BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Head Shop >

Religion

  
  

Page: 1234(5)

 
 
*
17:58 / 21.03.06
Am I wrong in having made the distinction in the past between ethics (any system for figuring out what is the right thing to do) and morality (a set of rules for figuring out the right thing to do, based on religious, spiritual, or absolute abstract precepts)?

Have I been sort of loosely exchanging those terms here in an unfortunate way?
 
 
elene
19:03 / 21.03.06
If I'm thirsty, and they're on the brink of starvation, and I give them water, I'm not helping.

I don't really know what to say to that, but I imagine there are better images, such as how we Europeans have, not always with the best results, forced our solutions on other cultures. It’s certainly not the perfect guide for every situation but it is dynamic, not static like “thou shall not …”, and it’s invariably coupled with a set of rules that set various bounds on its applicability.

I think of an ethical system as any system for guiding decision making based on benefit vs. loss/harm.

Yes, one can think like that, like I belong to the generation so I guess the null ethical system must be made for the likes of me.

I don’t know whether one can always use ethical and moral interchangeably, but I think one can safely claim that an ethical system may be morally void, evil or self-destructive, it being an abstract container of rules and ways.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
19:34 / 21.03.06
For example, although I don't know much about Sufism or the individual Tariqa, I have read Sufi thinkers arguing against the golden rule, saying it's too pat and not everyone has the same needs, so there are many situations where it is harmful to do to someone as I would have them do to me.

Well, yes, but one could say that the do-unto-others response would be to succour their need. That's not the problem per se. However, as you say, they are not accepting the golden rule. The five precepts of Buddhism don't include the golden rule. Hinduism.. well, it's very hard to treat Hinduism as anything like a unity, but I don't know if there's a firm statement of the golden rule.

So, yes, I'd say that the idea that religious people, if by that we mean people who belong to an established religion, have true access to and obedience of the golden rule is wrong. I'd also question the idea that people who do not have religiosity do not have access to the golden rule, and just mimic its results because of applied self-interest - also seems dodgy. The golden rule is a maxim, after all, rather than a mystery. If it is the logical extension of altruistic desire, then to say non-religious people cannot employ it is further to suggest that secular altruism is inevitably limited and incomplete. Again, I don't think this is an easy or natural conclusion.

Then we get onto id's question about ethics and morals - and whether there's really a difference between them. I've generally tried to keep ethics and morals separate in my usage - using ethics to refer to how individuals are encouraged to act in social orders and morals to describe how behaviour is hypothetically guided by principles that are alleged to transcend one's own environment. However, this is a peculiarity of mine and one not successfully maintained. Elene might be arguing for a distinction where religious people, who follow the golden rule, are acting morally, whereas non-religious people, when they behave in a way that matches how they would behave if they were to be following the golden rule, might be acting so out of a regard for ethics - how they are to be successful as members of a social environment. Probably not hard and fast, though.
 
 
grant
21:09 / 21.03.06
Wikipedia on the ethic of reciprocity mentions the Mahabharata and the Dhammapada -- Hinduism and Buddhism. The statements there do seem a little after-the-fact (well, there must be a Golden Rule somewhere in these faiths, so where is it?), but they seem to be based on the actual texts in question. The "discussion" page might be more useful for some of what's being talked about here.

I also, relevant to the previoius page, suspect that something becomes defined as a religion (rather than a cult or something) based on it having a recognizable ethical code. The ethics might define the religion rather than the other way around.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
22:12 / 21.03.06
Clearly I've missed some of the trails, but the Mahabharatta isn't purely a holy text, right? It's an epic, albeit one many parts of which have great religious importance. Do we know where within it that citation occurs, and how much it is cited in religious practice? I'm not entirely convinced by the Dhammapada ref, either - that may be an instance of reciprocity, but it's not exactly a universal statement. I call reach. What it does help us to say is that a concept of reciprocity seems to find expression in very disparate cultures. As you say, this may be because what forms around a system of living is a religion, to some degree.
 
 
grant
03:20 / 22.03.06
The main Mahabharata citation on that page makes no sense to me (5:1517 seems like it would be Book Five, Udyoga Parva, either the 1,517th chapter or else the 151st chapter, 7th line or 15th chapter, 17th verse or similar -- none of which fit the bill). But there's a clearer reciprocal statement here, in Anusasana Parva 113.8:
That man who regards all creatures as his own self, and behaves towards them as towards his own self, laying aside the rod of chastisement and completely subjugating his wrath, succeeds in attaining to happiness. The very deities, who are desirous of a fixed abode, become stupefied in ascertaining the track of that person who constitutes himself the soul of all creatures and looks upon them all as his own self, for such a person leaves no track behind.

According to the first book of the Mahabharata, the Adi Parva, the text came into being in a weird kind of reverse of the Quran set-up; instead of the sagely human receiving dictation from a divine being, it was Rishi Vyasa who gave dictation to Ganesh (after some haggling over terms):
Brahma having thus spoken to Vyasa, retired to his own abode. Then Vyasa began to call to mind Ganesa. And Ganesa, obviator of obstacles, ready to fulfil the desires of his votaries, was no sooner thought of, than he repaired to the place where Vyasa was seated. And when he had been saluted, and was seated, Vyasa addressed him thus, 'O guide of the Ganas! be thou the writer of the Bharata which I have formed in my imagination, and which I am about to repeat.'

Ganesa, upon hearing this address, thus answered, 'I will become the writer of thy work, provided my pen do not for a moment cease writing.' And Vyasa said unto that divinity, 'Wherever there be anything thou dost not comprehend, cease to continue writing.' Ganesa having signified his assent, by repeating the word Om! proceeded to write; and Vyasa began; and by way of diversion, he knit the knots of composition exceeding close; by doing which, he dictated this work according to his engagement.

I'm not familiar enough with the Pali canon to get into the Dhammapada reference. One translation of chapter 10 is yonder.
 
 
elene
06:21 / 22.03.06
I don't think that whether Buddhism rests on the ethic of reciprocity or not really matters. Buddhism possesses a far more sophisticated ethical system, and likewise Sufism. The ethic of reciprocity serves rather as a minimal requirement, and I've argued that it's the natural, simplest requirement of this form. The problem with my argument lies rather with the existence of ethically empty, self-harming or evil religions, and the possibility that the purely pragmatic, self-serving ethical stance common in our societies, and probably in all societies, really does count as a valid ethical system, if it does.

This is a very serious problem. I know several Germans who applied our ethical system during their youth and have regretted it greatly ever since. It was an easy choice, and an evil one. I want more from a religion than that. In fact I see that as an irreligion.

Nevertheless, this debate is not about that matter. This debate is about the privileged position of science in our consciousness. We feel very strongly that we can divide everything up into the scientific and the unscientific. Thus religion is not a human faculty like logic or aesthetics, even though it is manifestly as old and ingrained as either of those. Science can (scientifically?) split off an abstraction of religion called ethics and claim that's all that is truth. Visions are illusions, rituals may be a comfort but they are inevitably a superstition if taken too seriously.

Someone writing with the authority of science can do this and it's, well, science, but if I try to claim for religion it's apparent natural domain that's a silly way to argue.

I'm going to London for a few days starting tomorrow, and I'll be quite busy much of today too, so apologies in advance if I fail to respond to anyone.

My use of "consciousness" in privileged position of science in our consciousness is not right - but I don't know what the correct word would be. And yesterday I was referring to the blank generation, but blank in angle brackets renders to nothing. And I've a cold.
 
 
*
06:39 / 22.03.06
Just a little discussion I found about ethics vs. morals. Sounds like there's no consensus.

On the other hand, there's this, which I don't entirely agree with, but which seems to present itself as authoritative.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
07:21 / 22.03.06
The problem with my argument lies rather with the existence of ethically empty, self-harming or evil religions, and the possibility that the purely pragmatic, self-serving ethical stance common in our societies, and probably in all societies, really does count as a valid ethical system, if it does.

A further problem with your argument is that you have yet to demonstrate that the ethical system by which our societies (whatever set of societies that includes) is purely pragmatic or self-serving; to decide off the bat that altruism is the property only of the religious, and then only of the religious who belong to church x, strikes me as a giant conceptual leap, and one not yet evidenced.
 
 
elene
07:45 / 22.03.06
Yes, I think you're right, Haus, and I don't think I even want to prove that. I doubt such a thing can be proven, even were it true. It's something that must be measured. Please note that x represents a class of beliefs, and potential beliefs, not a single unknown (church).
 
 
elene
07:52 / 22.03.06
Concerning morals & ethics: the Online Etymological Dictionary has this to say,

moral (adj.):
c.1340, "of or pertaining to character or temperament" (good or bad), from O.Fr. moral, from L. moralis "proper behavior of a person in society," lit. "pertaining to manners," coined by Cicero ("De Fato," II.i) to translate Gk. ethikos (see ethics) from L. mos (gen. moris) "one's disposition," in pl., "mores, customs, manners, morals," of uncertain origin. Meaning "morally good, conforming to moral rules," is first recorded c.1386 of stories, 1638 of persons. Original value-neutral sense preserved in moral support, moral victory, with sense of "pertaining to character as opposed to physical action." The noun meaning "moral exposition of a story" is attested from c.1500. Moralistic formed 1865.

morality:
c.1386, "moral qualities," from O.Fr. moralité, from L.L. moralitatem (nom. moralitas) "manner, character," from L. moralis (see moral (adj.)). Meaning "goodness" is attested from 1592.

"Where there is no free agency, there can be no morality. Where there is no temptation, there can be little claim to virtue. Where the routine is rigorously proscribed by law, the law, and not the man, must have the credit of the conduct." [William H. Prescott, "History of the Conquest of Peru," 1847]

ethics:
1602, "the science of morals," pl. of M.E. ethik "study of morals" (1387), from O.Fr. ethique, from L.L. ethica, from Gk. ethike philosophia "moral philosophy," fem. of ethikos "ethical," from ethos "moral character," related to ethos "custom" (see ethos). The word also traces to Ta Ethika, title of Aristotle's work. Ethic "a person's moral principles," attested from 1651.

So that morals are likely rules for the proper behaviour of a person in society, and ethics the study or science of these rules.

Additionally Ethics says that,

Ethics (from Greek ethos meaning "custom") is the branch of axiology, one of the four major branches of philosophy, which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to define that which is right from that which is wrong. The Western tradition of ethics is sometimes called moral philosophy.

and Ethics in religion,

Ethics is a branch of philosophy dealing with right and wrong in human behaviour.

and about Morality

Morality

See also Ethics.

Morality, in the strictest sense of the word, deals with that which is regarded as right or wrong. The term is often used to refer to a system of principles and judgments shared by cultural, religious, secular (e.g. Humanist) and philosophical communities who share concepts and beliefs, by which people subjectively determine whether given actions, are right or wrong.
...
The systematic study of morality is a branch of philosophy called ethics. Ethics seeks to address questions such as how one ought to behave in a specific situation ("applied ethics"), how one can justify a moral position ("normative ethics"), and how one should understand the fundamental nature of ethics or morality itself, including whether it has any objective justification ("meta-ethics").

This seems quite a consistent view, and it agrees with the second article you quote, id entity.
 
 
elene
08:51 / 22.03.06
There is also no way that I can prove that beyond an ethical system one also needs a vision in order to live a better than pragmatic life, and even if I could I would be abusing language to call this a belief, in the sense of a religion. A single person without connections can really choose any system of rules to live by, and a vision of great wealth, a united global proletariat or a green earth can hardly be called a religion. The visions of someone bound into a family are somewhat different, of course, as the family will normally be the centre of one's hope and visions and the ethics of necessity closer to the social norm. Still, I can't prove that making a religious faith of all this will make one happier, more complete or less pragmatically self-serving in one's moral stance than otherwise.
 
  

Page: 1234(5)

 
  
Add Your Reply