The Missing Moral Compass - Part II
If modern psychology’s moral neutrality attempts has led to an impoverished understanding of the human person, how can we restore what was lost? Drawing on the Thomistic tradition, the second part of our inquiry examines how we might correct this deviation, redirecting psychology to recognize that, as rational beings, we are inherently ordered toward truth and goodness.
Moving beyond abstraction, this article outlines concrete ways psychology can integrate moral and philosophical insight without sacrificing empirical rigor. For those seeking a psychology that not only studies human behavior but also illuminates its flourishing, here we offer a roadmap back to wisdom — a call to reunite psychology with the perennial truths about the soul.
Reintegrating Moral Foundations
From a Thomistic perspective, the absence of moral foundations in psychology is not just philosophically untenable — it is inhuman. Humans are rational animals, endowed with intellect and will, oriented by nature toward truth and goodness. If psychology ignores this, it effectively ignores what makes us human.
Indeed, reality itself refutes a neutral view of morality: “Where is the object of the idea of obligation, of justice, of right, of wrong?” asks Gruender. “They are neither mere phantoms of the mind nor mere words beating the air, they are most potent realities.” Right and wrong matter to people — they shape inner life and society — and this is a fact any psychologist must confront. Even William James, as noted in the previous article, conceded that a fully mechanistic determinism does not sit well with our moral experience. To persist in treating morality as outside the realm of psychology is to persist in a kind of abstraction that ultimately fails to do justice to the human person.
If the crux of the problem is that psychology divorced itself from teleology and moral truth, the solution will involve reconnecting psychology with a robust philosophical frame — and theology where appropriate. This doesn’t mean sacrificing empirical rigor; rather, it enriches the kinds of questions asked. For example, research on forgiveness, altruism, or purpose in life can be guided by the insight that humans are capax Dei (capable to know God), and, therefor, able to transcendent themself.
This was the spirit advocated by Cardinal Mercier and other Neo-Scholastics in the early 20th century: “to bring the wisdom of past ages to bear upon the latest triumphs of science.” In line with this, Gilson noted that in Aquinas’s system “the study of morals cannot be isolated from that of metaphysics” — a reminder that any study of human behavior must take into account what philosophical tradition has discovered and taught about human nature. What might this look like in practice?
The Steps To Restoring Moral Foundations
In practice, moving toward a psychology with a moral compass involve several shifts:
Embracing a Person-Centered Approach: Rather than reducing individuals to cases or data points, psychologists are called to treat their subjects as persons with inherent dignity and purpose. Arnold and Gasson insist that a psychologist must consider each human being “in relation to the larger whole,” not isolating aspects of the person in a way that neglects the unity of body and soul. This means, for example, that in therapy or research, one must not violate human dignity or ignore the patient’s search for meaning. Any attempt to see man as an animal and disregard his human functions is a violation of the psychologist’s duty to reality, to his patients.
Logically, it follows from the above that psychologists must applying norms of adequate conduct for human beings. After all, if psychologists inevitably make normative judgments (even if implicit) in assessing what is healthy or good for us, then, those norms must be embedded in our nature, instead of a biased and unrealistic view of the person.
For instance, is extreme self-centeredness appropriate for us? From a Thomistic view, no, because humans are naturally social and oriented toward goods beyond themselves. In therapy, this means a clinician would not automatically dismiss patient’s moral acts, nor seeks to ensure the remission of symptoms at the expense of the patient's moral dimension. If a patient’s conscience is troubled, Arnold says, one must evaluate those scruples “in the light of what is adequate conduct for a human being, not on the basis of some supposedly ‘realistic’ notion of what would be right... if they were animals.” In other words, the therapist task is to help the patient live up in an authentically human way, rather than abandon this goal due to a poor conceptualization of what it means to be a person.
Recognizing Moral Development as Natural Development: Instead of viewing moral conscience as a mere byproduct of social conditioning, psychology can study it as an integral aspect of human cognitive and emotional development. Developmental psychology already observes stages by which children develop notions of fairness, empathy, and duty. A teleological perspective would interpret these findings in light of human purpose: the child’s emerging moral sense is evidence of an inner inclination toward truth and goodness. Which in turn might allow us to understand Disorders of behavior partly as failures to develop towards one’s natural moral end, not just as maladaptive behaviors. This viewpoint opens up a fruitful dialogue between psychology and virtue development on topics like character formation and moral education.
With The compass In Hand
In sum, the way forward is integration rather than compartmentalization. Science and ethics need not be at odds. Psychology can maintain its empirical methods and commitment to evidence while also openly acknowledging that humans have inherent ends. By recovering a moral realism — the idea that certain things are genuinely good or bad for human nature — psychology can provide more meaningful guidance for human life. After all, as Aristotle taught, “the good for a human is in accordance with his nature.” If psychology’s mission is to understand and help humans, it cannot remain agnostic about the good life for the human person. It must, in a sense, become wise about the soul again, recognizing, as Gruender put it, that moral ideas like justice and obligation are real aspects of our world, not just subjective opinions.
Nicolás Eyzaguirre Bäuerle
Editor-in-chief
