How to Create Morals in a Moral-Less Universe

By Jake Lee

Note: The original title of this article was “From Existentialism to Moral Nihilism to Social Contract Theory”

The terms will be defined later, but here is a general overview of these concepts

Existentialism - The belief that there is no inherent meaning in life, and therefore it is up to individuals to create meaning for themselves

Moral Nihilism - The belief that there are no moral rules, and that nothing is really “wrong” or “right”

Social Contract Theory - The creation of morals and obligations through “contracts” originally made to benefit the parties of the contract (for example, there is no universal truth to the idea of copyright, but it’s still “wrong” to break copyright law since we agreed upon it as a rule to follow)

Imagine a chair.

It was created, as most chairs are, to be sat on. Its purpose is clear and definite, and it has a meaning for its existence: someone wanted something to sit on, and therefore a chair was created.

Imagine a human.

While your parents might have had certain intentions when they had you, there is no definite meaning to your existence. A chair has an “essence” (purpose) before it exists, but you exist before you find a purpose.

Existentialism is, according to founding existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “radically freeing”. But freedom comes with a cost. Without any innate meaning to anyone’s existence, we can’t find any reasoning behind why we do things. In fact, existentialists cannot fully rationalize why even existence is a good thing, much less the idea of community, love, or even the biological feelings of pleasure. Their solution is that it is up to an individual to create their own meaning, but that provides no grounding for the wider world.

This is the realm of Moral Nihilism, where objectivity is non-existent. Do not confuse this with Moral Relativism, which makes claims like “certain things are right or wrong to different cultures”. Relativism, despite its inability to allow for any moral progress, still makes a sort of objective standard out of cultural expectations. However, Moral Nihilism rejects that cultural expectations have any meaning at all.

For example, humans are in general against the feeling of pain, and are in favor of concepts like love and community. These can likely be attributed to biology as well as our social upbringing. But no absolute grounding can be provided for them. Absolute, in this context, means something that can be applied universally and to all things. Obviously, concepts like “intellectual property theft” and “squatter’s rights” can only be understood in regards to 21st century humans. They make no sense when applied to animals, non-sentient creations, or the planets and stars. 

But even ideas like “pleasure” and “pain”, have no meaning in absolute terms. Firstly, “pleasure” and “pain” should not be confused with “good” or “bad”, because those latter two words immediately assume some objective measure of “good”-ness or “bad”-ness. 

If we define pleasure as a something along the lines of a rush of dopamine (which is the most “objective” definition we can find), then the reliance of a subjective human metric becomes obvious: without biological humans that are capable of creating dopamine, there is no such thing as “pleasure” or “pain”. Again, animals without the right chemicals, or life far outside of our solar system, cannot be properly squared with our views on morality.

So how should we create any sort of moral system? The solution might come from our own “independent moralities”. Personally, I am against the idea of murder, and consider dopamine rushes a good thing. I cannot ground these beliefs in some sort of objective measure, nor can I say that my beliefs are “universal” in any way. Instead, these moral beliefs come from how I have been raised, and any number of events both in and outside of my control that shape my belief system. Certainly, there can be (and have been) people who think very differently. But as long as there are enough people who think similarly, that we can agree upon the idea that “murder is wrong” or “dopamine is good”, and enforce them through laws. This is the realm of Social Contract Theory.

In order to create a society and have some semblance of morals, the members of the society must share similar or the same moral beliefs. This has worked for the most part in today’s world. Children are taught in school about manners, respect, and are generally persuaded away from physical violence. Children then internalize these lessons to create their own individual understandings of morality. There have been, and still are, places that have taught very different moralities—take the Spartans. Given the barrier in communication that comes from Boomer and Gen Z disagreements, imagine how difficult it would be to live in a society where parts of the population supported the Krypteia (essentially a “rite-of-passage” ritual where young Spartan men go in the wilderness to kill slaves). It relies on most of the people in a community to have the same beliefs for Social Contract Theory to work.

If you agree with the perspective I have just laid out, there’s one more thing to consider: with this system, the way to create the most stable moral system is through indoctrination. All people must be raised with the same moral system, so that the Social Contract is never violated. Given that we have taken the Moral Nihilist position, there is no reason to support a society built around cooperation over a society built around bloodlust. I might consider the first one more aligned to my beliefs, but there is no objective grounding for either being better.

Still, this article has, if successful, explained how to create a functioning society without believing in the existence of any morals. If you take Existentialism to be true, then the pathway towards Moral Nihilism, which initially seems terrifying, can be embraced, because it allows for the creation of Social Contracts. From there, we can create morals that, while subjective, apply to the people and communities we care about, allowing a society similar to one created on objective morals like religion or Utilitarianism.