Jots and Tittles (vol. 6, no. 2)

Oxford University Press will publish Dr. Steven Fesmire’s new book Beyond Moral Fundamentalism: Toward a Pragmatic Pluralism. Jots and Tittles asked him to share a bit about the book.

What originally inspired you to write this book?

In 2016 my family and I were in Edinburgh, Scotland during Brexit, then we returned to the U.S. in time for President Trump’s election. During that political turmoil, and its aftermath in the coming years, I struggled for a coherent philosophical response both to right wing rancor and to rising fury among progressives, on and off campuses. To many, including many of my students at Green Mountain College and Middlebury College in Vermont, what I’m calling moral fundamentalism seemed the best way to show moral backbone. Professional philosophers and public intellectuals worried about rising illiberalism on the political right as well as on the left. But in the main ethicists and political theorists continued to debate the single Right way to reason about ethics and politics, even as (to my mind) evidence mounted that the “single right way” mentality itself was a remediable part of the problem.

Radford University’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies celebrates its applied and practical orientation. Is that on display in this new book?

Yes, the book focuses on “wickedly” complex problems in ethics, education, and politics. Even as we confront increasingly complex global problems that demand greater awareness, moral sensitivity, and responsibility, a more popular approach beckons: a stark one-way mentality that assumes those going the right way (“us”) are constantly endangered by others (“them”) going the wrong way. I call this approach “moral fundamentalism,” the habit of assuming that there is an exclusively right way to diagnose problems, along with a single practical solution to any problem.

What’s wrong with moral fundamentalism? Taking a moral stand is still important, right?

Yes, we need moral backbone, but without the closed-mindedness. Moral fundamentalism causes us to oversimplify situations, neglect broader context, take refuge in dogmatic absolutes, ignore possibilities for finding common ground, assume privileged access to the right way to proceed, and shut off honest inquiry. In this way, moral fundamentalism—exacerbated by social media silos—also makes the worst of native impulses toward social bonding and antagonism. This depletes social capital and makes it impossible to debate and achieve social goals that we can only achieve together, such as public health, justice, security, sustainability, peace, and democracy.