Quaestiones

[m_francis]

Elsewhere, the Usual Suspects brought up a perennial question, and it amused me to take the counterarguments and the sed contra from what seem at first unlikely sources.

De moralitate atheorum

Question: Whether those who do not believe in God may act morally.

Objection 1. It would seem not, because  as Jean-Paul Sartre held in "Existentialism is a

Comments

[whswhs]

This argument looks as if it might be equivocal in the meaning of "morality."

* Are we referring to morality as a cultural and institutional element of human societies, descriptively, or are we referring to morality as something that we are obliged to follow? It is a factual truth that nearly all human societies have moralities, and have effective methods of getting most people to adhere to them. Why this should be so is a partly empirical and partly philosophical question. The Christian may suppose that they exist because God has implanted a moral sense in human beings (even in human beings who are not Christians, as in this belief system Christianity is not simply the arbitrary belief system of one particular culture); the naturalist must suppose that they exist because they favor long-term survival, both for themselves and for their human hosts. (Presumably a morality could make its host mildly dysfunctional by making them devote effort to infecting others with the morality; an acute morality would kill too many of its hosts and

There are other candidate moral systems.

[marycatelli]

Please provide these counter-examples.

Re: There are other candidate moral systems.

[whswhs]

Ancient Greek moral beliefs of the Homeric era (speaking of Nietzsche). Ancient Greek moral ideas of classical Athens, with, for example, the assumption that sex with a woman, a boy, or a slave was natural, but sex between two adult men was a perversion (some of the most abusive epithets in Greek, such as eurypygon and katapygon, refer to a man who accepts the "passive" role in homosexuality), and the assumption that there was a natural tie between democracy and pederasty. Buddhist ethics as taught by Gautama. The partially Buddhist ethics of samurai era Japan. Objectivism.

Re: There are other candidate moral systems.

[m_francis]

It is instructive that the Buddha was canonized as St. Jehosaphat [iirc] when his story began to circulate in Christian Europe. There are obvious differences: Christianity preaches social justice, Buddhism preaches a withdrawal from the world. Things like that.

Bushido is more akin to European codes of chivalry than to a system of morality. Professional engineers also have a code of ethics. It does not constitute a separate moral system.

You may be confusing a moral system with a set of specific commandments meant to cover all possible situations, as is the case with Qur'an, Confucianism, et al. If we instead adopt the Aristotelian-Christian POV of rationalism, we can see that such things are easily explained.

Or is burning widows on the husband's funeral pyre "moral" because that is the custom in one place, but not another.

Noooo

[ilion7]

"There are obvious differences: Christianity preaches social justice, Buddhism preaches a withdrawal from the world."

Nooo .... leftism preaches "social justice;" Christianity preaches justice. Chriatianity no more preaches "social justice" than that it preaches "racial justice."

Justice is due (from and to) individuals, as individuals.

Re: There are other candidate moral systems.

[ilion7]

I don't yet have a "feel" for 'whswhs,' but perhaps here he's doing similar to his response to this post of mine.

[m_francis]

* Are we referring to morality as a cultural and institutional element of human societies, descriptively, or are we referring to morality as something that we are obliged to follow?

The latter. The former is mere custom. (Though custom is never mere.) Augustine cites as example the wearing of a dalmatic, which in earlier times would have been regarded with great disapproval whereas in his own day, every man of culture wore it in preference to the toga.

* the naturalist must suppose that ["moralities"] exist because they favor long-term survival... Darwinism explains a lot of complicated forms of organization.

The mastery of electro-magnetic energies also favor long-term survival; but we mustn't suppose radios exist because they favor long-term survival. Electromagnetism is not entirely a cultural construct