Moralism may also be an absolutism or dogmatism about moral principles or standards, as opposed to a relativism or skepticism. It may be both descriptivist and prescriptivist in its scope and application. It may also be cognitivist in asserting that there are moral facts and that moral knowledge is possible.
A moralist may be someone who tends to make or express moral judgments in or through their speech or writing. They may be someone who tends to look for moral meanings and moral explanations for things, and to make moral inferences or draw moral conclusions from them.
To be moralistic may also be to be focused on morality, to the point of seeing things only for what they say about some other person's or group's morality and ignoring any other non-moral meanings those things may have.
A moralizer may be a person who says "I told you so" or who scolds you for not having listened to their advice. They may be someone who subjects others to public ridicule or shame for having acted wrongly. They may also be someone who likes to gossip, and who makes veiled (or not so veiled) allegations through insinuation or innuendo about others' behavior.
On the other hand, someone who consciously avoids making moral judgments about things (or who avoids moralizing or being moralistic) may do so as an expression of the view that not all things can be explained in moral terms, and that moralizing may be inappropriate in some situations. They may be someone who recognizes that there may be deeper explanations for some things than those provided by conventional notions of morality.
While scientism may hold that all (meaningful) questions are ultimately scientific questions, moralism may hold that all (meaningful) questions are ultimately moral questions. While scientism may hold that all questions can be answered scientifically, moralism may hold that all questions can be answered morally.
In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice meets a Duchess who tells her there's a moral lesson to be learned from everything; we have only to discover what that moral lesson is. The Duchess may thus be a moralizer. "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it," she says. One of these morals is: "Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves."1 (In other words, if we truly attend to the meaning of something, then we'll most likely find some way of expressing that meaning.)
Alfred Archer (2017) explains that moralism involves an inflated sense of the extent to which moral criticism is appropriate.2 Thus, moral criticism of individuals who've performed actions that are morally indifferent may be inappropriate, as may be criticism of individuals who haven't performed actions that are supererogatory. So also may criticism of individuals who've acted wrongly be inappropriate, if there are exculpatory circumstances.3
Craig Taylor (2012) notes that when we accuse others of moralizing, we ourselves may be moralizing. When we accuse others of moralism, we ourselves may be guilty of moralism. So we must do more than merely point a moral finger at those who point a moral finger at others.4
According to Taylor, a defect of moralism is that it may involve a failure to recognize or acknowledge the full humanity of those who are criticized, as well as their nature as morally accountable beings.5 Another defect of moralism is that it may involve a distorted conception of morality, insofar as it means taking some things as a moral matter when they actually are not.6
Phillip Rieff, in Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959), describes Freud as a moralist, in the sense that Freud divides the self into three psychic agencies, the id (or instinct), the ego (or reason), and the superego (or conscience), thereby assigning control over the id to the ego, and control over the ego to the superego. Each of these three psychic agencies has moral dimensions and can be described in moral terms.
According to Noël Carroll (1966), radical moralism in the evaluation of art is the theory that the purpose of art is to express moral values. Radical moralism holds that the aesthetic value of an artwork depends on the moral values it expresses. The moral virtues of an artwork are always aesthetic virtues, and the moral defects of an artwork are always aesthetic defects. Moderate moralism. on the other hand, holds that the aesthetic value of an artwork may partly depend on the moral values it expresses. The moral virtues of an artwork may sometimes be aesthetic virtues, and the moral defects of an artwork may sometimes be aesthetic defects; however, not all moral virtues of an artwork are necessarily aesthetic virtues, and not all moral defects of an artwork are necessarily aesthetic defects.7
Other theories of moral and aesthetic criticism, as described by Carroll, include radical autonomism, which holds that moral values and aesthetic values are totally autonomous and separate, and moderate autonomism, which holds that moral values and aesthetic values are autonomous and separate, but that artworks may be evaluated for their moral as well as aesthetic virtues or defects.8
FOOTNOTES
1Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass [1865] (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), p. 68.
2Alfred Archer, "The Problem with Moralism," in Ratio (July 2017), p. 1, online at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318288004_The_problem_with_moralism
3Ibid. p. 3
4Craig Taylor, Moralism: A Study of a Vice (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012), p. 11.
5Ibid., p. 34.
6Ibid., p. 58.
7Noël Carroll, "Moderate Moralism versus Moderate Autonomism," in The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 38 (Oct 1998), p. 419.
8Noël Carroll, "Moderate Moralism," in The British Journal of Aesthetics, Vol. 36, No. 3 (July 1996), p. 230.
OTHER REFERENCES
Phillip Rieff, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959).
