另一種道德哲學：「道德形式」的評估

Another Kind of Moral Philosophy: Evaluating 'Forms of Morality'

道德是什麼？首先，人們共同生活需要某種基本的人際秩序，我們叫它做「道德秩序」，是這樣的概念並還沒有觸及到人們要如何來參與，只有當我們進一步問要如何來實現道德秩序時，我們感興趣的道德概念才會出現。對於實現道德秩序，有兩種說法，分別決定了不同的道德概念：「道德即規範」（morality as norms）指出道德秩序的實現在於遵守一組合情合理的共同規範，而「道德即心理（結構）」（morality as a psychic structure）則強調道德實現的關鍵，在於人們是否具有恰當的心理結構。概據「道德即規範」的概念，道德就是一組有關一個人應該如何行為的命題，也就是一組行為規範；這個概念相當自然，因為個人活在社會裡，彼此間需要互相的協調合作，才能求得一己生活的基本保障，所以大家有必要共同遵守一組合情合理的行為規範，而「道德」指的就是那一套合乎情理的共同規範。

Preoccupied with providing reasonable norms for human interaction and their rationale, traditional moral philosophy assumes a rather naive view of moral psychology: 'conscience' is often taken to be the ultimate psychic agent, expected to carry the weight of moral demands (whatever they turn out to be). However, 'conscience' is not as benign as they thought it was, as we can see from psychoanalytic phenomena of 'moral pathology,' such as 'pale criminality' and 'moral masochism.' Sufferers of moral pathology are induced to act against morality not because of a lack of moral conscience, but in virtue of their overly heightened sense of what the authoritative morality demands: they commit moral wrongs to seek punishment, (partly) because for pale criminals it can purge the pre-existing sense of guilt that a highly sensitive conscience created in the first place, and for moral masochists it is associated with fulfillment of some earlier passive sexual desires. The traditional norm-oriented approach to moral philosophy cannot take account of phenomena of moral pathology because it tends to idealize morality, paying no attention to the developmental hazards the inner authoritative moral agent might bring. In view of these limits of the traditional norm-oriented approach, I introduce a 'psychology-oriented' approach, in which conscience, being restored to its proper developmental history of the individual (conscience as the superego), is no longer regarded as 'the' inner agent of morality, but only as one possible 'form of morality' among many. This 'psychology-oriented' approach not only leads us to realize the fact that morality (whatever its content) does, and needs to, take a particular form, but also enables to reflect upon the possibility of a more benign form of morality than the authoritative one, e.g., in the form of 'an ego ideal.' Its task of evaluating forms of morality is analogous to that of diagnosing tumors as benign or malign in medicine, it may not offer us an offhand prescription about what to act, but it tells us the appropriate psychological conditions for a healthy moral life, something we need to know for any congenial moral order.