the bourgeois mode of production that bourgeois morality, founded upon individualism, comes into contradiction with itself.  For as the bourgeois mode of production developed, eventually it brought about the industrial revolution, which, of course, also, in its own way, meant replaceable parts.  Ironically, bourgeois morality, combined with bourgeois production, begins with individualism but ends by subverting individuality.  Eventually, in a fully developed industrial society, individuals don't matter, and can be replaced without harm to productivity.  As Kurt Cobain put it, "We can have some more."  

How far are we to take the relativistic aspect of bourgeois morality?  Let's think about some of the implications.

If it is wrong for A to enslave B, then it is wrong for B to enslave A. 

If it is wrong for A to assert a claim over B, then it is wrong for B to assert a claim over A.

If it is wrong for A to be God over B, then it is wrong for B to be God over A.  

Thus bourgeois morality must end in a kind of ethical atheism - not exactly in a factual claim that no gods could possibly exist, but rather in the assertion that if a god were to exist, this would be morally wrong.  Or as Mikhail Bakunin put it, "If God existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him."  

Unless, of course, one consents to another individual being God, in which case they are allowed to be God.  God himself is thus subordinated to individual consent, and religion becomes a private affair.

A highly refined version of the bourgeois morality can be seen in the work of Samuel Beckett, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, and their theory of the author.  

A Freudian might detect a pattern in bourgeois morality's treatment of both authorship and Godhead, and could describe it this way: If it is wrong for A to assert that he is the father of B, then it is wrong for B to assert that he is the father of A.  Indeed, emancipation is the central theme of bourgeois morality, and as such, it implies the subversion of the family.  Incidentally, Freudian psychoanalysis is, itself, an example of something that was the product of bourgeois morality, but which itself, ultimately undermines bourgeois morality.

In general, bourgeois morality has made possible the development of science, technology, and industry which ultimately challenges bourgeois morality, if not making it entirely impossible.