What makes a moral crisis

Crises force us to ask whether what we take to be moral is really good or true. At the point of crises our assumed ways of doing things no longer fit the world we live in. Our moral commitments are no longer tacit rules habitually acted upon. At a point of crisis, we must try to discern and discover whether what we take to be moral can help us respond to this new situation or does it need re-calibrating or even rejecting.

For example, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the need for physical distancing to inhibit its spread and protect the vulnerable is cutting against moral norms of solidarity and care and everyday practices of social, economic and political life, leading to a fundamental reordering of many aspects of life.

A basic question underlying many contemporary crises — from how to respond to climate change to COVID — is who or what should be the primary focus of moral regard: the individual, the community, the nation, humanity, or the planet? Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Modern ethical frameworks have, for the most part, made the individual the basis of ethical concern.

The individual is both the agent and the end of morality. Proper treatment of the individual, their ability to be recognised, freedom to express themselves authentically in the world, to have nothing done to them without their consent are deep moral commitments of the modern world.

As individual freedom is curtailed in the name of societal health, the current pandemic calls these commitments into question. Critiques of individualism rightly ask whether the actions and judgments of the individual are the proper subject of ethics and whether making the individual the focus of ethical concern is itself immoral.

Yet, if we begin moral deliberation with community or society as a whole rather than the individual, then we are in danger of the collective taking precedence over and oppressing the individual. This is also immoral. Should individual freedoms be favoured to the exclusion of all other considerations? Or do certain established social norms or obligations related to care for the vulnerable place limits on what can be done? Somehow, the means we have always assumed as being adequate to the task of achieving human welfare, health and peace, are failing us.

Have we lost sight of the primacy of human ends? Governments still push for economic growth and technological advances, but many are now asking: economic growth for what, technology for what? Needless to say, the respondents should be taken from a representative sample. Under the current contact restrictions, using an online panel is the only option. Sample : To be specific, we envisage to interview a panel of roughly 2, respondents in three consecutive waves, using a fully standardized questionnaire of about twenty minutes interview length.

We intend to include in the questionnaire randomized experimental tools to see whether people react in their responses to varying stimuli that depict the crisis in different degrees of severity. Again, it is necessary to interview the same respondents throughout the crisis.

Sokratis , team Hong Kong Prof. Values in Crisis — a Crisis of Values? Moral Values under the Imprint of the Corona Pandemic.