MORAL RESTRAINT

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites” Edmund Burke.

Burke, a famous and very perceptive political theorist, wrote these much quoted words to a member of the French National Assembly in 1791 as he observed the growth of anarchy in the French Revolution. They may be paraphrased as saying that men will only enjoy real freedom in their society if they all show moral restraint in those areas where their own selfish desires threaten to get the better of them. If they do not, society will descend into anarchy. He was trying to make the point that real freedom is not so much built on the demands for rights, the great cry of the Revolution, as on the readiness to exercise personal responsibility and personal self-restraint in relation to others. It is a much quoted saying simply because it enshrines an essential truth.

Burke uses two words which have been marginalised in our modern thinking, the words “moral” and “restraint” (graphically pictured as “chains”). They desperately need to come back. “Restraint” means there are limits to our personal freedom; we cannot do just what we like, irrespective of consequences upon others. “Moral” means we need to recognise again the force of the words “ought to”; there is a “moral imperative”, a right and a wrong.

The most interesting thing about this statement of Burke is that he is not placing the task of securing civil liberty on government legislation to hold wrongdoing in check (though that has its own place and an important place), but is speaking to all individuals who make up the society and putting responsibility on them. He is making the point that it is the prevailing communal good behaviour of individual people that in the end makes real freedom in society possible. In an age which seems to have off-loaded everything onto “the government”, with the ubiquitous expression, “the government ought” (notice the ‘ought’), we sadly need this correction.

Governments are not capable of bringing freedom and security by restrictive legislation alone, no matter how well intentioned. Moral restraint must be present in the very fibre of the society itself. Otherwise the prisons simply fill up and up, and lying, cheating and corruption in all walks of life rapidly spread, and family solidarity collapses more and more under the onslaught of unrestrained sexual license. Social life becomes more and more oppressed and freedom is lost. It is this need of moral restraint in society as a whole that has to be gripped in our generation. Once we have grasped the need (and there is some way yet to go on this), we then have to answer the question of how this restraint can be re-established after so much of it has been lost.

The short answer is that it has to be taught; but from what text book? The text book of secular humanism is of little help – that is the current prevailing text book and has been found wanting. Neither is philosophy of help. As the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell once said, philosophy provides no real guidelines for moral behaviour. On the contrary modern philosophy has underpinned the removal of absolute standards. It is at this point that the great rock on which Hebrew political and social society was to be built comes to mind with staggering clarity and relevance, namely the Ten Commandments. Here are moral imperatives of extraordinary perception for the well being of a whole society, imperatives which are securely founded on the worship of a “Holy” God, whose word, “Be holy for I am holy” has immense dynamic for every human person. Political theory would do well to follow the lead of divine revelation!

Bob

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