Faith, Unity, Discipline

Even once we accept that morality has a universal foundation, we should still recognize that the particular values, virtues, relationships and obligations that guide our decisions are often contingent. We should respect one another, advance happiness, live flourishing lives and advance justice, but the way in which we should do these things will always be specific to our social context. In recognizing that much of our form of ethical life is relative to our social world, we do not need to think that all of ethics is relative. The ultimate moral ends or principles that ground our pursuits and restrict our actions will only have meaning and substance through the particularities of the form of life we live. To ignore these particularities will only obscure what the ultimate ground for ethics and morality truly is. The particular way in which we live together determines much of our particular form of ethical life. In living together, we organize, coordinate and understand our actions in accordance with social practices. These practices set our expectations of others and give meaning to our activities. When our interactions are complex and when we live with large groups, we organize our interaction more and more, and our practices become more and more structured. What we identify as our social institutions are particularly ordered practices that structure our life together. In ordering our lives, these institutions have profound and pervasive effects on the content of ethical life