By Robin Koerner October 15, 2023
We live in an age of agendas.
But agendas cannot make morality or be moral: only human agency can do that.
As history attests, most of the greatest evils require that enough people give up enough of their agency in the name of an agenda.
Understanding the power and responsibility of agency, the morally courageous know that they are wholly responsible for all of their actions, independently of any agenda. They are the people for whom no external cause or abstract, general claim can make a wrong action right, justify a violation of conscience, or make a lie tellable.
It is worth noting how fundamental is the correlation between acting against conscience and speaking untruth: falsehood is wrongdoing’s greatest helper.
We become aware of conscience only when we are facing a decision or having an idea that troubles it. At that point, conscience provides a sense that some way of proceeding would be right or wrong. When we choose to go against conscience, which is to do something that morally troubles us, in almost every case, we have a positive reason to do so that involves some benefit to ourselves.
Thus, when the agenda is wrong, compliance is complicity.
The virtue that matters at times of such choices is moral courage. That is the quality exhibited by the person who chooses the right thing at a cost to herself because the only alternative is to choose the wrong thing at a cost to someone else. It is the quality of the person who asserts his agency against someone else’s agenda.
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