When discussing controversial moral issues, it is rather common for at least one party, and sometimes all parties, to claim that they are on ‘the right side of history’. These arguments are often interpreted as making an appeal to a sense of inevitability or trajectory that purportedly runs through history, where this trajectory is some kind of independent force that guides and shapes human actions. This sense of trajectory is frequently a source of criticism of what I will call Right Side of History (RSH) arguments, because many find it implausible that history has inevitable outcomes or independently guides human actions. I argue that it is more charitable to interpret RSH arguments as making a kind of prediction that does not rely on understanding ‘history’ as some kind of independent force that acts on human behaviour. I will also argue that even on what I take to be my more charitable view, RSH arguments do not have much going for them. In my discussion of RSH arguments, I'll take it for granted that moral realism of some form is true. By this, I just mean that I'll assume that there are at least some moral facts and that we have some way of coming to know them. Another way to put this is that, very roughly, it is true that at least some things are morally right or morally wrong, and we can gain access to these truths. I'll start with this assumption because, as we'll see below, this is an intuitive way to interpret RSH arguments. RSH arguments make the most sense if those making them believe that there are moral truths we can in fact know.
Right Side of History Arguments
In disputes on moral and social matters, one will sometimes encounter, or perhaps make, an RSH argument. Such arguments go like this. Person P has a stance S. S does not command universal or widespread assent, and may even be in the minority. In a conversation with interlocutorFootnote 1 R who does not hold to S, P claims to be on ‘the right side of history’, or tells their opponent that they are on ‘the wrong side of history’ (with the implication that R's wrongness stands counter to P's rightness). Note that RSH arguments may be made without actually using the phrase ‘right (or wrong) side of history’, though for the sake of clarity I'll confine myself to examples which make use of that phrase. A couple of examples should serve to illuminate both the broader argumentative structures in which the RSH is used, and the kinds of situations in which it is invoked. The first example I'll borrow is from Green:
Tamara and her mother, Eunice, are on holiday together. They find themselves inexorably drawn into conflicts between Tamara's more progressive moral beliefs and Eunice's culturally conservative ones. Choosing a restaurant turns into debating the merits of veganism. A flyer for a pride parade turns into a back and forth on human sexuality. A miserably hot day occasions a debate over climate change. Unable to budge her mother on any issue, Tamara says exasperated, ‘Mom, it's you against the world every time. If you go back to some more ignorant, backwards time, then you'd find more people who agree with you. But the more thoughtful and scientifically informed a person is these days, the more likely they are to agree with me. Doesn't that tell you something? You're on the wrong side of history!’ (Green Reference Green2018: 2)
While the above example is obviously rather constructed and on the nose (as a great many examples in philosophy papers are) it gets the use of the phrase and RSH structure across quite clearly. In making an RSH, one stakes out a position one takes to be the morally correct one, claims that this position is part of a chain of historical moral progress, and then tells one's interlocutor that anyone on this side is on the right side, and anyone not on this side is on the wrong side.
A clear real-world example comes from contemporary Christian author and anti-death-penalty activist Shane Clairborne. When asked what might get evangelical Christians to support abolishing the death penalty, Clairborne replied:
we gotta win the hearts and minds of people on this issue, and the good news is that like … it's an old school form of justice. So, when you poll […] Christians born after 1980, it's like 80% of them are against the death penalty. It's not because they've thrown out their faith, but it's because of their faith they can't reconcile the death penalty with Jesus and their commitment to Jesus. So, it's an exciting time, but I would love to see the Church on the right side of history. It's not that hard to say slavery is wrong after we've abolished it, you know? (Belew Reference Belew2016)
Based on these examples, which I take to be representative of RSH arguments, several features of RSH arguments are obvious. First, RSH appeals work best when there are polarized positions on clear-cut issues at stake. In the first example, Tamara and Eunice argue over particular issues, like the moral correctness of veganism or LGTBTQ rights. In the second, the issue is the moral correctness of the death penalty, with abolition being the right side and continuing the death penalty the wrong one. Indeed, Clairborne suggests that if we do things right, we will look back and see that the death penalty is obviously wrong in the way that we now see slavery to be obviously wrong.
Relatedly, RSH arguments are also naturally interpreted as having a moral realist foundation. It seems wrong to say that one is on the right side of history in a moral matter if one is not morally correct. Note that in each example, the person making the RSH argument took their position to be correct, rather than merely preferred or likely to win out in the long run. Part of an RSH argument is the idea that there is in fact an accessible moral truth with which one is currently in touch and which future moral agents will take to be obvious. It is not enough to say that people in the future will happen to agree that one's present position is correct. Suppose the following: you are an anti-death-penalty activist and you are in fact correct that the death penalty is immoral. A death penalty tells you that supporting the death penalty puts one on the right side of history. As a matter of bad luck, future agents overwhelmingly view the death penalty as obviously morally correct. Clearly, you would not be forced to admit that those in favour of the death penalty were on the right side of history because by hypothesis they have the moral facts wrong. You might concede defeat and admit that in some sense, history is ‘written by the victors’ but you would not be forced to admit that proponents of the death penalty are morally right just because their position in fact won out.
Second, RSH arguments are most prominent in moral and social disputes. It would be odd to find scientists making RSH arguments in a dispute about the existence of some particle, for example. In a retrospective analysis of scientific activity, we might say that those who supported oxygen theories of combustion over phlogiston theories, or heliocentric views of the solar system over geocentric ones, turned out to be on the right side of history. However, this is just a way of describing the outcome of some past dispute. Invoking the right side of history in the course of a dispute about combustion would be a very odd way of making the case to one's scientific opponents that they should believe in oxygen rather than phlogiston. Similarly, RSH arguments fit best in disputes over high-stakes issues. While it seems fitting to say that one might be on the right (or wrong) side of history about LGBTQ rights, the death penalty, or the abolition of slavery, it would be hyperbolic, or perhaps absurd, to claim one is on the right side of history in a dispute over the layout of one's living room furniture. We might think of the set of issues for which RSH arguments seem fitting as the set of issues for which we think we will be judged by future generations.
Third, RSH arguments are more than judgements of the moral quality of some position in a debate at the present time. They imply some kind of historical trajectory or context. To make an RSH argument is to locate the current state of some dispute with relation to both the past and future state of that issue, with the aim of showing one's interlocutor that the position on the wrong side will look very different to those in the future. Those currently on the wrong side will be seen by those in the future to have been clearly mistaken, and will be judged accordingly. To see this more clearly, let's return to Clairborne's remarks on the death penalty. Clairborne makes it clear that the dispute over the death penalty is not a new dispute. The death penalty has a long history and disputes over its use are disputes about an ‘old school’ form of justice. He also references a cultural shift in Christian opinions about the death penalty occurring a few decades ago in the 1980s. In characterizing the current stage of the project as one of winning hearts and minds, and given that the death penalty still exists, Clairborne makes it clear that this is a work that will continue into the future until the death penalty is abolished. Finally, Clairborne makes it clear that he expects those in the future to look back on the abolition of the death penalty as obviously morally correct in the same way that we now look back at the abolition of slavery and see that as obviously morally correct. This last aspect, the idea that one's current stance will eventually be seen as obviously correct, is key to these arguments. It is one thing to assert that one is on the right side. The RSH argument makes some kind of case that it carries much more weight to say that not only is one on the right side but that one is on the obviously right side and that one is confident that future observers will see one as having been obviously right.
The Trajectory of History
The appeal to some sense of trajectory or context is perhaps the most notable feature of RSH arguments. This trajectory is often taken to be a matter of history itself having a course that gives direction to and guides human actions, or of causing an inevitable revelation of moral truth. History is not merely a context or sequence of events within which some particular event or moral dispute can be located. As Green describes it,
When making an appeal to the right or wrong side of history … the assumption in play is that history itself has a trajectory such that ceteris paribus one should be more likely to discover the truth as one moves forward in time … the influence of history on the matter in question is a positive directional influence. It is in this sense that a claim to be on the right side of history claims more than that one has a favorable temporal frame of reference. History ends up not simply providing a kind of topography that determines what one can see from any given position in it. Instead, history has a current. (Green Reference Green2018: 5)
This understanding of the kind of trajectory at stake in RSH arguments is the source of criticism in popular work as well. Levy (Reference Levy2019) writes that the problem with RSH arguments is ‘the belief that history manifests and reveals them in some natural way’ and Graham (Reference Graham2015) notes that ‘this kind of thinking … imputes an agency to history that doesn't exist. Worse, it assumes that progress is unidirectional.’ Levy and others associate the RSH with the idea that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice’ and notes that Martin Luther King Jr. reflected in ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’ that ‘Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively’ (King Reference King1994). Goldberg echoes the notion that there is nothing at all clear about the trajectory of history, contending: ‘Maybe there is a direction to history. But if there is, it doesn't move in anything like a straight line. It zigs and zags and U-turns all the time. And there's no telling how long any detour will last’ (Goldberg Reference Goldberg2014) Clearly, Levy, Graham, Green, Goldberg, and King interpret RSH arguments as claiming that history itself has a flow that will take us towards, and ultimately reveal, moral truth. Call this interpretation of RSH the Trajectory Interpretation.
If we are charitable with RSH arguments, I think they can be made immune to critiques that rely on problems with the idea of historical trajectory. I'll propose that we use, instead, what I'll call the Simple Interpretation. According to this interpretation, RSH arguments are just claims about a relationship between moral facts and the views of future agents. An RSH argument claims that one's present stance is both morally correct and, when viewed from a suitably future point of view by agents with good access to the moral facts, will be seen as obviously morally correct. RSH arguments are, on my interpretation, just a way of situating one's current situation with respect to both moral facts and future moral agents.Footnote 2
Why should we use the Simple Interpretation? First, RSH arguments needn't be understood as mere claims that one's position will in fact prevail. The course of future events is highly unpredictable. Suppose one is correct that the death penalty is immoral and so informs one's opponents that abolishing the death penalty would put them on the right side of history. Shortly after this argument is made, a meteor strikes the earth, causing complete human extinction. As a result, neither the anti-death-penalty activists nor their pro-death-penalty opponents are on the right side of anything at all. Further, there are no future observers to look back and judge how well one's position aligned with the moral facts. Or, perhaps a blast of cosmic radiation causes mutations which lead future generations to lack the cognitive capacities required to access moral facts and engage in moral reasoning. In this case, neither the anti-death-penalty activists nor their pro-death-penalty opponents are on the right side of history because there are no future agents equipped to look back and take one's position to be obviously morally correct. At best, RSH arguments mean that as long as one's present position is in fact in line with the moral facts and there are future observers who have access to the moral facts, those observers will see one's position as obviously correct.
Second, RSH arguments do not need to be interpreted as invoking continual and inevitable progress. There can be serious deviations from a path of moral progress even if it ends with life in alignment with moral facts. Suppose the death penalty is immoral and that very early in human history the death penalty was almost unheard of. Over time, its use expanded and contracted, meaning that we variously approached and backed away from living in accordance with moral facts. Progress on living in accordance with moral truth would then be far from continuous. If the death penalty were eventually abolished and regarded as a moral stain on human existence, one could then claim that successfully ending the death penalty put those who worked to abolish it on the right side of history. Getting there just involved periods of substantial moral backsliding.
Third, RSH arguments don't entail any record whatsoever of either past moral progress or success in living in accordance with moral truths. One might be the very first agent in history to perceive correctly the moral matters at stake and the first person to live in a morally appropriate way. One might be at the very genesis of moral progress. Such a person could make a proclamation that they are on the right side of history for some issue without speaking nonsense. Thus, RSH arguments don't entail the existence of past progress. The Simple Interpretation is suitable for making RSH arguments.
The Limits of the Right Side of History
Even on the Simple Interpretation, RSH arguments are in bad shape. First, it is an open question how it is that we come into contact with moral truth. Given that RSH arguments are partially a claim that one is in fact on the morally correct side, anyone who expects their RSH argument to be taken seriously needs to be able to back up their claim with an explanation of how they see the moral truth when their opponents do not. This, however, is a general metaethical problem, not a unique problem for RSH arguments. This problem can be sufficiently mitigated by allowing one to appeal to whatever moral epistemology one takes to be most compelling, since the RSH argument doesn't rely on any particular moral epistemology being correct. There just has to be some plausible account of how one comes to know moral facts.
A more pressing matter for RSH arguments is that they make claims about how future agents will view the present. How can one be in a position to think that they are justified in making such a claim? This problem may be taken to count against the Simple Interpretation, which does not involve a past pattern or the view that a progressive trajectory will continue. The advocate of the Trajectory Interpretation may claim that a suitable past trajectory, combined with evidence that that trajectory will continue, is exactly what is needed to justify claims about the views of future moral agents. Green offers a way of appealing to historical trajectory to make sense of the Trajectory Interpretation. Green proposes that RSH arguments are claims about higher-order evidence, and that we can understand RSH arguments by making use of a tool called an epistemic election. An epistemic election is a tool used to resolve disagreements by considering the positions a relevant set of agents would take in the disagreed-upon matter.Footnote 3 Green proposes understanding RSH arguments as claims about how a series of epistemic elections on some moral matter would turn out. To make a good RSH, one takes the results of epistemic elections spread across a suitably wide swathe of the past, finds a pattern of progress in the form of increasing agreement with one's preferred position across past epistemic elections leading up to the present, and argues that this increased agreement is not a fluke but the result of improved epistemic relations to moral truth (Green Reference Green2018: 8–9). This pattern of increased agreement with one's side and improved access to moral truth forms the basis for claiming that, in the future, there will be even more agreement as a result of even better access to moral truth. Thus, the advocates of the Trajectory Interpretation may claim that their approach is superior to the Simple Interpretation because only the former has the machinery to make sense of the way in which RSH arguments make claims about the future.
Despite these very real issues, the Simple Interpretation is preferable. First, the Trajectory Interpretation relies on a view of history that seems specious at best, and more likely downright naive or wilfully ignorant. Indeed, criticism of the idea of historical trajectory is what motivated the Simple Interpretation. The Trajectory Interpretation cannot be separated from a specious view of history. If one tries to avoid the worst aspects of the Trajectory Interpretation by arguing that the pattern of epistemic elections shows improved access to some moral facts but that agreement with one's position is not a matter of some independent force of history, the Trajectory Interpretation loses all bite. Coincidental past improvements in access to moral facts and increased agreement with one's present position say nothing at all about what future agents will think. It is only when there is some independent historical force underlying these improvements that they can be taken to inform our views of the future.
Of course, the Simple Interpretation shares something of this problem. Even if we stipulate that we do know the moral facts, it isn't clear what constitutes a basis for thinking we know that future agents will have access to moral facts, how agents in the future will side on moral issues, or why being further down the temporal road would make them better able to access the moral facts. But this is an inescapable problem for RSH arguments, because any interpretation of them must admit that they make a claim about future agents.
Second, as I argued, RSH arguments just don't need to make claims about the past. One can be the first person to have access to some moral fact and thus the first person to make an RSH. The likelihood that one is the first to gain access to some moral truth is vanishingly small, but that is a feature of being well into the course of human history rather than a feature of the RSH argument structure. Surely the first person to realize the wrongness of slavery and to advocate for its abolition could argue that they are on the right side of history. They could claim that they are correct about the moral facts and that future agents will see abolition as the obviously correct position. The absence of an extant history of improved understanding of the moral facts around slavery on which such a person could rely does not mean that such a person would be speaking nonsense if they claimed to be on the right side of history in their work towards abolition. So, in order to capture the widest array of RSH arguments, the Simple Interpretation is to be preferred.
As I see it, the Simple Interpretation is, on balance, superior to the Trajectory Interpretation because the Simple Interpretation allows us to make sense of RSH arguments without relying on the idea that history is an independent force guiding human morality to an inevitable conclusion. The Simple Interpretation also captures a wide array of RSH arguments. It allows for someone to make an RSH argument at the moment of the beginning of moral progress, because it doesn't require that RSH arguments involve claims about past trajectories. However, any interpretation of RSH arguments involves making sense of the idea that the person making the RSH argument somehow has insight into the views of future agents. Justifying such a claim about future agents, rather than history having independent force, is the real problem for RSH arguments.
