I found G’s comment on the “Must Hindus believe in God?” thread very thought-provoking, and given that comments get unwieldy after a certain point, I wanted to take the time to respond to it using a full blog post.
First of all, I’m not entirely certain that ”the larger good can probably be defined in terms of each person following and living up to their own, individual conceptions of [what ‘good’ means to them].” And the reason is precisely the wrinkle raised by the two questions G, Saba, and Sid brought up in their insightful comments. I paraphrase them here thus:
- Do all human beings necessarily have something that resembles a sense of morals? And further, how much of this is subjective and how much is objective?
- Assuming that all human beings have a sense of morals, what is its source?
And, what does any of this have to do with “dharmas” or “Dharma”? I don’t have answers to either question, but the very fact that we’re trying to struggle with positing an answer suggests to me that defining the larger good in this “additive” manner is problematic. For one, this gives rise to the usual question: if person X truly, sincerely believes that it is his moral duty to break person Y’s nose, should he be allowed to do so? And does one’s response to the question depend on what the source of person X’s belief is?
But stepping back from the debate for a moment: do these questions matter at all? If we are trying to come up with a reasonable basis for a personal sense of morality, I submit that these two questions are unnecessary. But if we decide that it’s not enough to set our own beliefs on a firm footing, and in fact need a (near-)universally applicable moral system, then we’re in a much more complicated position. To make things a bit more manageable, let’s consider only those moral systems that are “dharmic” in a broad sense.
As far as I can tell, the idea of Dharma does not fit neatly into a deontological or a virtue ethical or a consequentialist framework. It is a framework based around the idea of a duty no doubt (characteristic of deontological ethics), but it also values the actor’s intentions (something that virtue ethics emphasizes) and does not disregard the action’s actual outcome (the central plank of a consequentialist position). Particularly in our modern understanding, it is in the peculiar position of making universal claims—everybody has a dharma to follow—while staying deeply sensitive to particular contexts. (I say “modern”, because I’m pretty sure that in Vedic India the problem of what one’s dharma is was less complicated than it is today, given that it was largely defined by one’s social class and gender.) I’ve already expressed my thoughts on the aporias this setup raises, but I don’t consider the mere existence of aporias reason enough to abandon a moral system—the other frameworks all have their own problems too, after all.
What is the source of such a Dharma? While some specific theistic religious traditions in South Asia no doubt ground the power of Dharma within God, I don’t think this is necessary at all. It’s more likely that Dharma was in fact understood as cosmic order that was replicated in social order and perhaps within the individual’s mind/body too (I’m merely repeating the traditional belief in there being fundamental connections between the macrocosm of the universe, the mesocosm of the Vedic sacrifice, and the microcosm of the individual here). Now different myths portray particular gods intervening in this order in order to restore it, which suggests that maintaining this order is difficult. However the underlying belief seems to be that so long as people fulfill their dharmas (whatever they may be), Dharma continues to exist; as they used to say, “dharmo rakṣati rakṣitaḥ“ ( or (D/d)harma, protected, protects).
Where does Pinker come in here? Evolutionary ethics is provocative, but not something I find entirely satisfying—just because humans “are” a certain way does not ipso facto mean we “ought” to be that way. However, both Dharma and evolutionary ethics will disagree with the statement “If there is no God, all is permitted.” Neither Dharma nor evolutionary ethics really needs a God-figure for their own validity; and in fact the old Vedic/Hindu idea that there is in fact a cosmic order could be squeezed into the idea that some basic human “morals” have evolved or that social or ethical structures are “emergent”.
I’m still beating around the bush here, and I apologize, but I’m still trying to think through this for myself. A few things I haven’t said clearly enough yet:
- I’m still not certain what importance I give to the individual’s wellspring of morality. If it is in fact the case that human beings do share some moral universals, then I’m pretty sure that most religious/ethical frameworks will cover all these universals (although they may prioritize them differently).
- I’m still not certain what importance I give to an ethical framework’s origin (neither its self-proclaimed origin nor our scholarly understanding of its coming to be). Regardless of whether an ethical framework’s origin is divine or humanistic or evolutionary or what-have-you, I think what matters is how well this fits an individual’s “moral bent,” so to speak.
- I do think that abstract discussions on morals and the right, while fascinating and totally worth pursuing for their own sake, sometimes serve as much to cloud as to illuminate. Personally, I don’t think discussions of morals and the like work entirely at the level of the individual, mostly because I think the “individual” is more of a social construct than modern Western thinking acknowledges. I’m not denying human agency here, but I’d like to use this as an opportunity to re-inject the “community” (whatever that may be!) into the discussion of morals. I don’t think the ancients would have it any other way.
And on that note, Happy Deepavali! May the torch of Dharma illuminate our lives, and may we always hold that torch aloft together.
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