A lot of the discussion on Swadharma focuses on how to be sure that we’re doing the right thing: How do we live a moral life? So we decide that we want to live morally for various reasons, but how do we decide that what we do actually is moral? If your definition of moral behavior and mine are different, how can we be sure that what we do is right? Is it actually a question of right and wrong? The questions obviously go on, as they probably will for the next few millennia. Welcome to being human.
I was wondering, though, about other ways that people use to approach the question of “doing the right thing.“ Are there other ways to think about it, beyond finding a universal code of behavior as guide and source of judgment?
Finding a universal code for moral behavior is clearly a huge challenge. There’s no way to ever address every possible scenario, to be sure that what’s right in one situation will always hold true for every other. And as much as we struggle to identify the moral life, do we ever reach the end of the discussion? Do we ever reach a point of being able to comfortably say “Well, if I do that I’ll be a good person. And since he’s not doing that he’s not a good person”? That’s certainly a debatable question, especially when religious texts can provide a basis for making that judgment, if one chooses. But even those texts won’t be able to guide us through every decision that we make in life — at the very least because the world and society have evolved since those texts were written. So I don’t think it’s simply “finding the easy way out” to consider other ways of approaching the question. This was actually an issue that came up in Expos, and it’s something that’s continued to be thought-provoking even after turning in the final paper.
Part of the Contemporary Theater section is reading works by Sarah Kane, a young British playwright writing in the late 1990s, whose works are, hands down, the most violent and disturbing thing I’ve ever read. Torture, rape, mutilation, the absolute breakdown of human dignity. Not things that we encounter in every day life, but things that push our understanding of morality to its absolute limits. The challenge was how to approach the idea that morality and ethics could somehow exist in a universe that seems so detached from our own universal ideals.
The discussion sometimes degenerates into issues of semantics, trying out different ways of defining ethics and morality. Here’s one way to look at it, putting together ideas voiced by different post-modern philosophers: we all live within a system of ethics, because ethics is nothing more than how our actions affect other people. Regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, age, sex, etc. our lives are intricately tied to the lives of those around us. There’s really no choice in that, unless we actively withdraw from society and choose to live without a community. And even then our withdrawal would affect family, friends, everyone that we might have interacted with. Morality, unlike ethics, is a matter of choice. It’s up to each and every individual to decide whether or not he or she is willing to recognize and accept the responsibility that comes with living in an ethical system. If our actions affect other people, than we have a responsibility to consider those repercussions. To live morally is to acknowledge that responsibility, and try to find a way in which action “extends life to its fullest potential.” (A quote from Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, which sounds catchy but is annoyingly vague…)
So that’s one alternative for thinking about how to live morally. It isn’t based on a legalistic code of behavior, but rather on individual judgment, and the willingness to accept ethical responsibility. But clearly it’s hardly a solution. We’re human, and therefore we make mistakes. What if we’re unable to recognize which choice serves or helps the most people? It’s only natural that the person we know best is ourself — how do we figure out what best “improves society” as a whole? What if that’s different from what other people actually want?
My own knowledge of Hinduism is very limited. Do other people have thoughts on this, or how Hindu philosophy relates to/challenges/disagrees with/extends/whatever else these ideas?
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Dear Mary,
I agree with your opinion on morality though I don’t know much about Hinduism and if it coincides with your idea. Please excuse my brashness, because I’m a little new to all this.
Does helping others have to be synonymous to morality?
Say person A chooses to help person B completely altruistically (Only one person can help B and A enjoys no material gain but a moral sense of well being for having helped B). Enter person C who wants to help person B, for the same reason that person A wanted to help him. When more than one persons compete to help someone (for a moral reward), isn’t the reason to offer help ultimately self-centered and antithetical to pristine morality?
Isn’t it then safe to assume that moral perfection is subjective and can only be achieved from the viewpoint of the person wishing to seek it?
I can’t visualize a practical society where everyone follows an objective sense of morality, that is, when one person’s moral actions cannot be judged compared to some other person in the society (who is human and is inherently erroneous) but to a model
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Moral ”machine” that is fault-less. Since this is truly impractical, it is my opinion that subjective, intrapersonal moral content is not mutually related to social moral perfection.
In a free society, the only way that social moral perfection can be attained is by helping an individual gaining complete self-ownership. That is, help them enough that they have complete control over their lives and such that their lives are only the products of their actions and their environment. Helping them any less would be subjugating them to some sort of slavery by letting their freedom be parametrized or by helping them too much will make them dependant on your altruistic nature and you would control brief slices of their lives.
Can you think of any way how every person can achieve moral perfection in today’s society?
This is why people to turn to religion. To trust something “infallible,” that comes from a supreme higher authority, is enormously comforting. In the absolute terms, I have come to believe that (I paraphrase Dostoevsky here): If there’s no God, all is permitted. That is, in an absolute sense, nothing is “wrong.” We have personal standards that we choose to keep, but these are based on merely value judgments that we have made.
@Tom, I’m a little confused – what do you mean by “social moral perfection”? If you’re defining a free society as a society that lifts all regulations on individuals to let them function completely independently, it undermines the idea of a “society” in that to be part of a society is to conform to certain rules and laws, “official” or cultural or otherwise.
Regardless, this definition is (quite obviously) very impractical.
I’m denying that there is such a state of “moral perfection”. There is a state that embodies all the personal standards that each of us choose, but how to achieve this standard is very specific to the individual’s goal itself! Hence, to prescribe a generic method is somewhat meaningless.
Thoughts?
Sid,
By ’social moral perfection’ I intended to refer to an artificial sense of “moral purity” in which the person and the society unanimously agree that the person’s social ethics are completely ‘moral’, that is he/she adheres to the laws of what is collectively considered ‘morality’.
One pseudo-practical way I could think of how such a social moral perfection is attained, was if in an Utopian idea of a perfectly anarcho-autocratic Free society where freedom existed in its literary meaning and the ultimate moral would be considered maintaining freedom.
And so I agree with you when you say moral perfection cannot be reach, considering that the very definition of morality is different from person to person, because it reflects a subjective perspective. So what I tried to imply by my example of a “free society” is that since moral perfection is unattainable because everyone has varying morals, the only way moral perfection could ever be reached was if everyone had the same objective perspective of morality (In case of the ”free society” the ultimate moral would be maintaining freedom). The impracticality of such a society is evident.
But the question is if everyone has their own perspective of their own morality, where do we draw the line? Is there a line where a person goes from being accepted in society to socially considered pathological due to his/her moral beliefs? Do we need a common perspective of morality?
We don’t draw lines.
We make individual judgments on what is right and wrong that are (at the risk of being repetitive) completely arbitrary; I can’t help but quote Nietzsche here:
There exist laws that determine these on a larger scale to aid governance and circumvent absolute chaos. While it would be wonderful to find a common perspective of morality, this is largely unfeasible. And we don’t really need one.
Thoughts?
I love Dostoevsky, but his quote is inapplicable to the Indic sphere. Consider Jainism, which denies the existence of a creator god, and Buddhism, which is agnostic / essentially atheistic. I would love to see someone try to argue that “all is permitted” for Jains and Buddhists.
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