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A number of thinkers have commented on the different senses in which
a system can be said to be moral and in which an individual human
being can be said to be moral. For example, in his The Morality
of Law, legal philosopher
Lon L. Fuller distinguishes between what he calls the "the
morality of duty" and the "morality of aspiration."
Fuller explains that the morality of duty begins at the bottom of
human achievement and establishes the fundamental rules that are
necessary to have an ordered society. He says that the basic rules
impose duties regarding what is necessary in order to have social
life. According to Fuller, natural rights create a universal
enforceable duty with regard to just conduct but not with respect to
good conduct. In the morality of duty penalties take priority over
rewards and objective standards can be applied to deviations from
adequate performance. It is not the function of the morality of duty
to compel a man through the law to live the good and virtuous life
of reason. The law, through the enforcement of natural rights, can
only create the prerequisite conditions necessary, but not
sufficient, for the attainment of one's personal flourishing in
society. Securing the social order through protected natural rights
places restrictions on the means a person can use to pursue his
happiness.
Fuller points out that the type of justification that characterizes
judgments of duty does not apply with respect to the morality of
aspiration. He says that the morality of aspiration is reflected in
the Greek philosophy of excellence, challenging ideals, and the Good
Life. It follows that the morality of aspiration exists at the
highest rank of human achievement. Fuller notes that the ancients
properly saw that the word "virtue" belongs in the vocabulary of the
morality of aspiration and not in the vocabulary of the morality of
duty. In the sphere of the morality of aspiration, a person makes
value judgments and praise and reward take precedence over
disapproval and punishment. It is clear that virtuous conduct far
surpasses the realm of natural rights which are neutral regarding
the variety of ways in which a person could choose to pursue his
happiness.
In his
Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith's idea of justice
approximates Fuller's idea of the morality of duty. Smith thus sets
justice apart from all of the other virtues. In addition, both
Herbert Spencer's "law of equal freedom" and Robert Nozick's "framework
for utopia" emphasize the importance of negative freedom so that
each person can pursue his happiness as he sees it best for him to
do so. Also, although Ayn Rand promulgated what Fuller would call a
morality of aspiration, derived natural rights and all of
Objectivism's other moral principles by way of ethical egoism, and
did not use the word "duty," she still spoke of natural rights that
must be respected by every human being.
Most recently, in their book,
Norms of Liberty, Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den
Uyl explain that liberalism is not an equinormative system and that
metanormative and normative levels of ethical principles are split
because of their different relationships to self-perfection. This
two-level ethical structure consists of metanorms (i.e., political
norms) and personal ethical norms. They maintain that natural rights
are an ethical concept not concerned directly with human flourishing.
Natural rights are concerned with context-setting and regulate the
conditions under which personal moral conduct can exist. Natural
rights, as metanormative principles, are based on the universal
characteristics of human nature that call for the protection and
preservation of the possibility of self-directedness.
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