THE SANCTION OF MORALITY It has already been remarked above that moral conduct is commonly associated with a sense of duty to do certain things and to abstain from certain others. The question then naturally arises concerning the authority of this sense of duty to command or to prohibit actions as the case may be. This is the problem of the Sanction of Morality. The problem does not arise for some ethical theories. At least, it is not equally urgent for all of them. For eudaemonists and perfectionists, e.g., the highest good is something so intrinsically alluring that the question of a moral sanction, if it is raised at all, can be adequately answered by saying that the summum bonum is its own sanction, its own authority. The problem is most urgent in those cases in which morality is regarded as something imposed upon man by some outside authority. At first sight, this would appear to be the case with Kant's categorical imperative. Kant, however, insisted on the autonomy of conscience. He regarded the moral law as self-imposed by the rational will of man who, qua a person, identifies himself with the moral law, which thus carries its own sanction with it. Kant's view, however, requires the metaphysics of a moral world-order valid for all rational beings, and such a metaphysics is remote from the thought of the ordinary moral person. Generally speaking, most people who are moral lean on some outside authority as their moral sanction. The three most important sanctions of the type with which we are here concerned are the religious, political and social sanctions.
The religious sanction is operative when morality is based on the authority of God or of the Church. (Strictly speaking, what is called the authority of God is always the authority of some church which claims to speak in His name.) In this case moral imperatives are looked upon as the commands of God, these im peratives being sometimes regarded as purely arbitrary. Accord ing to this view, if God had chosen to command what He has prohibited, or to prohibit what He has commanded, then what is now right would have been wrong, and what is now wrong would have been right. Nothing is either good or bad but God makes it so. For those who accept such a sanction there can be no ethics, no rational or philosophical account of morality, for all is arbitrary.
The political sanction is operative when the state is regarded as the authority that is empowered to decide what the citizen ought to do or avoid. The acceptance of this sanction tends to efface the distinction between legality and morality. It is also, as a rule, intimately connected with a eudaemonistic (generally utilitarian) ethical theory, for the aim of the state (except it be theocratic, like Geneva in the days of Calvin) is really to pro mote the temporal happiness of its citizens.
The social sanction is that exercised by society or one's social environment, in a less formal and less explicit manner than is done by the State as a political organization. There are social customs and traditions which carry much weight though not embodied in laws or regulations of the legislative body.
It is, of course, possible for all the above-mentioned sanctions to carry authority for the same person. In a theocratic state it would perhaps be so inevitably.
Any theory of morality which treats it as resting on its own authority is called autonomous; theories which base morality on any authority outside itself are usually called heteronomous. Strictly speaking, of course, it is the morality or the moral law, not the theory of morality, that is either autonomous or hetero nomous.