Since the 1980s there has been a growing division between private morality and public policy. This has meant that, though people may be scrupulous about their conduct in a private capacity, they are embarrassed to use the vocabulary of morals when it comes to public life. The division has come about largely because of an insistence on the virtue of tolerance.
Tolerance is a virtue, but its value can be overrated. We live, we are told, in a multicultural society, and all cultures, it is supposed, have their own equally valid system of morality. To suppose that there is a shared morality is a form of imperialism. So in politics the criterion against which to decide for or against a measure cannot be the common good (for who would decide what was good?) but must be expediency, economic value or what is likely to be popular.
That there are many cultures in our society does not entail that there is no such thing as a common good. Such values as justice, honesty, respect for human lives, compassion the love of learning – these are not culture-relative. It is in pursuit of such values that public policy should be formed. Openly to embrace such aspirations involves the use of a moral vocabulary, of which we should cease to be ashamed.
There is one important caveat: though many people derive their morality from religious beliefs, the morality that guides political decision-making must be separated from any idea of divine origin. For many, the idea of God is meaningless. If they are led to suppose that morality without religion is an impossibility, they will reject morality along with theism. We must be careful to allow that morality can be based on purely human values. But in a country steeped in a Judaeo-Christian religion, the outcome will not be so different.
• Visit the School of Life at theschooloflife.com
• Mary Warnock will be giving one of The School of Life's secular sermons at Conway Hall on Sunday 28th March, see theschooloflife.com/Sermons/Mary-Warnock-on-Ethics