Moral Rigidity

Moral Rigidity

We think of the morally rigid person as stiff, stern, intolerant, inflexible, old-fashioned, stubborn, and unintelligent. No one wants to be accused of being morally rigid—the Victorian prude, the stern and strict headmaster, the punitive prison warden. It’s just not nice, not cool, not lovable. But isn’t rigidity part of what morality is? Look at ordinary language: the good person is said to be strong, solid, upright, firm, unshakeable; the bad person is described as soft, weak, spineless, pliable, malleable, easily manipulated, bending under pressure, unreliable, lacking a backbone. To be a good person is to have principles, to stand one’s ground, to not back down, to have integrity—all terms that connote moral quality. A bad or weak person is the opposite of these—easily swayed, susceptible to corruption, unprincipled, lacking in moral strength or courage or fiber. A morally deficient person is made of jelly; a morally admirable person is made of sterner stuff—the right stuff (maybe gold or teak or bone). So, moral rigidity—unwaveringness—is an essential ingredient in the moral self. It is what integrity consists in. Of course, you have to be rigid about the right things—rigidity alone will not make you good. But you have to be able to stick with these things through thick and thin. You have to be able to keep your moral shape, come what may.

This point bears on more theoretical questions. Deontologists advocate following moral rules strictly; consequentialists favor being responsive to consequences, abandoning moral rules where necessary. This worries deontologists, to the point that they even ban any departure from strict rules, e.g., Kant on lying. Moral requirements are deemed strict and absolute, no exceptions allowed. This can seem dogmatic and extreme, but if we remember rigidity, we can see the motivation. Once rigidity is abandoned, morality comes under threat, because rigidity is essential to virtue—sound moral character. Consequentialism isn’t rigid enough; it smacks of a lack of principle, moral inconstancy. It makes morality into mush—the opposite of tough and unyielding. It makes us want to insist that we must adhere to the rules except under very special circumstances, if at all. It isn’t just a dogma of Kantian deontology; it’s part of the very structure of moral character. And we can always say that we are rigidly obeying the supreme moral imperative, namely to maximize happiness and minimize pain. We should be proud to be morally rigid (about the right things)—rigidly sexually tolerant, say, or rigidly free speech. Morality should never be flexible, i.e., ready to abandon itself. It is never right not to be moral. Rigid virtue is the only true virtue—all else is corruption and opportunism. We don’t “go with the flow”; we take our oar to the current. We never go morally limp or flabby or jelly-like. We remain stiff as a board, granite-hard, rock-solid. Rigidity is next to Godliness.[1]

[1] Why does every revolution involve throwing the baby out with bathwater? Why must we always be so undiscriminating? Why can’t we keep the good while trashing the bad? The history of human morality involves far too much baby-flushing. It’s apt to make a chap into a conservative!