More on the centrality of morality

I think we can imagine a species which have moral agency, but moral agency is a minor part of their flourishing. I assume wolves don’t have moral agency. But now imagine a species of canids that live much like wolves, but every couple of months get to make a very minor moral choice whether to inconvenience the pack in the slightest way—the rest is instinct. It seems to me that these canids are moral agents, but morality is a relatively minor part of their flourishing. The bulk of the flourishing of these canids would be the same as that of ordinary wolves.

Aristotle argued that the fact that rationality is how we differ from other species tells us that rationality is what is central to our flourishing. The above thought experiment shows that the argument is implausible. Our imaginary canids could, in fact, be the only rational species in the universe, and their moral agency or rationality (with Aristotle and Kant, I am inclined to equate the two) is the one thing that makes them different from other canids, but yet what is more important to their flourishing is what they have in common with other canids.

At the same time, it would be easy for an Aristotelian theorist to accommodate my canids. One needs to say that the form of a species defines what is central to the flourishing, and in my canids, unlike in humans, morality is not so central. And one can somehow observe this: rationality just is clearly important to the lives of humans in a way in which it’s not so much these canids.

In this way, I think, the Aristotelian may have a significant advantage over a Kantian. For a Kantian may have to prioritize rationality in all possible species.

In any case, we should not take it as a defining feature of morality that it is central to our flourishing.

One might wonder how this works in a theistic context. For humans, moral wrongdoing is also sin, an offense against a loving infinite Creator. As I’ve described the canids, they may have no concept of God and sin, and so moral wrongdoing isn’t seen as sin by them. Could you have a species which does have a concept of God and sin, but where morality (and hence sin) isn’t central to flourishing? Or does bringing God in automatically elevate morality to a higher plane? Anselm thought so. He might have been right. If so, then the discomfort that one is liable to feel at the idea of a species of moral agents where morality is not very important could be an inchoate grasp of the connection between God and morality.