Moral Discourse

Following a usage described by Foucault, a discourse is more than just language-in-use; it refers to a system of thought that simultaneously takes up ideas, ideologies, attitudes, actions, and concepts informing our understandings of self, world, and others. The notion of a moral discourse specifically directs attention to ways of thinking and acting about morality. Morality, broadly speaking, is concerned with systems of public thought (about moral rules, ideals, virtues, etc.) that informally govern our behavior as it affects others. Defining morality as an informal system contrasts it with systems of law and religion. In the former, unlike the latter, there is neither a decision procedure nor a source of authority that can, once and for all, settle contested questions. Morality is thus, in a fundamental sense, always an open question.

Moral discourse takes up questions of ethics and value. The study of ethics may be taken as synonymous with the study of morality, or it can more narrowly refer to the study of the moral principles of a particular group, as, for example, the professional ethics of evaluators. Questions of value have to do with the worth of something (or someone or some action)—including just what “having value” means in terms of a property or characteristic of something, and whether value is an objective or subjective matter. Moral discourse also encompasses discussion of political morality: that is, why people should accept and obey the decisions of a political system (especially in cases where some people disagree with those decisions). Depending on what value is placed at the center of social and political decision making (for example, personal liberty, democratic participation, community), approaches to answering this question differ—thus the debates between theories of classic liberalism, deliberative democracy, and communitarianism.

The subject matter of moral discourse is different in important ways from the subject matters of scientific and technical discourse. The former, generally, is concerned with matters of what it is right to do and good to be in our interactions with each other and is governed by questions of value or substantive rationality: Where am I (are we) going? What should I (we) be? Is this desirable? What should be done? The latter is concerned with the production of knowledge and with the design and testing of means to achieve agreed-on ends. It is governed by questions of analytic or instrumental rationality—What is knowledge? How do you know? What is effective for in reaching this goal?

Evaluation theory and practice participate in and contribute to both kinds of discourse, although it may be the case that more time in the education and training of evaluators is formally devoted to the study of the subject matters of scientific and technical discourse than to moral discourse. Nonetheless, here are a few examples of how evaluation is involved in moral discourse: When evaluators contend that the purpose of evaluation is the judgment of value; when evaluators debate the primary orientation or aim of evaluation (e.g., as objectivist, empowerment, transformative); when evaluators argue that a particular program or project (or person) that has been the object of the evaluation has (or does not have) value; when evaluators consider what professional values (honesty, integrity, credibility, competence, serving the public good, etc.) are and ought to be promoted in evaluation; when evaluators argue the merits of advocacy and debate their obligations to clients, to the public good, and to promoting social justice in evaluation practice; when evaluators consider what fairness and balance in evaluation reporting mean; when evaluators [Page 260]assess their actions as evaluators—for example, whether actions are to be judged in terms of their consequences or in terms of a set of virtues of what makes a “good” evaluator.

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