Moral Relationalism
Discussion
Michael F. Mascolo, Allison DiBianca Fasoli, David Greenway:
"Moral Relationalism Moral relationalism holds that moral concerns emerge from and are legitimized in terms of the goods that arise from human relational experience. In this regard, perhaps paradoxically, moral relationalism harks back to Piaget’s (1928/1965) relationalist conception of human development. Piaget’s (1965) relationalist approach has its origins in the classic debate between individualist and holistic conceptions of sociological facts. The individualist approach maintains that society is merely an aggregate of individual persons. From this view, social knowledge is the result of the mere summation of the knowledge across individuals (i.e., “the whole is equal to the sum of its parts”). In contrast, Durkheim championed the holistic conception of emergent sociologism. From this view, social facts are irreducible wholes in the sense that they exhibit properties that do not exist in their base constituents (individual persons). Further, in his version of emergence, novel sociological wholes exist “exclusively in the very society itself” and thus are “external to individual consciousness” (p. xx, cited in Kitchener, 1991); they exist, for example, at the level of collective rather than individual consciousness.
Piaget rejected both extremes of the individualism-holism debate. For Piaget, social knowledge can neither be reduced to the activity of individual minds nor does it correspond to novel sociological wholes that operate somehow independent of their constituents (see Mascolo & Kallio, 2019). Instead, social knowledge (e.g., rationality, reason, social and moral norms) are products of relations between individuals. Piaget called this approach sociological relativism or relationalism. For Piaget, social wholes indeed show emergent properties, they do not form novel entities that are in some way independent of or “hover over” their parts. Instead, “social facts” arise from interactions (relations) between individuals which are consolidated into rules, values and shared signs. For Piaget, shared values have their origins in the personal desires (and values) of individual actors. When people interact, they exchange values, which then become consolidated into larger and more equilibrated systems of rules and meanings. In this way, the norm of reciprocity arises in social interaction as (a) the action of one person results in some (b) satisfaction of desire in another. As a result, a (c) debt or obligation to repay is incurred by the second person as a result of the action of her partner; this debt or obligation can be (d) repaid at some other time. The consolidation of the emergent meanings created by this pattern of interaction forms the basis of reciprocity norms. Piaget’s example of reciprocity illustrates the ways in which evaluative and moral concerns emerge from the structure of social relations. However, the example of reciprocity runs the risk of under-representing the full extent of the intersubjective nature of human interaction (Mascolo & Kallio, 2020).
In the example of reciprocity, it is easy to think of interacting individuals as self-encased actors whose experiential worlds operate largely independent of one another. From this view, humans begin life as separate and independent individuals who become social only when they come into contact with other individuals. While novel forms of social knowledge may arise from relational activity, individual persons precede social relations. From a relational point of view, persons are relational rather than merely individual beings. Persons are both separate and connected, individual and social, distinct but nonetheless mutually-constituting (Gergen, 2009; Mascolo, 2013; Raeff, 2006, Shotter, 2017). Humans are not self-encased beings who come into the world cut off from the experience of others. Instead, humans enter the world with a primordial capacity for intersubjectivity – that is, an ability to share, coordinate and mutually incorporate experience between self and other (Di Paolo & De Jaegher, 2015). The development of a moral sense builds upon the primacy of intersubjective experience (Bråten & Trevarthen, 2007; Trevarthen, 1993) and the demands of relationships (Donahue, 1977).
This relational view of moral development is reflected in the seminal work of Emmanuel Levinas (1961/1987), a French philosophy of Lithuanian heritage who, as a Jew, spent time in concentration camp during World War II. Levinas’ conception of moral action has its origins in his experiences in the Nazi death camps in World War II. The need to treat humans with moral dignity is often justified on the basis of appeals to a common sense of humanity. He noted that any attempt to include individuals under a common conception of humanity was limited by the nature of one’s conception of the human itself. Levinas (1961/1987) warned against the dangers of totalization – the tendency to assimilate the Other to one’s own conception of what it means to be human. Noting the ease with which some groups of people can be defined as other than human, Levinas turned this conception on its head. Instead of anchoring morality in a totalizing conception of humanity, Levinas grounds moral life in terms of ones’ open-ended relation to the other – a spontaneous agent who is a continuous source of novelty. For Levinas, there is an infinity of meaning that lines behind and shines through “the face of the other” (Hendley, 2000; Waldenfels, 2002). My encounter with the other always brings forth the possibility of novel forms of meaning. The other is a constant source of potential novelty, always calling upon me to reconsider or revise my existing understandings of the world. I am thus never complete; the other always provides the possibility of novelty that calls for new forms of responsiveness from me to the other. I act as a moral agent each time I accept to the call to be responsive to the other and to the infinity that the other provides. For Levinas, morality thus emerges from the very structure of relational life (Hendley, 2000). One’s sense of responsibility to the other operates at a pre-reflective level within the very structure of interpersonal relating itself. In any social encounter, the other speaks to me and calls out a response from me. I am called upon not simply to respond to the other, but to be responsive to the plea of the other. It is in my very responsiveness that my responsibility toward the other emerges and evolves. It is my responsivity to the other that provides the grounding for ethical or moral life. Morality is defined in terms of the proper demands of being in relation to others. From a moral relationalist perspective, a moral framework is a symbolic system of strong evaluation that has its origins in relations between people and is justified with reference to diverse goods that arise within intersubjective experience."
Source
* Article: A Relational Approach to Moral Development in Societies, Organizations and Individuals. By Michael F. Mascolo, Allison DiBianca Fasoli, David Greenway. INTEGRAL REVIEW, December 2021, Vol. 17, No. 1 '