Definition
The Amoral Neutrality Critique (pioneered by Leo Strauss) is the observation that the enforced “moral obtuseness” and neutrality of the scientific revolution—while necessary for certain forms of inquiry—has led to a hollow and aimless culture. It argues that value judgments, though forbidden from “the front door” of modern science and technology, inevitably enter “through the back door,” resulting in a nihilsm where individuals hide behind purportedly neutral discovery to avoid the responsibility of worldview formation.
Why It Matters
If science and technology remain “neutrally” indifferent to the good life, they become tools for whoever has the most power. This critique warns that a society without a shared worldview eventually becomes a “hollowed-out” bureaucracy where progress has no direction and no soul.
Core Concepts
- Enforced Neutrality: The requirement to relinquishing or pause the search for a definition of good and evil to enable scientific analysis.
- Nihilism of Aimlessness: The “indifference to any goal, or of aimlessness and drifting” that Strauss warned is the seed of cultural decay.
- The Empty Vessel Manager: A managerial class that uses “inclusivity” and “neutrality” as a cloak to avoid developing substantive views about the good life.
- Back-Door Values: The reality that technology and science are never truly neutral; they are always directed by unexamined or “back-door” values (e.g., maximizing status or convenience).
- Vacuous Utilitarianism: A “bland and unsatisfying” ethical universalism (e.g., Peter Singer’s approach) that provides cover for avoiding thorny questions of identity and meaning.