It should not be thought the secular ethic is a complete repudiation of morality. It preserves the distinction between the “is” and the “ought.” Nature is the way we are, and it also provides the model for the way we ought to be. We should follow the call of our inner selves; if we don’t, we are not being true to ourselves and are missing out on the goal of self-fulfillment. This is subjectivism—because each of us has a distinctive way of being ourselves—but it is not relativism, because there is no suggestion here that “anything goes.” In the secular ethic, the inner self speaks definitively and we are obliged to follow it. Secular morality differs from Christianity not in rejecting the notion of the good but in positing a self-sufficient inner source for what is good.
Perhaps surprisingly, secular morality retains some of the most distinctive features of traditional Christianity. For example, many Christians habitually engage in rituals of self-disclosure and confession. The confessional style is not limited to Catholics, who at least confine the narrative of their sins to a single confessor. Many born-again Christians will at the slightest provocation uncork astonishing details of what drunks, drug addicts, and moral reprobates they used to be until they fell into the arms of Christ. Our secular culture continues this tradition. Turn on Oprah or another talk show, and you will hearpeople discussing without inhibition the intimate details of their sex lives, what Peeping Toms they used to be as teenagers, how they still fantasize about making love to the Peabody twins who live down the street, or how they have come to suspect that their partner’s sex organs are not functioning entirely well. In the Oprah case, the purpose of all this titillating detail is not, however, to surrender these anxieties and turn to Christ. It is to advance the process of self-discovery, aided by audience participation.
Oprah’s popularity reveals some of the appealing elements of the secular ethic. It promotes individuality, because each of us now has our own moral script and our own way of being human. It eschews hypocrisy. Nothing could be worse under this ethic than to pretend to be the kind of person you are not. Why put on airs and live a lie? It’s better to live naturally, even if this raises a few eyebrows, and to encourage people to accept you as you are. It promotes independence. When you become your own person you are no longer subservient to the will of others, or to the artificial appeal of “society.”
Under the secular code, art assumes a central role as a means of self-realization and self-expression. The artist is no longer copying nature, in the manner of conforming to an external code, but rather employing sculpture and painting and poetry to reveal his own (sometimes incomprehensible) inner self. No wonder that art has largely replaced religion as the institution to which secular people pay homage: it is much more fashionable to serve on the local museum’s board than on the parish committee’s.
The deepest appeal of secular morality is its role in the formation and preservation of “love relationships.” How do we know that we love? There is no other way but to reach deep into ourselves and consult the inner voice, which is not the voice of reason but the voice of feeling. We succumb to that inward self so completely that we feel that we have lost control. We don’t love, but are “in love,” and we are now not entirely responsible for what we do.
