The manuscript has acquired a pencilled question mark beside the heading "The Moral Animal."
No one attempts to erase it.
Blottisham: This chapter is rather dangerous.
Quillibrace: Then let us proceed unusually slowly.
Blottisham: The author appears to suggest that morality is partly concerned with making goodness visible.
Surely morality is about being good.
Quillibrace: One hopes so.
The interesting question is how societies recognise goodness once it exists.
Stray: Recognition isn't automatic.
Large societies require visible signs.
Otherwise everyone must inspect everyone else's character personally.
Blottisham: Which would take forever.
Quillibrace: And make committee meetings even longer.
(A brief pause.)
Stray: The manuscript isn't mocking morality.
It's asking how moral trust becomes possible between strangers.
Blottisham: Through honesty.
Quillibrace: An admirable beginning.
How does one recognise it?
Blottisham: Well...
eventually.
Quillibrace: Society generally prefers not to wait eventually.
(Blottisham nods reluctantly.)
Stray: So communities invent ways of signalling shared commitments.
Oaths.
Professional codes.
Public promises.
Ceremonies.
Quillibrace: Quite.
Visible assurances regarding invisible dispositions.
Blottisham: That seems entirely sensible.
Quillibrace: It is.
The manuscript's concern begins one step later.
Blottisham: Which is?
Quillibrace: The sign occasionally becomes easier to observe than the disposition.
(Silence.)
Stray: Like mistaking a wedding ring for a marriage.
Quillibrace: An excellent example.
The symbol may express the relationship.
It cannot conduct it.
Blottisham: But surely symbols matter.
Quillibrace: Immensely.
Civilisation would be impossible without them.
The difficulty arises only when symbols become substitutes rather than reminders.
(They read for a while.)
Stray: Here's an interesting sentence.
"Communities coordinate around publicly recognisable goodness."
Blottisham: That sounds faintly bureaucratic.
Quillibrace: Morality becomes surprisingly administrative once populations exceed several million.
(They laugh.)
Blottisham: I hadn't thought of ethics as an administrative challenge.
Quillibrace: Most ethical systems eventually do.
The filing arrives rather later.
Stray: The manuscript also distinguishes between goodness...
and confidence that goodness is present.
Quillibrace: Ah.
Now we arrive at the interesting part.
Blottisham: Aren't those the same thing?
Quillibrace: No more than health and confidence in health are the same thing.
Civilisations require both.
They merely flourish when they are not confused.
(A thoughtful silence.)
Stray: Perhaps that's why every age develops new ways of displaying virtue.
The forms change because society itself changes.
Quillibrace: Yes.
A medieval village and a modern city solve rather different coordination problems.
One should therefore expect different moral furniture.
Blottisham: Moral furniture?
Quillibrace: Every civilisation furnishes goodness slightly differently.
The architecture changes.
The aspiration is recognisably familiar.
Blottisham: I rather like that.
Quillibrace: So do I.
Though I distrust liking my own metaphors.
(A pause.)
Stray: I think the manuscript is kinder than I first realised.
It never laughs at people for wishing to be good.
Only for occasionally mistaking public recognisability for the thing itself.
Quillibrace: Precisely.
That mistake is understandable.
Visible things are easier to coordinate than invisible ones.
Blottisham: Then the solution is simply to ignore appearances?
Quillibrace: Good heavens, no.
One cannot conduct civilisation by private intuition alone.
The art lies in remembering that appearances are evidence...
not verdicts.
(Silence.)
Stray: That's rather beautiful.
Quillibrace: Merely practical.
Beautiful things often are.
The discussion concluded after an unexpectedly spirited debate over whether the College's annual prize for Collegial Conduct recognised exemplary behaviour or merely exemplary recognisability.
The prize committee declined to comment.
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