Summary
There was a time when publicly standing up to protest at injustices, especially if they didn't affect you personally, was the sign of an upright citizen - the very definition of altruism - a "disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others." Now such expressions of moral outrage are as likely to be dismissed as "virtue signalling" as they are to be applauded. It's a neat and pithy phrase and like all the best neologism seems to capture and distil something in our cultural discourse. It's only been in use for a couple of years. You know the sort of thing - ice bucket challenges, male actors and politicians wearing t-shirts with the slogan "this is what a feminist looks like". Virtue signalling - the practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate our good character or the moral correctness of our beliefs - was only coined a couple of years ago, and has caught on like wild fire. Perhaps because the only thing people seem to like more than virtue signalling is judging other people. To some the phrase deftly skewers an age where politics is driven by narcissism and the echo chamber of social media where being moralistic is more important than being moral? But has what started off as a clever way to win arguments become a lazy put down or mental shortcut to dogmatism? Does accusing others of virtue signalling encourage you not to interrogate your own beliefs? Even if we can't change something we know to be wrong, big collective moral shifts in society have to start somewhere, so is dismissing them as empty gestures a cynical counsel of despair? There was a time when virtue was its won reward. Is that still the case? The morality of virtue signalling. Witnesses are James Bartholomew, Maya Goodfellow, Dr Jonathan Rowson and Professor Frank Furedi.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.6 | You can download many more BBC Radio 4 programmes for free. |
| 0:07.7 | Find these at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio 4. |
| 0:12.1 | Good evening. Virtue signalling looks set to be the phrase of the year, |
| 0:15.9 | so fast has it been taken up by what passes for the public discourse. |
| 0:19.5 | Indeed, it could be, said, that tuning |
| 0:21.7 | into the moral maze is a kind of virtue signalling, though you and I know it's more likely |
| 0:27.1 | that you just want to hear that bloke with the funny jackets talk about something other than |
| 0:30.4 | trains, or the lefty vicar go bananas again about Donald Trump. Virtue signalling is a cute |
| 0:35.9 | neologism that punctures so much of the empty posturing that |
| 0:40.1 | goes on these days by those who want to show how morally superior they are. The political |
| 0:44.5 | rants at the Oscars are the most obvious recent example. Men running around in t-shirts that say |
| 0:49.8 | this is what a feminist looks like. Some would even say a foreign aid budget with its target for how much we should spend |
| 0:56.7 | is a form of national virtue signalling. |
| 0:59.9 | We live in a narcissistic age, and social media have created an echo chamber for our moral outrage. |
| 1:06.0 | Virtue signalling is a neat way of curtly dismissing it all. |
| 1:09.6 | Too neat, perhaps, too easy to label any moral argument, any moral position as self-serving, self-glorifying humbug, a lazy way to take a swipe at altruism itself, shut down any effort to introduce an ethical dimension to our public life. |
| 1:24.7 | Anyway, virtue signaling, our moral maze tonight. The panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator on the Times, Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist, the Chief Executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor, and the priest and polemicist Giles Fraser. Anne McElvoy, does this get your dander up, or do you do it yourself? Well, I'm going to refer us back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th century essay as you said, |
| 1:48.4 | the louder he spoke of his honour, the more we counted our spoons. |
| 1:52.4 | And I think he put his finger on something that leads us to our criticism |
| 1:56.1 | or our worries about virtue signalling in 2017. |
| 2:00.6 | It is that suspicion that it's about preening rather than about inquiry. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.