Final remarks

Admittedly, this chapter stops far short of formulating an alternative sociological theory of moral behaviour. Its purpose is much more modest: to discuss some sources of moral drive other than social and some societally produced conditions under which immoral behaviour becomes possible. Even such a limited discussion, it seems, shows that the orthodox sociology of morality is in need of substantial revision. One of the orthodox assumptions that seems to have failed the test particularly badly is that moral behaviour is born of the operation of society and maintained by the operation of societal institutions, that society is essentially a humanizing, moralizing device and that, accordingly, the incidence of immoral conduct on anything more than a marginal scale may be explained only as an effect of the malfunctioning of 'normal' social arrangements. The corollary of this assumption is that immorality cannot on the whole be societally produced, and that its true causes must be sought elsewhere.

The point made in this chapter is that powerful moral drives have a pre-societal origin, while some aspects of modern societal organization cause considerable weakening of their constraining power; that, in effect, society may make the immoral conduct more, rather than less, plausible. The Western-promoted mythical image of the world without modern bureaucracy and expertise as ruled by the 'jungle law' or the 'law of the fist' bears evidence partly to the self-legitimizing need of modern bureaucracy²⁷ which set to destroy the competition of norms deriving from drives and proclivities it did not control,²⁸ and partly to the degree to which the pristine human ability to regulate reciprocal relations on the basis of moral responsibility has been by-now lost and forgotten. What is therefore presented and conceived of as savagery to be tamed and

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suppressed may prove on a close scrutiny to be the self same moral drive that the civilizing process set out to neutralize, and then to replace with the controlling pressures emanating from the new structure of domination. Once the moral forces spontaneously generated by human proximity had been delegitimized and paralyzed, the new forces which replaced it acquired an unprecedented freedom of manoeuvre. They may generate on a massive scale a conduct which can be defined as ethically correct only by the criminals in power.

Among societal achievements in the sphere of the management of morality one needs to name: social production of distance, which either annuls or weakens the pressure of moral responsibility; substitution of technical for moral responsibility, which effectively conceals the moral significance of the action; and the technology of segregation and separation, which promotes indifference to the plight of the Other which otherwise would be subject to moral evaluation and morally motivated response. One needs also to consider that all these morality-eroding mechanisms are further strengthened by the principle of sovereignty of state powers usurping supreme ethical authority on behalf of the societies they rule. Except for diffuse and often ineffective 'world opinion', the rulers of states are on the whole unconstrained in their management of norms binding on the territory of their sovereign rule. Proofs are not lacking that the more unscrupulous their actions in that field, the more intense are the calls for their appeasement' which reconfirm and reinforce their monopoly and dictatorship in the field of moral judgement.

What follows is that under modern order the ancient Sophoclean conflict between moral law and the law of society shows no signs of abating. If anything, it tends to become more frequent and more profound - and the odds are shifted in favour of the morality-suppressing societal pressures. On many occasions moral behaviour means taking a stance dubbed and decreed anti-social or subversive by the powers that be and by public opinion (whether outspoken or merely manifested in majority action or non-action). Promotion of moral behaviour in such cases means resistance to societal authority and action aimed at the weakening of its grip. Moral duty has in count on us pristine source: the essential human responsibility for the Other.

That these problems have an urgency in addition to their academic interest, reminds us of the words of Paul Hilberg:

Remember, again, that the basic question was whether a western