The Idolatry of Modernity and the Impossibile State

In the concluding chapter of his book The Impossible State, Wael B. Hallaq argues that the crisis of the Muslim world is not a uniquely Muslim crisis, but is the crisis faced by all of humanity in our present times. This crisis stems from modernity, from Enlightenment philosophy, from a humanism that says “man is the measure of all things”.

Hallaq presents two worldviews in fundamental contradiction to one another. On the one hand, we have a theology that says we live in a universe saturated with moral values, with reasons that make normative demands of us (165). These moral demands transcend human subjectivity: they are part of the created world in which we live, and they come from God, the only Sovereign. On the other hand, we have a humanism that says we live in a value-free universe, and that the only moral constraints on us have their origin in human Reason.

C. S. Lewis and David B. Wong on Morality and Natural Impulses

It seems to me these passages are talking about the same thing. Morality is that which directs our impulses when those impulses conflict. Morality helps guide choice and action.

C. S. Lewis on Instincts and the Moral Law

(at Google Books)

[S]ome people wrote to me saying, ‘Isn’t what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn’t it been developed just like all our other instincts?’ Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law.  We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct—by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires—one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys. (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 9-10)

David B. Wong on Morality and Natural Drives

(at Google Books)

This intrapersonal function of morality comprehends what has been called “the ethical,” as opposed to what might be called the “narrowly moral.” Morality in the broader sense used here comprehends the ethical. This part of morality helps human beings to structure their lives together in a larger sense, that is, not just for the sake of coordinating with each other but also for the sake of coordination within themselves. Because the natural drives of human beings are diffuse and general, and because they are diverse and are liable to come into conflict with each other, there is a need for a shaping of these drives, and much of it comes from people telling each other just how these drives should be shaped and how internal conflicts should be regulated and resolved. (David B. Wong, Natural Moralities, p. 43)

Wong on a different direction for moral philosophy

"Not all moral values that are well grounded for us need to be well grounded for all human beings in all ages and places. It will be argued in chapter 6 that values can be grounded in such a way that they are suitable for human beings under certain sets of broadly defined circumstances, though not necessarily for human beings under all historically known circumstances, much less all conceivable circumstances.
"However, showing that adopting our moral values is one way to flourish requires us to meet certain challenges.... My point here is that this is the sort of task we must engage in if we are to sustain confidence in our moral commitments. It is a task that many moral philosophers have thought to be irrelevant to confidence, opting instead for very abstract universalistic justifications of our morality. If I am right, moral philosophy needs to take a different direction, one that is more closely related to political theory and to certain versions of poststructuralism and critical theory." (Wong, Natural Moralities, 109-110)

I take Wong to be saying that taking seriously the situational character of morality makes the work of moral philosophy more challenging and more important. It is not about finding a few universal principles that ground our norms of right and wrong, of giving precedence to one kind of value over another. It is about understanding the concrete specifics of our situation: our location in history, in the present, in this time and place, in relation to other individuals and other societies and other cultures (with other moralities), and it is about understanding how these concrete specifics determine the basis for our morality.