Dr Asangba Tzudir
Aristotle said that “every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for that reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” If something is the justified highest good, then it is good in itself, and not merely because it leads to something else. The spirit of which Aristotle said, and its intended understanding ought to be the spirit and essence of the moral politics. Moral politics which is different from political ethics provides room for making moral judgments based on the political ethics.
Every Government and its associated policies of governance come with its own political ethics. However, the question is whether it gives room for moral politics to intervene in the political ethics. This becomes a pertinent issue in the face of the State Government that is within an ‘opposition-less’ fold. Such a nature of the government has brought about a ‘normalisation’ of sorts. Only time will tell whether this can be taken as a reference towards what can be said to be the ‘coming politics’ for the select few.
Such a ‘state of being’ becomes the means through which more power can be realized from the subjects or those that are ‘ruled.’ However, the moral politics should not be sacrificed at the altar of political ethics thereby staging and enforcing the ‘will’ of the government contrary to the ‘will’ of the people.
On the whole it is not just about creating a so called harmonious state but a framework that should look towards what can possibly be considered as one that provides a ‘good life’ for the people. This should include a space for the populace to let them make rational claims.
The space for moral politics also needs to go beyond moral judgments by accommodating the rational claims and make it wholesome. While rights are either given or claimed, it is the latter that makes the issue of rights contentious. Yet, a ‘good life’ can only be envisaged when there is space to accommodate the ‘will’ of the people so also rational claims. On the Contrary, ‘political ethics’ of the day should not again bow down to irrational claims.
While interests are bound to differ between those at the top and the bottom, and in the evolution of contending interests on the idea of ‘good life,’ the state can easily turn to the denial of equal concern and respect through the enforcement of a particular vision of their ‘good life’ thereby privileging inequality and injustice.
Ronald Dworkin’s expression on the basic political right to equal concern and respect towards its citizens demands due warrant in that the Government must treat those whom it governs with not just concern but equal concern and respect. The state is obliged and bound by duty to treat each person, being subjects of the state, as a moral and political equal and also give equal concern and respect while catering to the needs of its own subjects.
The state as the provider and guarantor of life of an individual citizen should act upon the morally obligated duty with a realisation that no one deserves, irrespective of its worth, to be made a social and political outcast like the once lepers who were cast out of the city walls. This can be translated into praxis only where there is space for moral politics to operate within the domain of moral judgments.
In this strain, the state should transparently channel goods and services and deliver equal opportunities and not work on lame fictitious grounds, that no citizen, under normal circumstances should be entitled to more opportunities nor are they worthy of more concern and that one citizen’s conception of the ‘good life’ should not be prioritised as an exception or superior to others.
The current state of affairs, of violence, corruption, immoral activities and unethical means of living which have become habitual and now finds normalized is somehow rooted in a long standing history of denial of equal rights and opportunities.
As such, the government needs to act responsibly and which requires the government to be ‘necessarily guided by the principle of the moral’ – the moral politics. Only when they are morally guided can they act responsibly. It is morality that gives impetus to be responsible – a kind of responsibility that gives them the vision in defining the best democratic way for people to live followed by a careful analysis of their thoughts and actions as right or wrong under particular circumstances. The question of the need for moral politics is not a meta-ethical narrative, nor a sort of philosophical propaganda, but a question concerning praxis, of life and living.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir contributes a weekly guest editorial to The Morung Express. Comments can be emailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
