Liberalism’s ethical collapse in times of crisis
Note: This post was originally written as an essay for a philosophy class in January, 2025. So, I apologize if the tone is a bit dry.
"Their morals, their code; it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see- I'll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They'll eat each other."1
The Joker's unnerving words resonate all too vividly in our contemporary moment. Since October 7th, 2023, at least 47,0002 humans - of whom 17,000 are children - have been massacred in Israel's assault on Gaza (as of January 15, 2025). The relentless fifteen month bombing adequately captures the practical if not wholehearted moral support from most of the western political order. Contrary to what many assume, these catastrophic events are not aberrations of the metaphysical underpinnings the western political order is built on; rather, whenever an apparent existential crisis arises, this modern liberal world order precipitates mass destruction and loss of life.
The Crisis of Liberal Moral Framework
In what follows, we aim to show that these massacres indicate more than just individual moral failings. Instead, Liberalism, derived from Enlightenment-era views that largely abandoned the idea of a definitive telos for human beings, has long struggled to produce a unifying basis for moral judgments. For all its ostensible commitment to freedom and rights, liberalism often reverts to instrumental politics that justify shockingly high "collateral damage." When a perceived crisis threatens the stability of liberal orders, bureaucratic and instrumental frameworks typically assume control, offering merely procedural or technocratic solutions. These solutions, rarely anchored in any teleological conception of the Good, prove impotent to prevent mass killings. Like the Joker's bleak prophecy, liberal moral codes are swiftly forsaken when threatened by perceived barbarism, existential menaces, or crises requiring swift "bureaucratic" response.
Historical Origins and the Loss of Telos
The Historical Critical Method (HCM) brought consensus among European scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth century that the truth of the Bible is not a given and has to correspond to reason and fact as its text was shaped largely through humans3. This development precipitated the Enlightenment. Thinkers from Locke to Hume, Kant, and Smith ventured to define the Good without recourse to a divine or teleological grounding. This shift marked a departure from classical Aristotelian ethics, which viewed ethics teleologically. Indeed pre-modern thinkers—from Aristotle to Aquinas—argued that human beings are oriented toward a highest good. In Aristotle's Nichomachean teleological ethics, what a human is and what he could be if he realizes his true potential are distinct and the values realized through actions that take him from the former to the latter is ethics. In the absence of any one of these three components - an untutored human, a human who has realized his potential, the actions from the untutored state to the realized state - the other two suffer from incoherence. Josef Pieper also underscores that the Aristotelian notion of happiness (as the realization of one's nature) fuses seamlessly with Christian thought, holding that humanity's true fulfillment lies in a contemplative union with the divine.
The Thomistic Vision
Aquinas in his Treatise on Human Nature (Summa Theologica, I, Q.93) proceeded to prove that man was created in the image of God, bearing a resemblance not merely in physical form but in intellect, will, and the capacity to recognize ultimate truth. Being created "to the image and likeness of God" implied a telos of uniting with Him, a movement toward perfect happiness and love that transcends worldly contingency. Aquinas discusses how all creation reflects God, but rational beings—men and angels—reflect Him more perfectly, for they can know and will in a manner that imitates divine self-knowledge and self-love. In that pre-modern teleology, every human bears an infinite worth, for each is the image of God called to be unified with Him. In these frameworks, ethics cannot be divorced from humanity's ultimate purpose. Grounded in this vision, to commit atrocities against the innocent would be unthinkable because one's fellow human beings are bound to the same transcendent end. In such a metaphysically rich context, systematic slaughter of civilians—especially on the order of tens or hundreds of thousands—would be unimaginable as a "policy option." It would violate the moral reality that humans, as reflections of God, must never be reduced to mere expendable matter.
The Enlightenment's Break with Tradition
The Enlightenment, for all its rational progress, jettisoned the concept of a divinely or cosmically ordained telos that underpinned classical and medieval ethical systems. This is the culmination of a historical progression in which confidence in teleological or divinely ordained structures eroded under mounting intellectual and sociopolitical pressures. On the intellectual front, the Reformation fractured Latin Christendom, ushering in theological pluralism, while the Scientific Revolution prompted thinkers such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton to formulate laws and models that relegated teleological explanations to the sidelines. Increasingly, philosophers began to argue that the cosmos functions like a mechanism governed by lawlike regularities rather than purpose-driven ends. On the sociopolitical front, the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (e.g., the Thirty Years' War culminating in the Peace of Westphalia) deeply undermined the notion that shared religious or teleological commitments could secure peaceful coexistence. As states emerged as sovereign and relatively secular entities, they sought new, non-theological grounds for public order.
When Descartes and Hobbes inaugurated the so-called "rationalist turn," they replaced appeals to ultimate purposes with appeals to clear and distinct ideas or to social contracts preserving security. In this new found world, searching for the replacement of the telos, Kant's categorical imperative implied moral beliefs can be founded upon reason, not in passion while Hume concluded moral beliefs are from human passion and cannot be founded upon reason while Keirkegaard rejected both. While Hume, Kant, Diderot, Kierkegaard, and Smith all disagree with each other in their quest for finding a rational basis for moral beliefs, they all share the rejection of any teleological view of human nature or its essence that guides him to the ought to be. Each of these three moral philosophies succeeds on the basis of the failure of the other two and as a sum total none of them succeeds.
The Rise of Emotivism
However, the abandonment of the human telos in the Enlightenment project led to multiple rival frameworks of ethics without any premises that can be asserted over each other. As such, the failure of the Enlightenment project to build a unifying rational foundation inevitably led to emotivism where all moral expressions became a matter of preference or attitude, and are not propositions that can be true or false in sharp contrast to a moral realist framework where moral expressions have truth value4. As a result, moral disagreements can no longer be reconciled as the rival premises behind them are just assertions and cannot be evaluated against each other. Such emotivism is the de facto operating procedure in the current western political order founded upon liberalism. Liberalism itself is built upon ideas of empiricists like Locke whose empiricism inevitably leads to the idea that all moral knowledge, like other knowledge, can only be derived from experience and sensory perception rather than first principle ideas. In theory, this fosters a tolerant, pluralistic society. In practice, however, in the absence of a framework where moral disagreements can be solved, this political system resorts to procedural or technocratic solutions through complex bureaucratic structures to navigate complex societal issues. Weber's notion of disenchantment - Entzauberung - captures the dynamic: once the moral realm is severed from transcendental ends, bureaucratic efficiency stands as the dominant criterion for governance. The system's hallmark is meticulous procedure, not moral deliberation. When moral consensus is impossible, the only achievable consensus is that of "instrumental rationality."
International Law and Its Contradictions
After World War II, against the backdrop of the massacres in Dresden and the never before seen destruction of human lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, international law reemerged more urgently, especially the notions of jus ad bellum (right to war) and jus in bello (law in war)5. This was a new, urgent application of principles with roots in earlier thinkers such as Hugo Grotius, who is often deemed the father of modern international law; the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which cemented the sovereignty of nation-states; and the Peace of Augsburg (1555), which laid groundwork for toleration among differing Christian denominations. Just war theory itself has its roots in natural law of course where laws are derived from nature that are universal to all humans and are not subjected to opinions or customs6. Not surprisingly, Locke himself had to utilize a teleological framework to establish a natural-theological basis for natural law in line with natural law's historical origins from St. Augustine or Aquinas in stark contrast to his dismissal of any kind of teleology in accordance with his unqualified empiricism7.
As a result, these laws are based on a kind of moral realism that the political machinery of the modern liberal states disbelieves in. This discrepancy cannot be rectified. The laws almost always submit to the Instrumental politics derived from Machiavellian or Hobbesian realism to achieve what is most efficient or desirable for the Weberian Bureaucracy. There is no objective good for the war machine of the modern state, and even if there was it's not within the scope of deliberation for a servant within the machinery. Politics has become a contest of power and interests with no opportunity for genuine ethical deliberations grounded on objective good. Paradoxically, liberal jurisprudence requires a moral realism it otherwise does not substantively endorse. The contradiction is stark: liberal states sign onto treaties or conventions that assume natural law but govern themselves internally by utilitarian realpolitik. Under stress, the result is often sham justification for overwhelming force—an "ends justify the means" logic reminiscent of Hobbesian or Machiavellian realpolitik.
The Liberal Paradox
Mill's declaration in "On Liberty" that despotism can be a legitimate mode of governance when dealing with barbarism further illustrates this troubling willingness to suspend liberal principles in the face of perceived threats. This is no stray remark but a disclosure of liberal thought's vulnerability: it can bracket its own moral commitments if the "other" is deemed subhuman or backward. Historically, the moral abandonment in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was rationalized as the swiftest method to end World War II. Similarly, the British Empire's governance included well-documented atrocities, from India's famines to systematic violence in Africa. Today, Israeli campaigns in Gaza continue this legacy, rationalized under various banners: self-defense, anti-terror measures, or a "right to exist." But behind these justifications lies a chilling realization. Without an overarching metaphysical claim to each human's infinite worth, one can always find bureaucratic or "pragmatic" reasons to inflict mass suffering.
Addressing Potential Objections
The Problem of Historical Religious Violence
One may object that older metaphysical systems (including the medieval Christian frameworks) led to their own long list of atrocities—witch-hunts, religious wars, inquisitions—and so appealing to a "teleological worldview" is hardly a foolproof escape from mass slaughter. There is merit in noticing how religious authority was sometimes weaponized to perpetrate violence. However, the argument here is not that any metaphysical framework is automatically good; rather, the point is that a genuine teleological framework offers a standard beyond human manipulation. When abuses occurred in pre-modern societies, it was often despite their teleology, not because of it. On the other hand, in a system that altogether denies any binding telos, moral categories themselves are easily co-opted by power interests, with no appeal to a higher framework. Empirical facts also support our position in that more people have died in the 21st century than all previous centuries together from wars.
The "Best We Have" Argument
Another potential objection might be the defense of the modern international system as "the best arrangement so far," with critics pointing out that for all its flaws, the number of democratic states has risen and global charters champion basic rights. This objection underscores a kind of "liberal optimism," which insists that—despite notable setbacks—enlightened democracies, international organizations, and free markets have significantly minimized warfare compared to earlier epochs. Yet the carnage of the 20th and early 21st centuries (two World Wars, Hiroshima, Dresden, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, and beyond) complicates any naive triumphalism. Moreover, this objection does not engage the specific philosophical critique at issue: that liberalism's metaphysical vacuum systematically opens the door to brutality when crises arise. One might retort that "best so far" still is not sufficiently good, especially if the system repeatedly fails to protect the vulnerable in times of existential fear.
The Problem of Metaphysical Pluralism
It might also be argued that metaphysics itself is unverifiable, that there is no shared evidence for a telos, and that adopting one perspective arbitrarily would alienate those who believe differently. Yet to note the diversity of teleological traditions—Aristotelian-Thomist, Islam and Judaism, or Eastern traditions—does not nullify the possibility of consensus around an essential human worth. Plurality in metaphysical and religious traditions is indisputable. Different faiths, philosophies, and cultural codes each claim to know humanity's ultimate end. Yet the question of whether there is a telos is different from the question of which particular telos is correct. Arguably, some baseline recognition of shared human dignity—rooted in a metaphysical sense of the human person—could ground basic laws in a more robust manner than pure instrumental reasoning does. Large segments of history, including the monstrous events in modernity, show that without an unwavering sense of transcendent good, purely instrumental logics can be twisted to legitimize anything: nuclear bombs, drone warfare, chemical weapons, indefinite detention, and the starvation of entire populations (which is in fact currently going on in Gaza).
Conclusion
In fine, we need to cease being surprised by the liberal states' propensity to succumb to causing much havoc and destruction upon human lives it arbitrarily decides as having less value because of the indecisiveness within the philosophical underpinnings that are supposed to guide its course. The deliberate killing of civilians in Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the transatlantic chattel slavery, genocide in India by artificial famine, the Opium wars in China, carnage in Vietnam, and the devastation in Iraq and Afghanistan form a recurring pattern, not an incongruous exception. Recognizing this pattern is the first step towards emancipating ourselves from the western political hegemony's arbitrarism. An arbitrarism, situated wherein an order lacking any teleological core, that rationalizes any measure as long as the data or bureaucratic consensus permit it. Resisting such a system requires a renewed conversation about whether some notion of inherent human value—rooted in more than mere subjective preference—can once again ground our moral and legal frameworks. When humans believe in a truly moralist framework, they can not kill 17,000 children by pressing buttons because 'terrorists' are hiding among them and justify it by it's the terrorists' fault - the absurdity of which resembles the emperor without clothes.