moral foundation essay

Moral Foundations: The Moral Foundation’s Questionnaire Essay

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Introduction

Moral foundations, value differences.

Communication with people is a process through which human relationships are realized and an essential component that makes up almost the entire human life. Nevertheless, communication is not just a conversation of people, but a whole communication system consisting of communication sides, their mutual influence, ethics, communication techniques, and other components. When the process of communication is closely related to work and directly depends on it, then a person must possess specific communication techniques with clients. In this case, it is essential to know the communication methods and be guided by specific rules and ethics.

After reviewing the questionnaire called Moral Foundations, I received the following results. Harm/Care: 22, Fairness/Reciprocity: 22, In-Group/Loyalty: 11, Authority/Respect: 20, Purity/Sanctity: 16 (Hook et al., 2017). The questionnaire results seem to me to be correct since they quite accurately determine my worldview and attitude to life and the people around me. Also, they describe my standards and understanding of right and wrong quite closely.

When I think about my values and moral principles system, I can quite apply this model as a basis. This questionnaire contains all the necessary components: care, honesty, fairness, authority, and purity (Hook et al., 2017). However, this questionnaire is not perfect, so I would suggest making some changes to it even more effective. For example, it would be helpful to add several items to this questionnaire to reveal the level of professional and educational motivation. Moreover, I would provide this questionnaire with several questions that would characterize the current emotional state of the respondent.

Based on the results of this questionnaire, it is likely that rude and impatient customers will cause me the most severe problems. I lack self-confidence and firmness, which can be used by more authoritarian or even impulsive people who like to insist on their own. I need to cultivate greater firmness and fortitude of character to cope with any professional tasks effectively. A real professional needs to constantly develop and improve his communication skills. It will also probably be difficult for me to work in a team, so it is much more comfortable to work alone.

There are various causes of conflicts in the field of human services. They include socio-psychological reasons when there is no balance in the performance of their roles and personal reasons that arise due to character traits. I consider the following to be the most dangerous potential conflicts that can happen to me at work. Firstly, I believe a conflict based on inequality and gender stereotypes to be a dangerous type of conflict.

Often people do not pay attention to a person’s skills, taking into account gender. Secondly, some people have stereotypes about appearance when they are biased against a person who looks unconventional. Thirdly, there is a danger of misunderstanding when the conversation participants do not have the necessary skills for effective communication. I suppose these three types of conflict are the most severe and undesirable for me.

Case Example: Martha and Lisa

Martha, a 20-year-old American, heterosexual, cisgender, is in a toxic relationship with a young man who treats her disrespectfully, does not appreciate her qualities, and constantly underestimates her self-esteem. On this basis, she decides to visit a therapist, 26-year-old Lisa, American, heterosexual, cisgender, to sort out the relationship with her boyfriend. Since childhood, Martha believes that she is unworthy of the best and worse than others, and, thus, she subconsciously finds people who treat her rudely and disrespectfully. At the same time, she does not dare to part with her boyfriend because she is afraid that she will be left alone. Lisa wants to help Martha raise her self-esteem and point out that Martha’s boyfriend deliberately cultivates a sense of guilt in her.

Martha: We now live as neighbors, not as a couple. There is nothing romantic left in our relationship. We greet each other after work, have dinner in different rooms and go to bed. My boyfriend constantly tells me how little money we have and how much I spend.

Lisa: You need to change your attitude towards yourself, Martha. You are a young and beautiful girl who does not require such a toxic relationship at such a young age. You need to understand yourself and understand that this relationship is pulling you back.

Martha: I cannot leave him because we have been together for three years. I tried to go with him to a family psychologist, but he claims no problems in our relationship. He says that everything suits him, and I come up with issues out of nothing.

Lisa: Of course, everything suits him because you cook for him, do everyday life, and, most importantly, he always has a person on whom he can snap.

Martha: He says that our relationship is dear to him and wants to preserve it, but he does nothing simultaneously.

Lisa: You have to accept that nothing will change if you don’t take the first decisive step yourself. Your boyfriend only says that he will change, but he is satisfied with the position that he now occupies. You are emotionally dependent on him, afraid to leave him and start a new relationship, and rely on his opinion. It is essential to change this attitude and realize that you deserve only the best and that it is necessary to end unhealthy relationships in time.

In this paper, the results of the moral foundation’s questionnaire were analyzed. It was revealed that the results obtained correspond to reality and are an accurate description of my ideas about right and wrong. After receiving the questionnaire results, it became clear that this model is applicable to describe the moral system, although several options for additional points were proposed. The author defined the three most unpleasant types of conflicts, and an example of a conflict situation at work was compiled.

Hook J. N., Donald D. D., Owen, J., & C. (2017). Cultural humility: Engaging diverse identities in therapy . American Psychological Association.

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Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Forthcoming

64 Pages Posted: 4 Dec 2012

Jesse Graham

University of Southern California

Jonathan Haidt

New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business

Sena Koleva

New York University; University of California, Irvine - School of Social Ecology; California State University Los Angeles

University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Illinois at Chicago

Sean P. Wojcik

University of California, Irvine

Peter H. Ditto

University of California, Irvine - School of Social Ecology

Date Written: November 28, 2012

Where does morality come from? Why are moral judgments often so similar across cultures, yet sometimes so variable? Is morality one thing, or many? Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) was created to answer these questions. In this chapter we describe the origins, assumptions, and current conceptualization of the theory, and detail the empirical findings that MFT has made possible, both within social psychology and beyond. Looking toward the future, we embrace several critiques of the theory, and specify five criteria for determining what should be considered a foundation of human morality. Finally, we suggest a variety of future directions for MFT and for moral psychology.

Keywords: morality, moral foundations, pluralism, social psychology, moral judgments, moral psychology

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Jesse Graham (Contact Author)

University of southern california ( email ).

Los Angeles, CA 90089-1061 United States 2137409535 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.usc.edu/grahamlab

New York University (NYU) - Leonard N. Stern School of Business ( email )

NYU-Stern School of Business 44 West 4th Street New York, NY NY 10012 United States

Spassena Koleva

New york university.

20 Cooper Square 3rd Floor New York, NY 10003-711 United States

University of California, Irvine - School of Social Ecology ( email )

4312 Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway Irvine, CA 92697 United States

California State University Los Angeles ( email )

5151 State University Dr Los Angeles, CA 90032 United States

University of Illinois at Chicago ( email )

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Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory: The 6 Foundations

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What is Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory? What does he believe are the six foundations of morality ?

Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory puts forth six foundations of morality that we all have, but in different proportions. They are based on how people in various cultures deal with life’s challenges and what they regard as virtues.

Read more to learn about Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory.

The First Five Foundations of Morality

Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory is based on his examination of normal social life and the challenges associated with it around the world. He considered how people in different cultures deal with these challenges differently, and what they prioritize as virtues.

In his research, Haidt found five foundations of morality, or “taste receptors.” Just as we all have the same five taste receptors but prefer different foods, we all have these same five moral foundations, but in different proportions. The foundations are:

• Fairness/cheating
• Loyalty/betrayal
• Authority/subversion
• Sanctity/degradation

Each foundation has an adaptive advantage—in some way, each one helped humans succeed. Each also has triggers that existed generations ago and triggers that exist today. Finally, each foundation is associated with certain emotions and virtues. Find the characteristics of each foundation, or “taste receptor,” in the table below.

Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory did not include the sixth foundation, Liberty/oppression , until he discovered it later.

To understand how the foundations work in practice, we’ll use an example of the Care/harm principle: You take your four-year-old to a hospital to have his appendix removed. You can watch through a glass wall, and you see him lying on the operating table unconscious while the surgeon punctures his abdomen. You might feel both relief knowing the doctor is saving his life and pain watching him get punctured. From Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian point of view, it would be irrational if you looked away in fear because you know the doctor is not harming your child. But from the point of view of Haidt’s “taste receptor” theory, it makes sense, because you have an emotional response to watching your child bleed, even though you know rationally the doctor is not committing violence on him. This shows that you are caring and empathetic and that the Care/harm principle is a powerful “taste receptor” for you.

Discovering the Sixth Foundation

Haidt began to conduct experiments and write opinions based on his five principles, he realized that liberals and conservatives understood the second principle, Fairness/cheating, differently. Liberals argued that conservatives don’t care about fairness because they don’t care about equal outcomes—for example, they don’t care whether every school district is equally well-funded. However, conservatives also argued that liberals don’t care about fairness in this case because they don’t care about proportional outcomes—for example, they don’t care that successful people have to pay a lot of their hard-earned money in taxes. Haidt realized that he needed a better definition of fairness, and with it a better definition of equality. This led him to create a sixth taste receptor. 

The Sixth Foundation of Morality

The Fairness foundation is rooted in the wish to protect communities from cheaters, while the new foundation, Liberty/oppression, is about protecting society from cheaters. Fairness/cheating is about reciprocity, while Liberty/oppression is about a broader definition of equality. 

Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory states that the Liberty/oppression foundation rests on human nature. There are wide differences between philosophers’ understanding of basic human nature, but it’s clear that in every “state of nature,” some humans want to dominate others. When humans band together, it’s to protect each other from tyranny and also to select away from the people who would choose to dominate or bully others.

The original trigger of the Liberty/oppression matrix is domination and tyranny. People get angry when they feel controlled, which can lead to a reactance —when an authority figure tells you to do something and you become interested in doing the opposite. People band together to stop this domination and can resist or even sometimes kill the oppressor. Biologically, people who couldn’t recognize this kind of oppression coming were less likely to thrive.

The Liberty foundation exists in some tension with the Authority foundation. We do recognize authority as sometimes legitimate (the Authority foundation), but we’re vigilant about authority and want our authority figures to earn our trust (the Liberty foundation). Read any declaration of independence from a colonial state, including America’s, and you’ll see signs of this foundation. It lists oppressive events and enumerates rights that a revolution will secure. 

Oppression concerns both liberals and conservatives, and they express this concern in unique ways. 

• Liberals employ the Liberty/oppression foundation when arguing on behalf of traditional underdogs. They worry that the accumulation of wealth by the top 1% will lead to oppression, and they fight for civil rights and human rights. Sometimes people further to the left also fight for equal outcomes, or an equality of pay and services rendered no matter your job title , which doesn’t exist in capitalist systems. 
• Conservatives are more concerned about their own groups than humanity as a whole. They say, “Don’t tread on me with high taxes, my business with regulations, or my nation with the UN and international treaties.”

Conservatives care much more about the word liberty than they do equality. Consider Liberty University, founded by evangelical preacher Jerry Falwell. Liberty University’s students are pro-authority and pro-traditional family, but they oppose control or authority from the government. 

You can find a deeper discussion of Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory in his book The Righteous Mind .

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• Why we all can't get along
• How our divergent moralities evolved
• How we can counter our natural self-righteousness to decrease political divides
• ← Moral Choices: Understanding Ethical Decision-Making
• The Jungian Self: Unlock Your Artistic Genius →

Elizabeth Whitworth

Elizabeth has a lifelong love of books. She devours nonfiction, especially in the areas of history, theology, and philosophy. A switch to audiobooks has kindled her enjoyment of well-narrated fiction, particularly Victorian and early 20th-century works. She appreciates idea-driven books—and a classic murder mystery now and then. Elizabeth has a blog and is writing a book about the beginning and the end of suffering.

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Decoding morality across cultures: Insights from a mega-study of Moral Foundations Theory

Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) was developed with the intention of understanding variations in moral judgments across cultures, proposing five universal moral concerns, including “care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation.” The Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ) was developed to measure these five foundations. Despite the extensive reference to MFT, and widespread use of the MFQ, critics have requested theoretical refinement and improvement of its psychometric properties. In a mega-study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Mohammad Atari and colleagues responded to this call.

“My main goal was to go beyond WEIRD [Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic] morality and develop a measurement tool based on a genuinely diverse sample,” said study author Mohammad Atari ( @MohammadAtari90 ), an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

MFT originally proposed five psychological foundations upon which cultures construct their moralities, undergirded by research in evolutionary and cultural psychology, and anthropology. These foundations were categorized into individualizing foundations (care and fairness) focusing on the protection of individuals, and binding foundations (loyalty, authority, and purity) centered around group cohesion and societal structures. The initial version of the MFQ (i.e., MFQ-1) was designed to measure the degree to which individuals endorse these five areas of morality.

MFQ-1’s extensive use has revealed that various moral foundations correlate with specific attitudes and behaviors, such as empathy, social justice, national security, tradition, and religious attendance. These foundations have further been linked to political ideology, emotional reactions, and other societal attitudes and behaviors. However, the application of MFT and MFQ-1 have also exposed gaps in the theory and measurement. For example, critics have pointed out the omission of moral concerns such as equality,and the inadequacy of MFT in addressing societal inequalities. The MFQ-2 was developed to address these gaps.

The goal of Study 1a was to develop a preliminary item pool for the MFQ-2, based on a top-down structure including six foundations: care, equality, proportionality, loyalty, authority, and purity. The team ensured cultural diversity and avoided Eurocentrism in item creation. A total of 840 participants from the United States and India were included. Participants first completed the MFQ-2 item pool, followed by the MFQ-1, and provided demographic details. The MFQ-2 item pool initially had over 100 items in a declarative format. The item pool was narrowed down for further studies.

Studies 1b and 1c further refined the MFQ-2 item pool. In Study 1b, 90 items were administered to participants from India, United States, and Iran, with the aim of fine-tuning the pool to a more focused set of items. A total of 71 items were retained. Study 1c aimed to finalize the item pool, administering 71 items to participants from the United States, Ecuador, and China. The final MFQ-2 had 50 candidate items.

The final 50-item pool from Study 1 was administered in Study 2. A total of 3902 participants from 19 different nations were recruited. This study had a goal of finalizing the MFQ-2 into a 36-item questionnaire. Exploratory Structural Equation Models were used to finalize the items, leading to the exclusion of 14 items. Reliability across nations was high, with omega coefficients ranging between .73 and .95. The study further revealed that the MFQ-2 had good structural validity across populations.

The researchers found significant cross-cultural differences in moral foundations. Purity was most strongly related to cultural variance, with participants from less WEIRD societies endorsing it more. Gender differences were also observed, with women scoring higher on equality and purity, and men scoring higher on proportionality, loyalty, and authority. Religious affiliation and religiosity showed significant relationships with different moral foundations.

Study 3 aimed to establish the convergence of MFQ-2 scores with MFQ-1 and to examine its capacity to predict criterion variables (e.g., psychopathy, social dominance orientation, disgust sensitivity, among others). This study involved 1410 participants from the United States, India, and Canada. The results showed strong correlations between MFQ-2 foundation scores and their counterparts in MFQ-1. Further, MFQ-2 demonstrated substantive associations with criterion variables and had greater predictive power than MFQ-1 in predicting related psychological variables. The addition of MFQ-2 scores improved the variance explained in outcome measures by an average of 13.7%.

There are several takeaways from this work. First, fairness in MFT was refined into two distinct foundations, including equality and proportionality. This allows for a better understanding of fairness-related norms and behaviors across cultures. The MFQ-2 demonstrated superior psychometric properties compared to MFQ-1, proving more effective in capturing morality cross-culturally. It also outperformed MFQ-1 in predicting various psychological outcomes.

The present findings support a pluralistic view of morality, showing that moral values and their importance greatly vary across cultures. The researchers discovered that moral foundations were not universal, but culture-dependent. There were notable differences in moral values based on gender, religion and political ideology. For example, women placed more importance on equality and purity compared to men, religious individuals scored higher on loyalty, authority, purity and equality, and conservatives scored higher on loyalty, authority, purity, and proportionality, while liberals valued care and equality to a greater extent.

A limitation the researchers note is that despite efforts to collect data from 25 different populations and seven languages, “the present results are still based on a subset of these populations who were educated enough to complete the surveys online.”

Overall, Atari shared that “[This work] suggests a lot of diversity in moral judgments around the globe. People’s endorsements of moral values vary across cultures and the nature of morality might vary from one culture to another.”

The study, “ Morality Beyond the WEIRD: How the Nomological Network of Morality Varies Across Cultures ”, was authored by Mohammad Atari, Jonathan Haidt, Jesse Graham, Sena Koleva, Sean T. Stevens, and Morteza Dehghani.

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Moral Foundations Theory: Background, Review, and Scaffolding for Future Research

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Ethics has no foundation

Ethical values can be both objective and knowable – torture really is wrong – yet not need any foundation outside themselves.

by Andrew Sepielli   + BIO

Many academic fields can be said to ‘study morality’. Of these, the philosophical sub-discipline of normative ethics studies morality in what is arguably the least alienated way. Rather than focusing on how people and societies think and talk about morality, normative ethicists try to figure out which things are, simply, morally good or bad, and why. The philosophical sub-field of meta-ethics adopts, naturally, a ‘meta-’ perspective on the kinds of enquiry that normative ethicists engage in. It asks whether there are objectively correct answers to these questions about good or bad, or whether ethics is, rather, a realm of illusion or mere opinion.

Most of my work in the past decade has been in meta-ethics. I believe that there are truths about what’s morally right and wrong. I believe that some of these truths are objective or, as they say in the literature, ‘stance-independent’. That is to say, it’s not my or our disapproval that makes torture morally wrong; torture is wrong because, to put it simply, it hurts people a lot. I believe that these objective moral truths are knowable, and that some people are better than others are at coming to know them. You can even call them ‘moral experts’ if you wish.

Of course, not everyone agrees with all of that. Some are simply confused; they conflate ‘objective’ with ‘culturally universal’ or ‘innate’ or ‘subsumable under a few exceptionless principles’ or some such. But many people’s misgivings about moral objectivity are more clear headed and deeper. In particular, I find that some demur because they think that, for there to be moral truths, let alone objective, knowable ones, morality would have to have a kind of ‘foundation’ that, in their view, is nowhere to be found. Others, anxious to help, try to show that there’s a firm foundation or ultimate ground for morality after all.

It’s my view that both sides of this conflict are off on the wrong foot. Morality is objective, but it neither requires nor admits of a foundation. It just kind of floats there, along with the evaluative realm more generally, unsupported by anything else. Parts of it can be explained by other parts, but the entirety of the web or network of good and evil is brute. Maybe you think that’s weird and even worthy of outright dismissal. I once thought the same thing. The purpose of this essay, which is based on my book Pragmatist Quietism: A Meta-Ethical System (2022), is to encourage you to start seeing this aspect of the world as I now see it.

T he first question we should ask is: what exactly is a ‘foundation’? We can get clearer on what a foundation is by querying whether a moral theory like utilitarianism might count as one. Utilitarianism says that actions are right to the extent, and only to the extent, that they promote overall wellbeing. So, is utilitarianism in the running for being a foundation for morality? Well, it certainly purports to explain a lot when it comes to right and wrong. Why give to the poor? Promotes wellbeing. Why not punch your neighbour in the face? Doesn’t promote wellbeing. Should the Bank of Canada raise interest rates this quarter? Not clear, because it’s not clear whether it promotes wellbeing. And so on, and so on.

Nonetheless, utilitarianism is not what I have in mind by a ‘foundation’. This is not because utilitarianism is incorrect; it is because utilitarianism is a moral theory. But a foundation is not a moral theory. It’s the kind of thing that’s supposed to ground, or support, or justify, moral theories, and moral claims generally, without itself being a claim within the domain of morality.

Here’s another way to think about it. Suppose that a moral sceptic were to declare, along with David Hume : ‘You cannot rationally infer an “ought” from an “is”!’ Now imagine that I replied: ‘Oh yes you can! Utilitarianism is true, and so, from the fact that an action promotes overall wellbeing, you can infer that it’s what you ought to do.’ I suspect that our sceptic would regard this response as unsatisfactory. ‘You can’t show that Hume was wrong about “ought” and “is” by just wheeling in some further “ought”,’ she might respond. ‘To show that the move from “is” to “ought” can be rational, you would need to step outside of “ought”-discourse entirely, and provide a…a…’ ‘And provide,’ I would finish the sceptic’s sentence, ‘what I’m calling a “foundation”.’

The right and the good have the feel of being supernatural, like ghosts and auras

So a moral theory doesn’t count as a foundation. What would count? Here’s a possible candidate. One thing that philosophers of language try to do is to explain why terms and concepts refer to the things in the world that they do. Many of these theories of reference invoke the relation of causal regulation – regulation of our ‘tokening’ of the concept ‘cat’ or our use of the word ‘cat’, for instance, by the comings and goings of the long-tailed housepets that like to stretch out on the windowsill. Some philosophers have applied this theory of reference to moral terms and concepts, yielding a view on which a concept like ‘good’ refers to whichever property or cluster of properties causally regulates our employment of it. Anything that then had that property(-cluster) would therefore be good. Note that our starting point here is not a claim or theory that is, intuitively speaking, within the subject-matter of ethics. Rather we began with a theory of reference – something belonging to the philosophy of language – that purports to explain how terms and concepts across the board are anchored in the world. One might say that, in doing so, we gave ethics a foundation.

Here is another theoretical move that might count as an attempt at offering a foundation for ethics. Many philosophers these days are leery about accepting the existence of objects, processes or properties that are outside the ‘natural’ order. This may seem to present a problem for ethics, because the right and the good have the feel of being supernatural, like ghosts and auras, rather than natural, like clams and carbon. But a few philosophers have suggested that this is too quick. There may be, in Philippa Foot ’s words, ‘natural goodness’. Doctors speak of a well-functioning kidney, farmers of an underdeveloped calf, and nobody takes them to be dipping into the realm of, as they say, ‘woo’. And while some philosophers have expressed suspicion about so-called ‘teleological’ features like functions and ‘final ends’, others have argued that a closer look at scientific practice reveals their explanatory value. But if there is nothing problematic about goodness in the way of a heart, there should be nothing problematic about goodness in the way of a human being. On this, as it’s sometimes called, ‘neo-Aristotelian’ picture, then, ethical features are part of the natural world.

What makes a semantic account like the causal theory of reference or a metaphysical view like neo-Aristotelian naturalism a candidate for being a foundation, while a theory like utilitarianism is not? They are capable of serving as foundations for ethics because, basically, they’re not ethics; they’re semantics – they’re about what words and concepts mean – or they’re metaphysics, cataloguing what sorts of things exist in the world. Utilitarianism, by contrast, is ethics, and ethics is no more capable of hoisting itself up by its own bootstraps than is anything else. I think we can go a little further, though. While a theory like utilitarianism offers a direct explanation – maybe a good one, maybe a bad one – of what is right or good or whatnot, our causal theory of reference does not. It offers a theory of what concepts and terms refer to, which has implications for which ethical claims are true, which in turn has implications for what’s right or good. But ultimately, it tells you about what things mean, while a theory like utilitarianism tells you what’s right. One indicator of the difference between the respective theories’ explanatory roles is the difference between them in terms of what we may call ‘domain generality’. Theories like ‘terms refer to the features that causally regulate their usage’ or ‘only things posited by the successful natural sciences exist’ have implications beyond ethics – into what ‘cat’ means, or about whether René Descartes’s postulated res cogitans exists — while utilitarianism is solely a theory of right and wrong, and that’s it.

Now, if you were to go on the website formerly known as Twitter and search for ‘foundation morality’ or something similar, you’d turn up many threads about God or religion. So it’s worth asking: is God the kind of thing that people like me have in mind when we talk about a ‘foundation’? There’s much to be said on this matter, but on the face of it, no. If someone were to claim that an action is morally wrong if and only if God forbids it, I’d take this as an ordinary moral theory on a par with the claim that an action is morally wrong if and only if it fails to promote wellbeing. If utilitarianism isn’t the sort of thing that’s even eligible to be a foundation, then neither is this simple version of divine command theory. Now, to be sure, there are ways of beefing up divine command theory so that it might properly be regarded as a stab at a foundation – bringing in the metaphysics of ‘God’s nature’, for example. (It should be said: there are parallel ways of beefing up other normative ethical theories, too.) The only point I wish to make now is that ‘God commands X’ no more takes us ‘outside of ethics’ than ‘X maximises overall wellbeing’. The moral relevance of each one is up for dispute, and that dispute would take place in the arena of regular old first-order moral thinking, with the rest of the normative-ethical gladiators.

S o why is it so often thought that morality requires a foundation? It may seem difficult to explain a way of thinking that strikes one as so obviously correct. I, however, do not think it is correct, let alone obviously correct, and so let me try my hand. Basically, I suspect that many people think morality needs a foundation because they in some way or other assimilate the enquiry that gets called ‘normative ethics’ to ordinary factual enquiry, in which there do indeed seem to be foundations/explanations for the most argued-over claims. Whether or not you accept highfalutin philosophical positions like the principle of sufficient reason, my guess is that that you would look askance at someone who said that it’s going to snow tomorrow but then claimed that there was no explanation for that – that it’s just a brute fact. But if that claim strains credulity, then the view in which ethics as a whole ‘just floats there’, as I put it, untethered from anything that might serve to explain it, is apt to strike you as downright absurd.

Correlatively, the fundamental reason why I don’t think that morality requires a foundation is that I deny that the relevant sorts of ethical disputes are akin to ordinary factual disputes. They have features that make it easy to be fooled into thinking otherwise, but in fact they’re crucially different. More specifically, disputes that get called ‘normative ethics’ are most like disputes that many people have labelled ‘merely verbal’ or ‘non-substantive’. A classic example comes from William James ’s book Pragmatism (1907). A man is chasing a squirrel around a tree. Is the man thereby going around the squirrel? One disputant says ‘no’, because the man is always behind the squirrel. Another says ‘yes’, because the man is first north of the squirrel, then west, then, south, then east of it. The people in this dispute have different beliefs, to be sure; their conflict is not a conflict of desires or emotions. Still, there’s a clear sense in which they’re not really representing the world in different ways. The side you take in this dispute does not determine, either directly or indirectly by way of inference, the way you think any aspect of the world looks, smells, sounds, etc; nor would taking one side or the other of this dispute guide you to act in a way that achieves your aims, whatever these aims may be and whatever your powers may be. The belief, in other words, doesn’t function in the way a representation like a map does.

I think the debates that tend to get called ‘normative ethical’ are a lot like this. The way that the world will look, smell, sound, etc if utilitarianism is true is just the way it will look, smell, sound, etc if utilitarianism is false. Taking sides for or against utilitarianism does not help us to further our ultimate goals, whatever they may happen to be, in the way that a map does. Rather, it simply changes what our ultimate goals are.

Connections with motivation and emotion fool us into assimilating disputes about utilitarianism to ordinary factual disputes

With that said, there are also some important differences between the ‘utilitarianism’ and ‘squirrel’ debates. I said that we sometimes call disputes like that about the squirrel ‘merely verbal’ or ‘non-substantive’. We also sometimes say of them something like: ‘You could say this, or you could say that. What’s the point?’ This is because not only is there no representational accuracy up for grabs in these debates – nothing of value seems to be afforded by them. They seem to be, again, pointless. Not so the majority of our debates about morality and politics. This is because such debates bear on our own and others’ motivations, as well as on praise, blame, esteem and so forth in a way that debates like ‘squirrel’ seem not to. We might say that they are significant, but not substantive. Unlike ‘squirrel’, they matter. But then unlike ordinary factual disputes, the way that they matter is not by affording accurate representation of the world.

It’s these connections with motivation and emotion that fool us into assimilating disputes about utilitarianism, or the ‘ trolley problem ’, or distributive justice, to ordinary factual disputes. Because they bear on what we do and how we feel, we do not reckon that we can simply ‘go either way’ on them in a willy-nilly fashion. We do not regard them as arbitrary, in other words, in the way that we regard ‘squirrel’. Nor do we think it’s acceptable to settle them by conceptual fiat, as we would settle disputes like ‘squirrel’.

Here is what I mean by that. Were I to find myself embroiled in a discussion about whether the man is going around the squirrel, I would probably try to put a stop to it by saying: ‘Look, all I mean by “going around” is this…’. By contrast, suppose we were embroiled in a dispute about whether the media would be right to mothball a story in an attempt to ensure that a disfavoured candidate is not elected. Here I would not try to settle the dispute by saying, eg, ‘Look, by “right”, all I mean is “maximises overall wellbeing”…’ I’d see such a dispute as to be settled by argument, not by stipulation. And again, I think we can chalk up this difference to the fact that normative-ethical disputes, despite failing to afford representational significance just like ‘squirrel’, are significant in practical and affective ways that ‘squirrel’ is not.

T his all puts ‘normative-ethical’ disputes in a strange category, and makes it difficult to know what to say about them in terms of philosophical theory. I actually consider this an advantage, for it is manifestly not obvious what to say about truth and objectivity and knowledge when it comes to ethics! This is witnessed by the fact that some super-smart philosophers think that there are objective truths about ethics, some think ethics is bullshit along the lines of alchemy, some think ethical disputes are really conflicts of desire-like attitudes in disguise, and so on. Anyone who thought ethical disputes work in such a way that one theoretical interpretation is just utterly obvious and natural and easy to state would then owe us an explanation of how so many smart people could be getting it so terribly wrong at this late stage in intellectual history.

And so, acknowledging that it is by no means obvious, here is my own theoretical interpretation. The reason why ethics neither requires nor admits of a foundation outside of itself is that, like ‘squirrel’ but unlike any ordinary factual disputes, the relevant kinds of ethical dispute are non-representational or, as I prefer to put it, fail to afford ‘representational value’. That is to say, one does not represent or mirror or copy the world in any robust sense that is worth caring about by coming to any conclusion rather than another pursuant to such a dispute. But the sorts of extra-ethical considerations drawn from metaphysics, semantics and so on that people typically call upon to serve as ‘foundations’ could be relevant to ethics only by bearing on which moral beliefs, if any, were good or bad in representational respects. They’re not ethically important in the ways that happiness, freedom, equality, dignity and other such things are. But since representational value and disvalue aren’t on the cards when it comes to normative-ethical disputes, these considerations regarding the metaphysics of moral properties, the sense and reference of moral terms and so on, are irrelevant to fundamental ethics.

And so it would be a mistake to think, with so-called ‘error theorists’ or ‘nihilists’ about morality, that there are no such things as moral properties in the world, and so all attributions of rightness or wrongness are false. The world doesn’t have to have these little moral doodads for things to be right or wrong; there just has to be happiness and unhappiness, freedom and tyranny, and so forth. It would be a mistake to think, with Elizabeth Anscombe in her influential paper ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ (1958), that the moral ‘ought’ lacks sense, as it were, and so there is nothing that we morally ought to do.

If these are problems, they’re problems for anyone who thinks things

Whether something ‘lacks sense’ is a semantic matter, and semantics does not bear on normative ethics. It would bear on ethics only if it went towards determining the representational values of beliefs about ethics, but there are no such values at stake. As I said at the outset, my quarrel is not only with the sceptics. Someone who attempted to wring some positive moral conclusions out of claims in semantics (eg, about the sense or reference of moral terms) or metaphysics (eg, about what would best accomplish the reduction of morality to some cluster of suitably ‘natural’ properties) is making the same sort of basic error. They are treating normative-ethical enquiry as representational, even though it is not.

But if neither side of a normative-ethical dispute is representing or ‘mirroring’ the world any more successfully than the other is, then why can’t we ‘go either way’, as it seems we can in ‘squirrel’? How can there be a truth of the matter, if there’s no possibility of accurate or inaccurate representation in any robust sense?

My basic answer is that what gives these normative-ethical debates the appearance of mattering – their conclusions’ influence on motivation and affect – also makes it the case that they actually matter. There’s value and significance up for grabs in these ethical disputes, then, but it’s not value that inheres in representing the world in a robust sense. It’s what I call ‘specifically ethical value’ – the value of doing the right thing for the right reason. And it’s from this sort of value that I try to wring a kind of truth or correctness that’s proprietary to ethics. Imagine a kind of advisor who’s ideal in all non-moral respects – true beliefs about non-evaluative matters, perfect inferential abilities, etc. If we plug a particular moral belief into such a person, and she advises you to do all and only right actions, then that belief counts as true in this proprietarily ethical sense, even though the belief does not ‘picture’ or ‘mirror’ the world.

Note that my brief for ethical truth bottoms out in claims about ‘specifically ethical’ value, and that my argument for the irrelevance of metaphysics, semantics, etc to ethics bottoms out in claims about what I called ‘representational’ value. This might strike you as begging the question against the sceptic about evaluative truth and knowledge – in other words, as assuming at the outset just what I intend to demonstrate to such a sceptic. My rejoinder: yes, I do beg the question, but this, in itself, does not put me in bad company. Everyone who ventures a positive claim about some subject matter – the external world, induction, mathematical knowledge, what-have-you – rather than withholding judgment entirely, must at some point confront the so-called ‘Agrippan trilemma’: either posit certain facts as unexplained, or beg the question, or accept an infinite regress. If these are problems, they’re not problems for me specifically; they’re problems for anyone who thinks things.

So I say that the true sin lies not in question-begging, but in failing to subsume aspects of the world within a more general vindicatory framework. For example, a theory of a priori knowledge that explains how knowledge of that very theory is possible might beg the question, but so long as it accounts for a priori knowledge in general – eg, of mathematics, logic and morality – and not just a priori knowledge of itself, it needn’t be problematic. A theory of accurate mental representation of the world that explains how our beliefs in that very theory accurately represent the world also begs the question, but this should not worry us insofar as it explains accurate mental representation across the board. These theories earn their keep by making sense of what would otherwise remain mysterious, and so it should not trouble us if they end up vindicating themselves in the process.

I propose to attain a similar sort of explanatory unity by vindicating all claims and domains that are worthy of it – not just ethics, but everything from biochemistry to sports prognostication – fundamentally in terms of values, be these representational, specifically ethical, or other sorts of values. It is this values-first re-imagining of enquiry for which I reserve the label ‘pragmatism’. Pragmatism offers a way of making sense of ethical truth, objectivity and knowledge by ensconcing these within a more comprehensive world picture, but not in such a way that would count as providing a foundation for ethics in some allegedly more fundamental area of enquiry. What emerges is a free-floating evaluative sphere, coupled with an account of why this is not so odd or mysterious after all.

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What’s Wrong with Moral Foundations Theory, and How to get Moral Psychology Right

Image: Antonio Marín Segovia/Flickr

Once the exclusive preserve of philosophy and theology, the study of morality has now become a thriving interdisciplinary endeavor, encompassing research in evolutionary theory, genetics, biology, animal behavior, psychology, and anthropology. The emerging consensus is that there is nothing mysterious about morality; it is merely a collection of biological and cultural traits that promote cooperation.

Best known among these accounts is Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). According to MFT: “Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperative social life possible.” And MFT proceeds to argue that, because humans face multiple social problems, they have multiple moral values—they rely on multiple “foundations” when making moral decisions. These foundations include: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity.

• Care: “The suffering of others, including virtues of caring and compassion.”
• Fairness: “Unfair treatment, cheating, and more abstract notions of justice and rights.”
• Loyalty: The “obligations of group membership” including “self-sacrifice, and vigilance against betrayal.”
• Authority: “Social order and the obligations of hierarchical relationships, such as obedience, respect, and the fulfillment of role-based duties.”
• Purity: “Physical and spiritual contagion, including virtues of chastity, wholesomeness, and control of desires.”

These moral foundations have been operationalized, and measured, by the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ; you can complete it here ).

MFT and the questionnaire have had an enormous impact on moral psychology. The central papers have been cited hundreds of times. And there is now a huge literature applying MFT to bioethics, charity, environmentalism, psychopathy, religion, and especially politics. However, MFT has some serious problems, both theoretical and empirical.

Moral Foundations Theory has had an enormous impact on moral psychology. However, the theory has some serious problems, both theoretical and empirical.

The main theoretical problem is that MFT’s list of foundations is not based on any particular theory of cooperation, or on any explicit theory at all. Indeed, Haidt, has explicitly argued against taking what he calls an “a priori or principled” approach to moral psychology, and instead has advocated taking an “ad hoc” approach. The shortcomings of this ad hoc approach, however, are all too plain to see.

First, MFT’s list of foundations has critical omissions. Despite claiming to be an evolutionary-cooperative account of morality, MFT fails to include the four most well-established types of evolved cooperation: kin altruism, reciprocal altruism, competitive altruism, and respect for prior possession.

• Kin altruism has no dedicated foundation in MFT. Although MFT argues that Care originally motivated investment in offspring, it is now applied to nonkin; and MFT treats “family” as just another type of “group.” The questionnaire (MFQ) does have two items pertaining to family, but they appear under Fairness and Loyalty, not Care.
• Reciprocal altruism has no dedicated foundation in MFT. Instead, MFT conflates reciprocity—a solution to iterated prisoners’ dilemmas—with fairness—a solution to bargaining problems. And the MFQ has no items pertaining to reciprocity.
• Competitive altruism—that is, costly signals of status, such as bravery or generosity—has no dedicated foundation in MFT, and no items in the MFQ.
• Respect for prior possession—that is, property rights and the prohibition of theft—has no dedicated foundation in MFT. The MFQ’s only mention of property occurs in an item about inheritance, under Fairness.

Second, in addition to these omissions, MFT includes two foundations that are not distinct types of evolved cooperation: Care and Purity.

• Care—like “altruism” or “benevolence”—is a generic category, not a specific type of cooperation. It doesn’t distinguish between the various distinct types of cooperation—kin altruism, mutualism, reciprocal altruism, competitive altruism and their corresponding psychological mechanisms—all of which involve caring for different people (including family, friends, strangers) for different reasons.
• Purity is supposed to stem from the need to avoid “people w/ diseases, parasites [&] waste products.” But “avoiding pathogens” is not itself a cooperative problem, any more than, say, “avoiding predators.” And, indeed, MFT offers no connection between purity and cooperation. On the contrary, Purity is described as an “odd corner” of morality because it is not “concerned with how we treat other people.” Hence, categorizing Purity as a moral foundation is anomalous.

Thus, MFT’s theory-free approach results in egregious errors of omission, conflation, and commission. It misses some candidate moral domains, combines others, and includes noncooperative domains. Most egregiously, the lack of theory means that MFT cannot rectify these errors; it cannot make principled predictions about what (other) foundations there might be, thus it cannot make progress toward a cumulative science of morality.

MFT also has empirical problems. The main problem is that MFT’s five-factor model of morality has not been well supported by studies using the MFQ. Some of the original studies , as well as replications in Italy , New Zealand , Korea , Sweden , and Turkey , and also a 27 country study using the short-form MFQ, have found that MFT’s five-factor model falls short of the conventionally acceptable degree of model fit (CFIs < 0.90). These studies typically find that a two-factor model—“Care-Fairness” and “Loyalty-Authority-Purity”—is a better fit. And so despite MFT promising five moral domains, the MFQ typically delivers only two. The MFQ does not distinguish domains dedicated to Fairness, Loyalty, or Authority; nor does it establish that Care and Purity are distinct moral domains. Simply put, it does not establish that there are five moral foundations. Other research has taken issue with specific foundations, especially Purity and the link between disgust and morality; but that’s a story for another time .

To their credit, proponents of MFT acknowledge these problems . They accept that the original list of foundations was “arbitrary,” based on a limited review of only “five books and articles,” and never intended to be “exhaustive.” And they have positively encouraged research that could “demonstrate the existence of an additional foundation, or show that any of the current five foundations should be merged or eliminated.”

And so that is what my colleagues and I have done. But we have not done so by making yet more “ad hoc” suggestions. We have gone back to first principles , to the theory that can provide a rigorous, systematic foundation for a cooperative theory of morality—the mathematics of cooperation, the theory of non-zero-sum games. We call this approach Morality-as-Cooperation (MAC).

According to MAC, morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. For 50 million years humans and their ancestors have lived in social groups. During this time, they faced a range of different problems of cooperation, and they evolved and invented a range of different solutions to them. Together, these biological and cultural mechanisms provide the motivation for cooperative behavior; and they provide the criteria by which we evaluate the behavior of others. And, according to MAC, it is precisely this collection of cooperative traits—these instincts, intuitions, and institutions—that constitute human morality.

For 50 million years humans and their ancestors have lived in social groups. During this time, they faced a range of different problems of cooperation, and they evolved and invented a range of different solutions to them.

Which problems of cooperation do humans face? And how are they solved? That’s where game theory comes in. Game theory makes a principled distinction between zero-sum and non-zero-sum games. Zero-sum games are competitive interactions that have a winner and a loser; one’s gain is another’s loss. Non-zero-sum games are cooperative interactions that can have two winners; they are win-win situations. Game theory also distinguishes between different types of non-zero-sum games and the strategies used to play them. Thus, it delineates mathematically distinct types of cooperation.

A review of this literature suggests that there are (at least) seven well established types of cooperation: (1) the allocation of resources to kin; (2) coordination to mutual advantage; (3) social exchange; and conflict resolution through contests featuring (4) hawkish displays of dominance and (5) dove-ish displays of submission; (6) division of disputed resources; and (7) recognition of prior possession.

In my research, I have shown how each of these types of cooperation can be used to identify and explain a distinct type of morality.

(1) Kin selection explains why we feel a special duty of care for our families, and why we abhor incest. (2) Mutualism explains why we form groups and coalitions (there is strength and safety in numbers), and hence why we value unity, solidarity, and loyalty. (3) Social exchange explains why we trust others, reciprocate favors, feel gratitude and guilt, make amends, and forgive. And conflict resolution explains why we (4) engage in costly displays of prowess such as bravery and generosity, why we (5) express humility and defer to our superiors, why we (6) divide disputed resources fairly and equitably, and why we (7) respect others’ property and refrain from stealing.

Our research has shown that examples of these seven types of cooperative behavior—help your family, help your group, return favors, be brave, defer to your superiors, be fair, and respect others’ property—are considered morally good all around the world and are probably cross-cultural moral universals.

Our research has shown that examples of these seven types of cooperative behavior—help your family, help your group, return favors, be brave, defer to your superiors, be fair, and respect others’ property—are considered morally good all around the world.

And we have used MAC’s framework to develop a new measure of moral values  that promises, and delivers, seven moral domains: (1) Family, (2) Group, (3) Reciprocity, (4) Heroism, (5) Deference, (6) Fairness, and (7) Property. This new Morality-as-Cooperation Questionnaire (MAC-Q) introduces the four moral domains that were missing from MFT: Family, Reciprocity, Heroism, Property. And unlike the MFQ, it distinguishes Family from Group (Loyalty), Group (Loyalty) from Deference (Authority), and Reciprocity from Fairness.

So this principled approach to morality, grounded firmly in the underlying logic of cooperation, outperforms an unprincipled approach. MAC explains more types of morality than MFT. It can generate novel principled predictions about morality’s content and structure—predictions that have thus far been supported by psychological and anthropological research. And it leads to a more comprehensive and reliable measure of moral values.

Equipped with this new map of the moral landscape, we can now examine familiar ground in greater detail and survey previously unexplored territory. We can take a fresh look at the genetic basis, and the psychological architecture, of morality. We can reassess the relationship between morals and politics. And we can investigate how and why moral values vary around the world. Above all, by using a theory to generate new testable predictions, we can pave the way for a genuine science of morality.

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Moral Foundations Theory: Criminal Justice Reform

by The Writing Workshop | Mar 12, 2024 | Persuasive Writing

Consider the topic of criminal justice reform, an issue that can elicit varying moral concerns. To engage diverse audiences effectively, public policy professionals can employ different strategies, depending on which Moral Frame they choose.

The message may emphasize the importance of prioritizing the well-being and safety of all individuals impacted by the criminal justice system, including victims, offenders, and their communities.

• For example : As we consider reforms to our criminal justice system, it’s crucial to prioritize the well-being and safety of all individuals impacted by crime and incarceration. Too often, our current system perpetuates harm rather than promoting healing and rehabilitation. By investing in programs that address the root causes of crime, such as poverty, mental illness, and addiction, we can break the cycle of harm and create safer communities for everyone. Let’s ensure that our policies reflect our commitment to caring for those most in need of support and protection, fostering empathy, compassion, and dignity for all individuals involved in the justice system.”

Fairness/Cheating

The message may revolve around the need for equitable treatment, addressing disparities in sentencing, and reducing the impact of systemic biases.

• For example : It’s time to address the glaring disparities and injustices that plague our criminal justice system. Too often, individuals are subjected to unequal treatment based on their race, socio-economic status, or zip code. This is not only unjust but undermines the very principles of fairness and equality upon which our society is built. By advocating for reforms that promote equal access to justice, fair sentencing practices, and unbiased policing, we can ensure that everyone is treated with the fairness and respect they deserve under the law. Let’s work together to level the playing field and uphold the principles of justice and fairness for all.

Loyalty/Betrayal

The discussion can center on the idea that a just criminal justice system strengthens the social fabric by reinforcing trust in the legal system.

• For example : As members of our community, we have a duty to uphold the values of loyalty and solidarity by supporting reforms that strengthen trust and accountability within our criminal justice system. When individuals are betrayed by a system that fails to protect their rights or uphold their dignity, it erodes the bonds of trust that hold our society together. By advocating for policies that prioritize transparency, integrity, and community engagement, we can rebuild trust between law enforcement, the judiciary, and the communities they serve. Together, let’s reaffirm our commitment to loyalty and justice by demanding reforms that ensure fairness, equality, and respect for all individuals involved in the justice system.

Authority/Subversion

The argument may focus on the importance of maintaining the integrity and authority of law enforcement agencies, which requires reform to enhance public trust and respect for authority.

• For example : Our criminal justice system relies on the authority of law enforcement and judicial institutions to maintain order and uphold the rule of law. However, when that authority is abused or misused, it undermines the trust and confidence of the communities these institutions serve. We cannot turn a blind eye to instances of corruption, abuse of power, or excessive force that subvert the principles of justice and fairness. By advocating for reforms that promote accountability, transparency, and oversight, we can ensure that authority is exercised responsibly and justly. Let’s work together to hold our institutions accountable and reaffirm the trust and legitimacy of our criminal justice system.

Sanctity/Degradation

Appeals to this frame may emphasize the need to restore the dignity of incarcerated individuals and promote rehabilitation as a means to cleanse or purify them morally.

• For example : In our pursuit of justice, we must not forget the inherent sanctity and dignity of every individual, regardless of their past mistakes or circumstances. Too often, our criminal justice system treats individuals as if they are disposable or unworthy of redemption, leading to further degradation and harm. We must recognize that every person has the potential for growth, healing, and rehabilitation. By advocating for policies that prioritize the restoration of human dignity and respect for all individuals involved in the justice system, we can create a more humane and compassionate approach to criminal justice. Let’s reaffirm our commitment to upholding the sanctity of life and ensuring that our policies reflect the values of empathy, compassion, and forgiveness.

Liberty/Oppression

For those who prioritize this frame, the conversation can underscore the role of criminal justice reform in safeguarding individual rights and freedoms, protecting against oppressive measures like mass incarceration.

• For example : In our pursuit of a fair and just society, we must confront the oppressive practices and systemic injustices that pervade our criminal justice system. Too often, individuals are denied their basic liberties and rights, subjected to unjust treatment, and marginalized by a system that disproportionately targets and oppresses certain communities. We cannot turn a blind eye to the pervasive inequalities and injustices that perpetuate cycles of oppression and incarceration. By advocating for reforms that promote alternatives to incarceration, address systemic biases, and protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals, we can dismantle the structures of oppression and create a more equitable and just society for all. Let’s stand together in the fight for liberty and justice, ensuring that every individual is treated with dignity, respect, and fairness under the law.

By tapping into shared moral principles, policymakers can overcome political polarization, increase the effectiveness of their communication strategies, and ultimately drive positive change on critical societal issues.

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Hero City Obelisk

The title "Hero City" was granted to the twelve cities of the Soviet Union that bore the brunt of the Nazi invasion during the Great Patriotic War (Second World War). St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, suffered as much as, if not more than, any other, withholding the appalling deprivations of the 900-day siege .

Among the many memorials to the heroism of the Soviet forces and the citizens of Leningrad, this towering obelisk on Ploshchad Vosstaniya, in front of the Moscow Railway Station , is probably the most visible. The site was originally occupied by an equestrian statue of Emperor Alexander III, erected in 1909. Removed in 1937, it now stands in the courtyard of the Marble Palace. For many decades, the centre of Ploshchad Vosstaniya stood empty until 1985, when this 36-meter grey granite column was unveiled on 8 May (on the eve of Victory Day celebrations).

Crowned with a bronze star, the column is itself star-shaped in cross-section, the first of its kind in the world. A bronze victory wreath encircles the lower part of the column beneath which oval haut-reliefs engraved with stirring patriotic slogans.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Saint petersburg.

Ewer and basin (lavabo set)

Probably made at Chisinau Court Workshop

Andrei Nikiforovich Voronikhin

Alexander Danilovich Menshikov (1673–1729)

Unknown Artist, Swiss, Austrian, or German, active Russia ca. 1703–4

Samuel Margas Jr.

The Empress Elizabeth of Russia (1709–1762) on Horseback, Attended by a Page

Attributed to Georg Christoph Grooth

Table snuffbox

Niello scenes after a print entitled Naufrage (Shipwreck) by Jacques de Lajoüe , published in Paris 1736

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) (1694–1778)

Jean Antoine Houdon

Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, St. Petersburg

Cup with cover and saucer

Two bottle coolers

Zacharias Deichman the Elder

Catherine II The Great, Empress of Russia

Jean-Baptiste Nini

Coffee service

Johan Henrik Blom

Tureen with cover

Tureen with cover and stand

Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers

Possibly by Pierre-François-Mathis de Beaulieu (for Jean Georges)

Pair of scallop-shell dishes

Sugar bowl (from a tea service)

Workshop of David Roentgen

Beaker and saucer

David Roentgen and Company in Saint Petersburg

Johann Friedrich Anthing

Drop-front desk (secrétaire à abattant or secrétaire en cabinet)

Attributed to Martin Carlin

Pair of Flintlock Pistols of Empress Catherine the Great (1729–1796)

Johan Adolph Grecke

Gardner Manufactory

Center table

Imperial Armory, Tula (south of Moscow), Russia

Female Shaman

Pair of vases

Nikolai Stepanovich Vereshchagin

Jugate busts of Czarevitch Paul and Maria Feodorovna of Russia

James Tassie

Wolfram Koeppe Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2003

The Birth of Saint Petersburg Russia, or “Muscovy” as it was often called, had rarely been considered a part of Europe before the reign of Czar Peter I (Piotr Alexeievich), known as Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725). His supremacy marked the beginning of the country’s “Westernization,” whereby the political, economic, and cultural norms of the western European monarchies would become the basis for “civilizing” Russia. A radical transformation was needed to launch Russia into the modern world, a transformation later called the Petrine Revolution. The young czar, feeling oppressed by the medieval traditions and ecclesiastical patriarchy of seventeenth-century Moscow, wanted to Westernize Russia in a hurry, defying the sluggish pace of history.

Saint Petersburg was born on May 16, 1703 (May 5 by the old Julian Russian calendar). On that day, on a small island on the north bank of the Neva River, Peter cut two pieces of turf and placed them cross-wise. The setting was inauspicious. The area was a swamp that remained frozen from early November to March, with an annual average of 104 days of rain and 74 days of snow. The army, under the command of Alexander Menshikov ( 1996.7 ), had conquered the region shortly before. To show his gratitude, the czar later appointed Menshikov the first governor-general of Saint Petersburg. The fortification of the territory kept the Swedish enemy at bay and secured for Russia permanent access to the Baltic Sea. The partially ice-free harbor would be crucial to further economic development. All buildings on the site were erected on wooden poles driven into the marshy, unstable ground. Stones were a rare commodity in Russia, and about as valuable as precious metals.

The Dutch name “Piterburkh” (later changed to the German version, “Petersburg”) embodied the czar’s fascination with Holland and its small-scale urban architecture. He disliked patriarchal court ceremony and felt at ease in the bourgeois domestic life that he experienced during his travels throughout Europe on “the Great Embassy” (1697–98). However, the primary purpose of this voyage was to acquire firsthand knowledge of shipbuilding—his personal passion—and to learn about progressive techniques and Western ideas.

The victory over the Swedish army at Poltava in June 1709 elevated Russia to the rank of a European power, no longer to be ignored. Peter triumphed: “Now with God’s help the final stone in the foundation of Saint Petersburg has been laid.” By 1717, the city’s population of about 8,000 had tripled, and grew to around 40,000 by the time of Peter’s death in 1725. Saint Petersburg had become the commercial, industrial, administrative, and residential “metropolis” of Russia. By the 1790s, it had surpassed Moscow as the empire’s largest urban vicinity and was hailed as the “Venice of the North,” an allusion to the waterway system around the local “Grand Canal,” the Neva River.

Peter the Great’s Successors The short reign of Peter’s second wife, Empress Catherine I (r. 1725–27), who depended on her long-time favorite Menshikov, saw the reinstatement of the luxurious habits of the former imperial household. The archaic and ostentatious court display in the Byzantine tradition  that Peter had so despised was now to be restored under the pretext of glorifying his legacy. Enormous sums of money were lavished on foreign luxury items, demonstrating the court’s new international status and its observance of western European manners ( 68.141.133 ).

During the reigns of Empress Anna Ioannovna (r. 1730–40), niece of Peter I ( 1982.60.330a,b ), and her successor Elizabeth (Elizaveta Petrovna, r. 1741–62; 1978.554.2 ), Peter’s daughter, Saint Petersburg was transformed into a Baroque extravaganza through the talents of architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli (1700–1771) and other Western and Russian artisans. Foreign powers began to recognize Russia’s importance and competed for closer diplomatic relations. Foreign immigrants increased much faster than the local population, as scholars, craftsmen, artisans, and specialists of all kinds flocked to the country, and especially to Saint Petersburg ( 65.47 ; 1982.60.172,.173 ; 1995.327 ).

Catherine the Great (r. 1762–96) In a coup d’état assisted by the five Orloff brothers ( 33.165.2a–c ; 48.187.386,.387 ), Catherine II overthrew her husband, the ill-fated Peter III (r. 1762) and became empress. Catherine saw herself as the political heir of Peter the Great. A German-born princess of Anhalt-Zerbst who, after her marriage, became more Russian than any native, Catherine aimed at completing Peter’s legacy ( 52.189.11 ; 48.73.1 ). Having lived in isolation in the shadow of Elizabeth I since her marriage to the grand duke in 1745, the time had come to satisfy her thirst for life and her insatiable quest for culture and international recognition. An admirer of the Enlightenment and devoted aficionada of Voltaire’s writings, Catherine stimulated his cult in Russia ( 1972.61 ). In response, the French philosopher dedicated a poem to the czarina; her reply, dated October 15, 1763, initiated a correspondence that influenced the empress on many matters until Voltaire’s death in 1778. The hothouse cultural climate of Saint Petersburg during Catherine’s reign can be compared to the artistic and intellectual ferment in New York City in the second half of the twentieth century.

Catherine’s desire to enhance her fame and her claim to the throne was immortalized by her own witty play on words in Latin: “Petro Primo / Catharina Secunda” (To Peter the First / from Catherine the Second). This she had inscribed on the vast lump of granite in the form of a wave supporting the Bronze Horseman on the banks of the Neva in front of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. This triple-lifesize equestrian figure of Peter the Great took the French sculptor Falconet twelve years to complete, until it was finally cast—after three attempts—in 1782.

Catherine had military expansion plans for Russia and a cultural vision for its capital Saint Petersburg. Above all, she knew how to attract devoted supporters. Only nine days after the overthrow of her husband, Catherine wrote to Denis Diderot, offering to print his famous Encyclopédie , which had been banned in France. Catherine recognized the power of art to demonstrate political and social maturity. She acquired entire collections of painting ( Watteau , for example), sculpture, and objects. The empress avoided anything that could be called mediocre or small. With the help of sophisticated advisors, such as Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn, her ambassador in Paris, Denis Diderot, Falconet, and the illustrious Baron Friedrich Melchior von Grimm, the empress assembled the core of today’s State Hermitage Museum. Catherine favored luxury goods from all over Europe ( 33.165.2a–c ; 48.187.386,.387 ; 17.190.1158 ). She commissioned Sèvres porcelain and Wedgwood pottery as well as hundreds of pieces of ingeniously conceived furniture from the German manufactory of David Roentgen in Neuwied ( 48.73.1 ). Furthermore, she encouraged and supported Russian enterprises and craftsmen, like local silversmiths ( 47.51.1–.5 ; 1981.367.1,.2 ) and the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory ( 1982.60.171 ; 1982.60.177,.178 ; 1982.60.175 ), as well as privately owned manufactories ( 1982.60.158 ). Catherine especially liked the sparkling decorative products of the Tula armory steel workshop ( 2002.115 ), genuine Russian art forms with a fairy-tale-like appearance, and in 1775 merged her large collection of Tula objects with the imperial crown jewels in a newly constructed gallery at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg.

Catherine’s son and successor Paul I (Pavel Petrovich, r. 1796–1801) disliked his mother and her aesthetic sensibility ( 1998.13.1,.2 ). As grand duke, he had spent most of his time with his second wife Maria Feodorovna ( 1999.525 ) outside of Saint Petersburg, in Gatchina Palace and Pavlovsk Palace. These they transformed into the finest Neoclassical architectural gems in Europe ( 1976.155.110 ; 2002.115 ).

Koeppe, Wolfram. “Saint Petersburg.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stpt/hd_stpt.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Cracraft, James. The Petrine Revolution in Russian Imagery . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Koeppe, Wolfram, and Marina Nudel. "An Unsuspected Bust of Alexander Menshikov." Metropolitan Museum Journal 35 (2000), pp. 161–77.

Shvidkovsky, Dmitri, and Alexander Orloff. St. Petersburg: Architecture of the Tsars . New York: Abbeville, 1995.

Additional Essays by Wolfram Koeppe

• Koeppe, Wolfram. “ Abraham and David Roentgen .” (June 2013)
• Koeppe, Wolfram. “ Hungarian Silver .” (February 2016)
• Koeppe, Wolfram. “ Collecting for the Kunstkammer .” (October 2002)

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List of Rulers

• List of Rulers of Europe
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1600–1800 A.D.
• Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 1600–1800 A.D.
• France, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Iran, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Low Countries, 1600–1800 A.D.
• 17th Century A.D.
• 18th Century A.D.
• Architecture
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Artist or Maker

• Anthing, Johann Friedrich
• Beaulieu, Pierre-François-Mathis de
• Blom, Johan Henrik
• Bouillat, Edme François, I
• Carlin, Martin
• Chisinau Court Workshop
• Deichman, Zacharias, the Elder
• Feodorovna, Maria
• Gardner Factory
• Grecke, Johan Adolph
• Grooth, Georg Christoph
• Houdon, Jean Antoine
• Imperial Armory, Tula
• Imperial Porcelain Manufactory
• Lajoüe, Jacques de
• Margas, Samuel, Jr.
• Nini, Jean-Baptiste
• Prudhomme, Elie
• Roentgen, David
• Roettiers, Jacques-Nicolas
• Rotari, Pietro
• Sèvres Manufactory
• Tassie, James
• Vereshchagin, Nikolai Stepanovich
• Voronikhin, Andrei N.
• Watteau, Antoine

Online Features

• 82nd & Fifth: “Curls” by Wolfram Koeppe