Contemporary forms of democracy suffer from ethical theories that try to include too much. This series of podcasts concludes by focusing on John Stuart Mill’s view of liberty that leads to a minimal view of ethics in a democracy. Although all human individuals and all human societies that seek to be moral must follow a single universal moral principle, most people try to manifest many other values in their lives. Economic, aesthetic, religious, and cognitive values all play an important role in human life, but it is a mistake to seek a utopia that incorporates all values in a single society. Mill, following Plato and Kant, urges us to reduce moral demands to what is truly mandatory and beyond that to give people the freedom to create their lives according their own best judgment. The value of peace serves as a final example of a value that can only be achieved by political means that are simultaneously faithful to the universal moral law.

In this podcast the ethical philosophy of Immanuel Kant is presented the best way of understanding the moral principle on which modern democracy is grounded. Rather than thinking of that principle — what Kant calls the Categorical Imperative — as a formula, we should understand its role in showing us not what to think but how to think about any and every moral issue. Kant, like Plato, is primarily concerned with helping us think for ourselves about the most important questions. The Categorical Imperative is best conceived as a single principle that allows important distinctions among three aspects of moral thought and action. It is presented through the image of a triangle with three sides, each representing a distinct aspect: 1. universality, 2. the intrinsic value of persons, and 3. autonomy.

This podcast places special emphasis on the idea of freedom. The search for a moral foundation on which to build democracy leads to two major versions of The Enlightenment — the Greek Enlightenment of the 5th Century B.C. and the 18th Century Enlightenment that spawned the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Throughout his dialogues, Plato practices a form of inquiry he calls dialectic “the way of knowing that is appropriate for free people.” Plato’s character Socrates opposes the Sophist Gorgias, who defends the art of “ruling over others,” and introduces the idea of “ruling over ourselves,” which he applies both to individuals and to societies.

Ethical relativism is antithetical to the concept of a universal moral law that provides a secure foundation for ethics in a democracy. The idea of a social contract as the basis of republics favors relativism, because the members of any society constantly change; today’s contract may or may not be honored tomorrow. Plato wrestled with this issue in The Republic, presenting the idea of a social contract in Book 2 through his character Glaucon. In the Crito, the laws and constitution of Athens emerge as a character that espouses a conservative view of law based on the authority of the republic. In this podcast, that position is examined and found to be inconsistent with ideas that were presented in the Apology. Law, as it emerges from that exchange, turns out to be neither absolute nor relative.

One reason the moral foundation has failed to take its proper place in creating democracy is that other values often masquerade as moral values. The United States Constitution makes a sharp distinction between political values and religious values in order to avoid confusion between those two distinct realms of value. The same is true of economic, aesthetic, military, and a variety of other domains. The important difference between morality and these other categories is that it and it alone takes priority in a genuine democracy. All of these forms of value are relative, but morality alone is universal, applying to all persons.

If religion is not able to provide justification for ethical principles, where can we turn? In this podcast I will begin a line of analysis showing why universal law is the only reasonable way to ground ethical principles and, therefore, to understand what democracy means. I begin by distinguishing between democracy and several other forms of government. Oligarchy is the form many people prefer in the United States and throughout the world.

In episode # 2 the question of whether ethics is grounded on religion was introduced, and the role of reason in both religion and morality was posed. Examples were taken from 16th century India and 18th century Europe and America. However, the philosophical question of whether ethics can and should be grounded on religion was left unanswered. In this third episode we turn to the Greek Enlightenment of the 5th century B.C. and to Plato’s analysis in his dialogue Euthyphro.

Many people turn to religion to guide them about what is right and wrong, good and bad, or just and unjust. Because religion comes in many forms, often the instructions they give conflict with each other. One religious authority may say that reason is incapable of determining what is moral and that faith alone will suffice, whereas another claims that there are good reasons to trust in divine guidance for both ethics and politics. One theologian will claim that only one universal truth exists, whereas another ignores universality and focuses only on a particular creed limited to a select few. Is religion able to guide us in ethical matters?

The first podcast in the series poses the question of the true nature of democracy, claiming that political, historical, and anthropological approaches fail to reach the core of the issue. A philosophical approach is required to get to the essence of democracy. The ethical principles that ground genuine democracy must be universal rather than local if we are to avoid relativism and subjectivism. Some of the great philosophers of all time contribute to this inquiry, beginning with the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Zi.