LESSON 3425 Tue 25 Aug 2020
For
The Welfare, Happiness, Peace of All Sentient and Non-Sentient Beings and for them to Attain Eternal Peace as Final Goal.
KUSHINARA NIBBANA BHUMI PAGODA-It
is a 18 feet Dia All White Pagoda with may be a table or, but be sure
to having above head level based on the usual use of the room. in 116 CLASSICAL LANGUAGES
Through
At
WHITE HOME
668, 5A main Road, 8th Cross, HAL III Stage,
Prabuddha Bharat Puniya Bhumi Bengaluru
Magadhi Karnataka State
PRABUDDHA BHARAT
Dr B.R.Ambedkar thundered “Main Bharat Baudhmay karunga.” (I will make India Buddhist)
All Aboriginal Awakened Societies Thunder ” Hum Prapanch Prabuddha Bharatmay karunge.” (We will make world Prabuddha Prapanch
donation of latest miniature 3D 360 degree cameras to capture places in
360 degree circular vision like circarama and 3D 360 deg projector to
be used in the Meditation as practiced in Lumbini, Buddha Gaya,
Saranath, Kushinara and also Bethlehem, Mecca Madhina and all places
practicing Kindness and compssion including for the physically disabled
18ft Dia circular pagoda for raising funds to help monks, needy poor
and physically disabled people and swimmers.
The
Buddha died at the age of 80 by the banks of a river at Kusinari in
Prabuddha Bharat. Lying on his side with his head propped up by his hand
and a serene expression, the Buddha passed into Nibbana. This moment is
captured in the image of the Reclining Buddha which can be seen in many
statues throughout Thailand, most famously at Wat Po in Bangkok.
Nibbana is a blissful state with no suffering and no reincarnation.
Buddha’s life (English
All Buddha’s original own words in a theravada chronological order
Buddha’s life (English
All Buddha’s original own words in a theravada chronological order
ethical system to develop as a reaction to the ossified form of the old
Vedic philosophy was Buddhism. The person who became known as the
Buddha (flourished c. 6th–4th century bce), which means the “Awakened
One with Awareness,” was born the son of a king. Until he was 29 years
old, he lived the sheltered life of a typical prince, with every luxury
he could desire. At that time, legend has it, he was jolted out of his
idleness by the “Four Signs”: he saw in succession an old man, a sick
person, a corpse being carried to cremation, and a monk in meditation
beneath a tree. He began to think about old age, disease, and death, and
decided to follow the way of the monk. For six years he led an ascetic
life of renunciation, but finally, while meditating under a tree, he
concluded that the solution was not withdrawal from the world, but
rather a practical life of compassion for all.
Buddhism is conventionally regarded as a religion, and indeed over the
centuries it adopted religious trappings in many places. This is an irony
of history, however, because the Buddha himself was a strong critic of
religion. He rejected the authority of the Vedas and refused to set up
an alternative
creed. He regarded religious ceremonies as a waste of time and
theological beliefs as mere superstition. He refused to discuss abstract
metaphysical problems such as the immortality of the soul.
The Buddha told his followers to think for themselves and to take
responsibility for their own future. In place of religious beliefs and
religious ceremonies, the Buddha advocated a life devoted to universal
compassion and brotherhood. Through such a life one might reach the
ultimate goal, Nibbana,
a state in which all living things are free from pain and sorrow. There
are similarities between this morality of universal compassion and the
ethics of the Jains.
In keeping with his own previous experience, the Buddha proposed a “middle path”
between self-indulgence and self-renunciation. In fact, it is not so
much a path between these two extremes as one that draws together the
benefits of both. Through living a life of compassion and love for all, a
person achieves the liberation from selfish cravings sought by the
ascetic and a serenity and satisfaction that are more fulfilling than
anything obtained by indulgence in pleasure.
It is sometimes thought that because the Buddhist goal is nirvana, a
state that can be reached by meditation, Buddhism teaches a withdrawal
from the real world. Nirvana, however, is not to be sought for oneself
alone; it is regarded as a unity of the individual self with the
universal self in which all things take part. In the Mahayana school of Buddhism, the aspirant to awakenment even takes a vow to become a bodhisattva (buddha-to-be) and not to accept final release until everything that exists in the universe has attained Nibbana.
classified as an Prabuddha Bharatian moral philosophy. Yet Buddhism did not
permanently take hold in the land of its origin. Instead, it spread in
different forms south into Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia
and north through Tibet to China, Korea, and Japan. In the process,
Buddhism suffered the same fate as the Vedic philosophy against which it
had rebelled: it became a religion, often rigid, with its own sects,
ceremonies, and superstitions.
luxury, and glamour—to be empty and worthless when compared with the
ultimate value of a peaceful inner life. He also emphasized gentleness,
calm, and nonviolence. Nearly 600 years before Jesus, he said: “It is
the way of the Dao…to recompense injury with kindness.” By returning
good for good and also good for evil, Laozi believed that all would
become good; to return evil for evil would lead to chaos.
The history of Western ethics
Ancient civilizations to the end of the 19th century
The ancient Middle East and Asia
The first ethical
precepts must have been passed down by word of mouth from parents and
elders, but as societies learned to use the written word, they began to
set down their ethical beliefs. These records constitute the first historical evidence of the origins of ethics.
The Middle East
The earliest surviving writings
that might be taken as ethics textbooks are a series of lists of
precepts to be learned by boys of the ruling class of Egypt,
prepared some 3,000 years before the Christian Era. In most cases, they
consist of shrewd advice on how to live happily, avoid unnecessary
troubles, and advance one’s career by cultivating
the favour of superiors. There are, however, several passages that
recommend more broadly based ideals of conduct, such as the following:
rulers should treat their people justly and judge impartially between
their subjects; they should aim to make their people prosperous; those
who have bread should share it with the hungry; humble and lowly people
must be treated with kindness; one should not laugh at the blind or at
dwarfs.
Why,
then, should one follow these precepts? Did the ancient Egyptians
believe that one should do what is good for its own sake? The precepts
frequently state that it will profit a man to act justly, as in the
maxim “Honesty is the best policy.” They also emphasize the importance
of having a good name. These precepts were intended for the instruction
of the ruling classes, however, and it is not clear why helping the destitute should have contributed to an individual’s good reputation among this class.
To some degree, therefore, the authors of the precepts must have
thought that to make people prosperous and happy and to be kind to those
who have least is not merely personally advantageous but good in
itself.
The precepts are not works of ethics in the philosophical sense. No
attempt is made to find any underlying principles of conduct that might
provide a more systematic understanding of ethics. Justice, for example, is given a prominent place, but there is no elaboration of the notion of justice
or any discussion of how disagreements about what is just and unjust
might be resolved. Furthermore, there is no probing of ethical dilemmas
that may occur if the precepts should conflict with one another. The
precepts are full of sound observations and practical wisdom, but they
do not encourage theoretical speculation.
The same practical bent can be found in other early codes or lists of ethical injunctions. The great Code of Hammurabi is often said to have been based on the principle of “an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth,” as if this were some fundamental principle of
justice, elaborated and applied to all cases. In fact, the code reflects
no such consistent principle. It frequently prescribes the death penalty
for offenses that do not themselves cause death—e.g., for robbery and
for accepting bribes. Moreover, even the eye-for-an-eye rule applies
only if the eye of the original victim is that of a member of the
patrician class; if it is the eye of a commoner, the punishment is a
fine of a quantity of silver. Apparently such differences in punishment
were not thought to require justification. At any rate, there are no
surviving attempts to defend the principles of justice on which the code
was based.
The Hebrew people were at different times captives of both the Egyptians and the Babylonians. It is therefore not surprising that the law of ancient Israel, which was put into its definitive form during the Babylonian Exile, shows the influence both of the ancient Egyptian precepts and of the Code of Hammurabi. The book of Exodus refers, for example, to the principle of “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Hebraic law does not differentiate, as the Babylonian law does, between patricians and commoners, but it does stipulate
that in several respects foreigners may be treated in ways that it is
not permissible to treat fellow Hebrews; for instance, Hebrew slaves,
but not others, had to be freed without ransom in the seventh year. Yet,
in other respects Hebraic law and morality
developed the humane concern shown in the Egyptian precepts for the
poor and unfortunate: hired servants must be paid promptly, because they
rely on their wages to satisfy their pressing needs; slaves must be
allowed to rest on the seventh day; widows, orphans, and the blind and
deaf must not be wronged; and the poor man should not be refused a loan.
There was even a tithe providing for an incipient welfare state.
The spirit of this humane concern was summed up by the injunction to
“love thy neighbour as thyself,” a sweepingly generous form of the rule
of reciprocity.
The famed Ten Commandments are thought to be a legacy
of Semitic tribal law from a time when important commands were taught
one for each finger, so that they could be remembered more easily (sets
of five or 10 laws are common among preliterate civilizations). The
content of the Hebrew commandments differed from other laws of the
region mainly in its emphasis on duties to God. This emphasis persisted
in the more detailed laws laid down elsewhere; as much as half of such
legislation was concerned with crimes against God and ceremonial and
ritualistic matters, though there may be other explanations for some of
these ostensibly religious requirements concerning the avoidance of
certain foods and the need for ceremonial cleansings.
receiving the Ten Commandments. His brother Aaron stands to his right
with Israelites waiting at the foot of the mountain, miniature
illuminated manuscript, c. 1322.The British Library (Public Domain)
In addition to lengthy statements of the law, the surviving literature of ancient Israel includes both proverbs
and the books of the prophets. The proverbs, like the precepts of the
Egyptians, are brief statements that do not demonstrate much concern for
systematic presentation or overall coherence.
They go farther than the Egyptian precepts, however, in urging conduct
that is just and upright and pleasing to God. There are correspondingly
fewer references to what is needed for a successful career, though it is
frequently stated that God rewards the just. In this connection, the Book of Job is notable as an exploration of the problem raised for those who accept this motive for obeying the moral
law: why do the best of people frequently suffer the worst misfortunes?
The book offers no solution beyond faith in God, but the sharpened
awareness of the problem it offers may have influenced some to adopt the
belief in reward and punishment in another realm as the only possible solution.
The literature of the prophets contains a good deal of social and moral criticism,
though most of it consists of denunciation rather than discussion about
what goodness really is or why there should be so much wrongdoing. The Book of Isaiah is especially notable for its early portrayal of a utopia
in which “the desert shall blossom as the rose…the wolf also shall
dwell with the lamb.…They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy
mountain.”
Unlike the ethical teachings of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, Prabuddha Bharatian ethics was philosophical from the start. In the oldest of the Indian writings, the Vedas, ethics is an integral aspect of philosophical and religious speculation about the nature of reality. These writings date from about 1500 to 1200 bce.
They have been described as the oldest philosophical literature in the
world, and what they say about how people ought to live may therefore be
the first philosophical ethics. (See Indian philosophy.)
The Vedas are, in a sense, hymns, but the gods to which they refer are not persons but manifestations of ultimate truth
and reality. In the Vedic philosophy, the basic principle of the
universe, the ultimate reality on which the cosmos exists, is the
principle of rita,
which is the word from which the Western notion of right is derived.
There is thus a belief in a right moral order somehow built into the
universe itself. Hence, truth and right are linked; to penetrate through
illusion and understand the ultimate truth of human existence is to understand what is right. To be an awakened person is to know what is real and to live rightly, for these are not two separate things but one and the same.
The
ethics that is thus traced to the very essence of the universe is not
without detailed practical applications. These applications were based
on four ideals, or proper goals, of life: prosperity, the satisfaction
of desires, moral duty, and spiritual perfection—i.e., liberation from a
finite existence. From these ends follow certain virtues: honesty,
rectitude, charity, nonviolence, modesty, and purity of heart. To be
condemned, on the other hand, are falsehood, egoism,
cruelty, adultery, theft, and injury to living things. Because the
eternal moral law is part of the universe, to do what is praiseworthy is
to act in harmony with the universe, and accordingly such action will
receive its proper reward; conversely, once the true nature of the self
is understood, it becomes apparent that those who do what is wrong are
acting self-destructively.
These basic principles underwent considerable modification over the ensuing centuries, especially in the Upanishads, a body of philosophical literature dating from about the middle of the 1st millennium bce. The Indian caste
system, with its intricate laws about what members of each caste may or
may not do, is accepted by the Upanishads as part of the proper order
of the universe. Ethics itself, however, is not regarded as a matter of
conformity to laws. Instead, the desire to be ethical is an inner
desire. It is part of the quest for spiritual perfection, which in turn
is elevated to the highest of the four goals of life.
During the following centuries the moral philosophy of this early period gradually became a rigid and dogmatic system that provoked several reactions. One, which is uncharacteristic of Indian thought in general, was the Charvaka, or materialist school, which mocked religious ceremonies, saying that they were invented by the Brahmans
(the priestly caste) to ensure their livelihood. When the Brahmans
defended animal sacrifices by claiming that the sacrificed beast goes
straight to heaven, the members of the Charvaka asked why the Brahmans
did not kill their aged parents to hasten their arrival there. Against
the postulation of an eventual spiritual liberation, Charvaka ethics
urged each individual to seek his or her pleasure in the here and now.
another reaction to the traditional Vedic outlook, reached exactly the
opposite conclusions. The Jain philosophy is based on spiritual
liberation as the highest of all goals and nonviolence
as the means of attaining it. In true philosophical manner, the Jains
found in the principle of nonviolence a guide to all morality. First,
apart from the obvious application to prohibiting violent acts directed
at other humans, nonviolence is extended to all living things. The Jains
are vegetarian.
They are often ridiculed by Westerners for the care they take to avoid
injuring insects or other living things while walking or drinking water
that may contain minute organisms; it is less well known that Jains
began to care for sick and injured animals thousands of years before
animal shelters were thought of in Europe. The Jains do not draw the
distinction usually made in Western ethics between their responsibility
for what they do and their responsibility for what they omit doing.
Omitting to care for an injured animal would also be in their view a
form of violence.
Other moral duties are also derived from the notion of nonviolence. To tell someone a lie, for example, is regarded as inflicting a mental injury on that person. Stealing,
of course, is another form of injury, but because of the absence of a
distinction between acts and omissions, even the possession of wealth is
seen as depriving the poor and hungry of the means to satisfy their
wants. Thus, nonviolence leads to a principle of nonpossession of
property. Jain priests were expected to be strict ascetics and to avoid sexual intercourse.
Ordinary Jains, however, followed a slightly less-severe code, which
was intended to give effect to the major forms of nonviolence while
still being compatible with a normal life.
(literally “Way,” the Supreme Principle). The Dao is based on the
traditional Chinese virtues of simplicity and sincerity. To follow the
Dao is a matter not of observing any set of duties or prohibitions but
rather of living in a simple and honest manner, being true to oneself,
and avoiding the distractions of ordinary living. Laozi’s classic book
on the Dao, Daodejing, consists only of aphorisms and isolated paragraphs, making it difficult to draw an intelligible system of ethics from it. Perhaps this is because Laozi was a type of moral skeptic: he rejected both righteousness and benevolence, apparently because he saw them as imposed on individuals from without rather than coming from their own inner natures.
What’s the Difference Between Morality and Ethics?
The lives of Laozi
and Confucius overlapped, and there is even an account of a meeting
between them, which is said to have left the younger Confucius baffled.
Confucius was the more down-to-earth thinker, absorbed in the practical
task of social reform. The province in which he served as minister of justice
became renowned for the honesty of its people, the respect shown to the
aged, and the care taken of the poor. Probably because of their
practical nature, the teachings of Confucius had a far greater influence
on China than did those of the more withdrawn Laozi.
Confucius did not organize his recommendations into any coherent system. His teachings are offered in the form of sayings, aphorisms, and anecdotes, usually in reply to questions by disciples. They aim at guiding the student toward becoming a junzi,
a concept translated as “gentleman” or “superior man.” In opposition to
the prevailing feudal ideal of the aristocratic lord, Confucius
presented the superior man as one who is humane and thoughtful,
motivated by the desire to do what is good rather than by personal
profit. Beyond this, however, the concept is not discussed in any
detail; it is only shown by diverse
examples, some of them trite: “A superior man’s life leads upwards.…The
superior man is broad and fair; the inferior man takes sides and is
petty.…A superior man shapes the good in man; he does not shape the bad
in him.”
One of the recorded sayings of Confucius is an answer to a request from a disciple for a single word that could serve as a guide to conduct for one’s entire life. He replied: “Is not reciprocity
such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to
others.” This rule is repeated several times in the Confucian literature
and might be considered the supreme principle of Confucian ethics.
Other duties are not, however, presented as derivative from this supreme
principle, nor is the principle used to determine what should be done
when two or more specific duties—e.g., the duty to parents and the duty
to friends, both of which are prominent in Confucian ethics—conflict
with each other.
Confucius
did not explain why the superior man chooses righteousness rather than
personal profit. This question was taken up more than 100 years after
his death by his follower Mencius (Mengzi; c. 372–c. 289 bce), who asserted that humans are naturally inclined to do what is humane and right. Evil is not part of human nature but is the result of poor upbringing or lack of education. But Confucius also had another distinguished follower, Xunzi (c. 300–c. 230 bce), who said that humans naturally seek profit for themselves and envy others. The rules of morality
are designed to avoid the strife that would otherwise follow from
acting according to this nature. The Confucian school was united in its
ideal of the junzi but divided over whether such an ideal was
to be obtained by controlling people’s natural desires or allowing them
to be fulfilled.
Ancient and Classical Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was the birthplace of Western philosophical ethics. The ideas of Socrates (c. 470–399 bce), Plato, and Aristotle (384–322 bce) will be discussed in the next section. The sudden flowering of philosophy during that period was rooted in the ethical thought of earlier centuries. In the poetic literature of the 7th and 6th centuries bce, there were, as in other cultures,
moral precepts but no real attempts to formulate a coherent overall
ethical position. The Greeks were later to refer to the most prominent
of these poets and early philosophers as the seven sages,
and they are frequently quoted with respect by Plato and Aristotle.
Knowledge of the thought of this period is limited, for often only
fragments of original writings, along with later accounts of dubious
accuracy, remain.
Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 bce),
whose name is familiar because of the geometric theorem that bears his
name, is one such early Greek thinker about whom little is known. He
appears to have written nothing at all, but he was the founder of a school of thought
that touched on all aspects of life and that may have been a kind of
philosophical and religious order. In ancient times the school was best
known for its advocacy of vegetarianism, which, like that of the Jains, was associated with the belief that after the death of the body, the human soul may take up residence in the body of an animal (see reincarnation). Pythagoreans continued to espouse this view for many centuries, and classical passages in the works of writers such as Ovid (43 bce–17 ce) and Porphyry (234–305) opposing bloodshed and animal slaughter can be traced to Pythagoras.
Ironically,
an important stimulus for the development of moral philosophy came from
a group of teachers to whom the later Greek philosophers—Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle—were consistently hostile: the Sophists. This term was used in the 5th century to refer to a class of professional teachers of rhetoric
and argument. The Sophists promised their pupils success in political
debate and increased influence in the affairs of the city. They were
accused of being mercenaries who taught their students to win arguments
by fair means or foul. Aristotle said that Protagoras (c. 490–c. 420 bce), perhaps the most famous of the Sophists, claimed to teach how “to make the weaker argument the stronger.”
The Sophists, however, were more than mere teachers of rhetorical tricks. They regarded themselves as imparters of the cultural and intellectual
qualities necessary for success, and their involvement with argument
about practical affairs naturally led them to develop views about
ethics. The recurrent theme in the views of the better-known Sophists,
such as Protagoras, Antiphon (c. 480–411 bce), and Thrasymachus (flourished late 5th century bce),
is that what is commonly called good and bad or just and unjust does
not reflect any objective fact of nature but is rather a matter of
social convention. Protagoras
is the apparent author of the celebrated epigram summing up this theme,
“Man is the measure of all things.” Plato represents him as saying,
“Whatever things seem just and fine to each city, are just and fine for
that city, so long as it thinks them so.” Protagoras, like Herodotus,
drew a moderate conclusion from his ethical relativism.
He argued that, while the particular content of the moral rules may
vary, there must be rules of some kind if life is to be tolerable. Thus,
Protagoras stated that the foundations of an ethical system needed
nothing from the gods or from any special metaphysical realm beyond the ordinary world of the senses.
Thrasymachus
appears to have taken a more radical approach—if Plato’s portrayal of
his views is historically accurate. He explained that the concept of justice
means nothing more than obedience to the laws of society, and, since
these laws are made by the strongest political group in its own
interest, justice represents nothing but the interest of the stronger.
This position is often represented by the slogan “Might makes right.”
Thrasymachus was probably not saying, however, that whatever the
mightiest do really is right; he is more likely to have been denying
that the distinction between right and wrong has any objective basis.
Presumably he would then encourage his pupils to follow their own
interests as best they could. He is thus an early representative of
moral skepticism and perhaps ethical egoism, the view that the right thing to do is to pursue one’s own interest (see below Ethical egoism).
It
is not surprising that, with ideas of this sort in circulation, other
thinkers should react by probing more deeply into ethics to see whether
the potentially destructive conclusions of some of the Sophists could be
resisted. This reaction produced works that have served ever since as
the cornerstone of the entire edifice of Western ethics.
Socrates
Socrates, who once observed that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” must be regarded as one of the greatest teachers of ethics. Yet, unlike other figures of comparable importance, such as the Buddha or Confucius,
he did not tell his audience how they should live. What Socrates taught
was a method of inquiry. When the Sophists or their pupils boasted that
they knew what justice, piety, temperance, or law
was, Socrates would ask them to give an account, which he would then
show was entirely inadequate. Because his method of inquiry threatened
conventional beliefs, Socrates’ enemies contrived to have him put to
death on a charge of corrupting the youth of Athens. For those who
thought that adherence to the conventional moral
code was more important than the cultivation of an inquiring mind, the
charge was appropriate. By conventional standards, Socrates was indeed
corrupting the youth of Athens, though he himself considered the
destruction of beliefs that could not stand up to criticism as a necessary preliminary to the search for true knowledge. In this respect he differed from the Sophists, with their ethical relativism, for he thought that virtue is something that can be known and that the virtuous person is the one who knows what virtue is.
It
is therefore not entirely accurate to regard Socrates as contributing a
method of inquiry but as having no positive views of his own. He
believed that virtue could be known, though he himself did not profess
to know it. He also thought that anyone who knows what virtue is will
necessarily act virtuously. Those who act badly, therefore, do so only
because they are ignorant of, or mistaken about, the real nature of
virtue. This belief
may seem peculiar today, in large part because it is now common to
distinguish between what a person ought to do and what is in his own
interest. Once this assumption is made, it is easy to imagine
circumstances in which a person knows what he ought to do but proceeds
to do something else—what is in his own interests—instead. Indeed, how
to provide self-interested (or merely rational) people with motivating
reasons for doing what is right has been a major problem for Western
ethics. In ancient Greece,
however, the distinction between virtue and self-interest was not
made—at least not in the clear-cut manner that it is today. The Greeks
believed that virtue is good both for the individual and for the community.
To be sure, they recognized that living virtuously might not be the
best way to prosper financially; but then they did not assume, as people
are prone to do today, that material wealth is a major factor in
whether a person’s life goes well or ill.
Plato
Socrates’ greatest disciple,
Plato, accepted the key Socratic beliefs in the objectivity of goodness
and in the link between knowing what is good and doing it. He also took
over the Socratic method of conducting philosophy,
developing the case for his own positions by exposing errors and
confusions in the arguments of his opponents. He did this by writing his
works as dialogues
in which Socrates is portrayed as engaging in argument with others,
usually Sophists. The early dialogues are generally accepted as
reasonably accurate accounts of the views of the historical Socrates,
but the later ones, written many years after Socrates’ death, use the
latter as a mouthpiece for ideas and arguments that were in fact
original to Plato.
In the most famous of Plato’s dialogues, Politeia (The Republic), the character Socrates is challenged by the following example: Suppose a person obtained the legendary ring of Gyges,
which has the magical property of rendering the wearer invisible. Would
that person still have any reason to behave justly? Behind this
challenge lies the suggestion, made by the Sophists and still heard
today, that the only reason for acting justly is that one cannot get
away with acting unjustly. Plato’s response to this challenge is a long
argument developing a position that appears to go beyond anything the
historical Socrates asserted. Plato maintained that true knowledge
consists not in knowing particular things but in knowing something
general that is common to all the particular cases. This view is
obviously derived from the way in which Socrates pressed his opponents
to go beyond merely describing particular acts that are (for example)
good, temperate, or just and to give instead a general account of
goodness, temperance, or justice. The implication
is that one does not know what goodness is unless one can give such a
general account. But the question then arises, what is it that one knows
when one knows this general idea of goodness? Plato’s answer is that one knows the Form of the Good,
a perfect, eternal, and changeless entity existing outside space and
time, in which particular good things share, or “participate,” insofar
as they are good.
It has been said that all of Western philosophy
consists of footnotes to Plato. Certainly the central issue around
which all of Western ethics has revolved can be traced to the debate
between the Sophists, who claimed that goodness and justice are relative
to the customs of each society—or, worse still, that they are merely a
disguise for the interest of the stronger—and the Platonists, who
maintained the possibility of knowledge of an objective Form of the
Good.
But
even if one could know what goodness or justice is, why should one act
justly if one could profit by doing the opposite? This is the remaining
part of the challenge posed by the tale of the ring of Gyges, and it is
still to be answered. For even if one accepts that goodness is something
objective, it does not follow that one has a sufficient reason to do
what is good. One would have such a reason if it could be shown that
goodness or justice leads, at least in the long run, to happiness; as has been seen from the preceding discussion of early ethics in other cultures, this issue is a perennial topic for all who think about ethics.
According
to Plato, justice exists in the individual when the three elements of
the soul—intellect, emotion, and desire—act in harmony with each other.
The unjust person lives in an unsatisfactory state of internal discord,
trying always to overcome the discomfort of unsatisfied desire but
never achieving anything better than the mere absence of want. The soul
of the just person, on the other hand, is harmoniously ordered under the
governance of reason,
and the just person derives truly satisfying enjoyment from the pursuit
of knowledge. Plato remarks that the highest pleasure, in fact, comes
from intellectual
speculation. He also gives an argument for the belief that the human
soul is immortal; therefore, even if a just individual lives in poverty
or suffers from illness, the gods will not neglect him in the next life,
where he will have the greatest rewards of all. In summary, then, Plato
asserts that we should act justly because in doing so we are “at one
with ourselves and with the gods.”
Today, this may seem like a strange conception
of justice and a farfetched view of what it takes to achieve human
happiness. Plato does not recommend justice for its own sake,
independent of any personal gains one might obtain from being a just
person. This is characteristic of Greek ethics, which refused to
recognize that there could be an irresolvable conflict between the
interest of the individual and the good of the community. Not until the
18th century did a philosopher forcefully assert the importance of doing
what is right simply because it is right, quite apart from
self-interested motivation (see below Kant).
To be sure, Plato did not hold that the motivation for each and every
just act is some personal gain; on the contrary, the person who takes up
justice will do what is just because it is just. Nevertheless, he
accepted the assumption of his opponents that one could not recommend
taking up justice in the first place unless doing so could be shown to
be advantageous for oneself as well as for others.
Although many people now think differently about the connection between morality
and self-interest, Plato’s attempt to argue that those who are just are
in the long run happier than those who are unjust has had an enormous
influence on Western ethics. Like Plato’s views on the objectivity of
goodness, the claim that justice and personal happiness are linked has
helped to frame the agenda for a debate that continues even today.
Aristotle
Plato
founded a school of philosophy in Athens known as the Academy. There
Aristotle, Plato’s younger contemporary and only rival in terms of
influence on the course of Western philosophy, went to study. Aristotle
was often fiercely critical of Plato, and his writing is very different
in style and content, but the time they spent together is reflected in a
considerable amount of common ground. Thus, Aristotle holds with Plato
that the life of virtue is rewarding for the virtuous as well as beneficial
for the community. Aristotle also agrees that the highest and most
satisfying form of human existence involves the exercise of one’s
rational faculties to the fullest extent. One major point of
disagreement concerns Plato’s doctrine of Forms, which Aristotle
rejected. Thus, Aristotle does not argue that in order to be good one
must have knowledge of the Form of the Good.
Aristotle conceived of the universe as a hierarchy
in which everything has a function. The highest form of existence is
the life of the rational being, and the function of lower beings is to
serve this form of life. From this perspective Aristotle defended slavery—because
he considered barbarians less rational than Greeks and by nature suited
to be “living tools”—and the killing of nonhuman animals for food and
clothing. From this perspective also came a view of human nature and an ethical theory derived from it. All living things, Aristotle held, have inherent potentialities, which it is their nature to develop. This is the form of life properly suited to them and constitutes
their goal. What, however, is the potentiality of human beings? For
Aristotle this question turns out to be equivalent to asking what is
distinctive about human beings; and this, of course, is the capacity to reason.
The ultimate goal of humans, therefore, is to develop their reasoning
powers. When they do this, they are living well, in accordance with
their true nature, and they will find this the most rewarding existence
possible.
Aristotle
thus ends up agreeing with Plato that the life of the intellect is the
most rewarding existence, though he was more realistic than Plato in
suggesting that such a life would also contain the goods of material
prosperity and close friendships. Aristotle’s argument for regarding the
life of the intellect so highly, however, is different from Plato’s,
and the difference is significant because Aristotle committed a fallacy
that has often been repeated. The fallacy is to assume that whatever
capacity distinguishes humans from other beings is, for that very
reason, the highest and best of their capacities. Perhaps the ability to
reason is the best human capacity, but one cannot be compelled to draw
this conclusion from the fact that it is what is most distinctive of the
human species.
A broader and still more pervasive
fallacy underlies Aristotle’s ethics. It is the idea that an
investigation of human nature can reveal what one ought to do. For
Aristotle, an examination of a knife would reveal that its distinctive
capacity is to cut, and from this one could conclude that a good knife
is a knife that cuts well. In the same way, an examination of human
nature should reveal the distinctive capacity of human beings, and from
this one should be able to infer what it is to be a good human being.
This line of thought makes sense if one thinks, as Aristotle did, that
the universe as a whole has a purpose and that human beings exist as
part of such a goal-directed scheme of things, but its error becomes
glaring if this view is rejected and human existence is seen as the
result of a blind process of evolution. Whereas the distinctive capacity
of a knife is a result of the fact that knives are made for a specific
purpose—and a good knife is thus one that fulfills this purpose
well—human beings, according to modern biology, were not made with any particular purpose in mind. Their nature is the result of random forces of natural selection. Thus, human nature cannot, without further moral premises, determine how human beings ought to live.
Aristotle is also responsible for much later thinking about the virtues one should cultivate. In his most important ethical treatise, the Nicomachean Ethics,
he sorts through the virtues as they were popularly understood in his
day, specifying in each case what is truly virtuous and what is
mistakenly thought to be so. Here he applies an idea that later came to
be known as the Golden Mean; it is essentially the same as the Buddha’s middle path
between self-indulgence and self-renunciation. Thus, courage, for
example, is the mean between two extremes: one can have a deficiency of
it, which is cowardice, or one can have an excess of it, which is
foolhardiness. The virtue of friendliness, to give another example, is
the mean between obsequiousness and surliness.
Aristotle
does not intend the idea of the mean to be applied mechanically in
every instance: he says that in the case of the virtue of temperance, or
self-restraint, it is easy to find the excess of self-indulgence in the
physical pleasures, but the opposite error, insufficient concern for
such pleasures, scarcely exists. (The Buddha, who had experienced the ascetic
life of renunciation, would not have agreed.) This caution in the
application of the idea is just as well, for while it may be a useful
device for moral education, the notion of a mean cannot help one to
discover new truths about virtue. One can determine the mean only if one
already has a notion of what is an excess and what is a defect of the
trait in question. But this is not something that can be discovered by a
morally neutral inspection of the trait itself: one needs a prior
conception of the virtue in order to decide what is excessive and what
is defective. Thus, to attempt to use the doctrine of the mean to define
the particular virtues would be to travel in a circle.
Aristotle’s
list of the virtues and vices differs from lists compiled by later
Christian thinkers. Although courage, temperance, and liberality are
recognized as virtues in both periods, Aristotle also includes a virtue
whose Greek name, megalopsyche, is sometimes translated as “pride,”
though it literally means “greatness of soul.” This is the
characteristic of holding a justified high opinion of oneself. For
Christians the corresponding excess, vanity, was a vice, but the
corresponding deficiency, humility, was a virtue.
Aristotle’s
discussion of the virtue of justice has been the starting point of
almost all Western accounts. He distinguishes between justice in the
distribution of wealth or other goods and justice in reparation, as, for
example, in punishing someone for a wrong he has done. The key element
of justice, according to Aristotle, is treating like cases alike—an idea
that set for later thinkers the task of working out which kinds of
similarities (e.g., need, desert, talent) should be relevant. As with
the notion of virtue as a mean, Aristotle’s conception of justice
provides a framework that requires fleshing out before it can be put to
use.
Aristotle distinguished between theoretical and practical wisdom.
His conception of practical wisdom is significant, for it involves more
than merely choosing the best means to whatever ends or goals one may
have. The practically wise person also has the right ends. This implies
that one’s ends are not purely a matter of brute desire or feeling; the
right ends are something that can be known and reasoned about. It also
gives rise to the problem that faced Socrates: How is it that people can
know the difference between good and bad and still choose what is bad?
As mentioned earlier, Socrates simply denied that this could happen,
saying that those who did not choose the good must, appearances
notwithstanding, be ignorant of what the good is. Aristotle said that
this view was “plainly at variance with the observed facts,” and he
offered instead a detailed account of the ways in which one can fail to
act on one’s knowledge of the good, including the failure that results
from lack of self-control and the failure caused by weakness of will.
Later Greek and Roman ethics
In
ethics, as in many other fields, the later Greek and Roman periods do
not display the same penetrating insight as the Classical period of 5th-
and 4th-century Greek civilization. Nevertheless, the two schools of
thought that dominated the later periods, Stoicism and Epicureanism, represent important approaches to the question of how one ought to live.
The Stoics
Stoicism originated in the views of Socrates and Plato, as modified by Zeno of Citium (c. 335–c. 263 bce) and then by Chrysippus (c. 280–206 bce). It gradually gained influence in Rome, chiefly through Cicero (106–43 bce) and then later through Seneca the Younger (4 bce–65 ce). Remarkably, its chief proponents include both a slave, Epictetus (55–c. 135), and an emperor, Marcus Aurelius (121–180). This is a fine illustration of the Stoic message that what is important is the pursuit of wisdom and virtue,
a quest that is open to all human beings because of their common
capacity for reason, no matter what the external circumstances of their
lives.
Today, the most common meaning of the word stoic is a person who remains unmoved by the sorrows and afflictions that distress the rest of humanity. This is an accurate representation of a Stoic ideal, but it must be placed in the context of a systematic approach to life. As noted above, Plato held that human passions and physical desires are in need of regulation by reason. The Stoics
went farther: they rejected passions altogether as a basis for deciding
what is good or bad. Although physical desires cannot simply be
abolished, the wise person will appreciate the difference between
wanting something and judging it to be good. Only reason can judge the
goodness or badness of what is desired. If one is wise, he will identify
himself with reason rather than with desire; hence, he will not hope
for the satisfaction of physical desires or worry that they might not be
satisfied. The Stoic will feel physical pain
as others do, but he will know that physical pain leaves the true
reasoning self untouched. The only thing that is truly good is to live
in a state of wisdom and virtue. In pursuing such a life, one is
protected from the play of fortune that afflicts those who aim at
physical pleasure or material wealth, for wisdom and virtue are matters
of the intellect and under the individual’s control. Moreover, if
matters become too grim, there is always a way of ending the pain of the
physical world. The Stoics were not reluctant to counsel suicide as a means of avoiding otherwise inescapable pain.
Perhaps the most important legacy of Stoicism, however, is its conviction that all human beings share the capacity to reason. This led the Stoics to a fundamental belief in equality, which went beyond the limited Greek conception of equal citizenship. Thus, Seneca claimed that the wise man will esteem the community
of rational beings far above any particular community in which the
accident of birth has placed him, and Marcus Aurelius said that common
reason makes all individuals fellow citizens. The belief that the
capacity to reason is common to all humans was also important because
from it the Stoics drew the implication that there is a universal moral law, which all people are capable of appreciating (see natural law). The Stoics thus strengthened the tradition that regarded the universality of reason as the basis on which to reject ethical relativism.
The Epicureans
Although the modern use of the term stoic accurately represents at least a part of the Stoic philosophy, anyone taking the present-day meaning of epicure as a guide to the philosophy of Epicurus (341–270 bce) would go astray. True, the Epicureans regarded pleasure
as the sole ultimate good and pain as the sole evil, and they did
regard the more refined pleasures as superior, simply in terms of the
quantity and durability of the pleasure they provided, to the coarser
pleasures. To portray them as searching for these more refined pleasures
by dining at the best restaurants and drinking the finest wines,
however, is the reverse of the truth.
By refined pleasures, Epicurus meant pleasures of the mind, as opposed
to the coarse pleasures of the body. He taught that the highest pleasure
obtainable is the pleasure of tranquillity, which is to be obtained by
the removal of unsatisfied wants. The way to do this is to eliminate all
but the simplest wants; these are then easily satisfied even by those
who are not wealthy.
something is good, he would ask if it increased pleasure or reduced
pain. If it did, it was good as a means; if it did not, it was not good
at all. Thus, justice
was good but merely as an expedient arrangement to prevent mutual harm.
Why not then commit injustice when we can get away with it? Only
because, Epicurus says, the perpetual dread of discovery will cause
painful anxiety. Epicurus also exalted friendship,
and the Epicureans were famous for the warmth of their personal
relationships; but, again, they proclaimed that friendship is good only
because of its tendency to create pleasure.
of later trends in Western ethics: the Stoics of the modern belief in
equality and the Epicureans of a utilitarian ethics based on pleasure (see below Utilitarianism). The development of these ethical
positions, however, was dramatically affected by the spreading from the
East of a new religion, Christianity, that was rooted in a Jewish
conception of ethics as obedience to a divine authority. With the
conversion of Emperor Constantine I (c. 280–337) to Christianity by 313 ce, the older schools of philosophy lost their sway over the thinking of the Roman Empire.
Christian ethics from the New Testament to the Scholastics
Ethics in the New Testament
The Apostle Matthew (5:17) reports Jesus as having said, in the Sermon on the Mount,
that he came not to destroy the law or the prophets but to fulfill
them. Indeed, when Jesus is regarded as a teacher of ethics, it is clear
that he was more a reformer of the Hebrew tradition than a radical innovator. The Hebrew tradition had a tendency to place great emphasis on compliance
with the letter of the law; the Gospel accounts of Jesus portray him as
preaching against this “righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,”
championing the spirit of the law rather than the letter. This spirit he
characterized as one of love, for God and for one’s neighbour. But
since he was not proposing that the old teachings be discarded, he saw
no need to develop a comprehensive ethical system. Christianity thus never really broke with the Jewish conception of morality as a matter of divine law to be discovered by reading and interpreting the word of God as revealed in the Scriptures.
This
conception of morality had important consequences for the future
development of Western ethics. The Greeks and Romans—and indeed thinkers
such as Confucius—did not conceive of a distinctively moral realm of
conduct. For them, everything that one did was a matter of practical
reasoning, in which one could do either well or poorly. In the more
legalistic Judeo-Christian view, however, falling short of what the
moral law requires was a much more serious matter than, say, failing to
do the household budgets correctly. This distinction between the moral
and the nonmoral realms now affects every question in Western ethics,
including the way the questions themselves are framed.
Another consequence of the retention of the basically legalistic stance of Jewish ethics was that from the beginning Christian ethics
had to deal with the question of how to judge the person who breaks the
law from good motives or keeps it from bad motives. The latter half of
this question was particularly acute,
because the Gospels describe Jesus as repeatedly warning of a coming
resurrection of the dead at which time all would be judged and punished
or rewarded according to their sins and virtues in this life (see Last Judgment).
The punishments and rewards were weighty enough to motivate anyone who
took this message seriously, and the warning was given added emphasis by
the fact that the resurrection was not going to be long in coming.
(Jesus said that it would take place during the lifetime of some of
those listening to him.) This is therefore an ethics that invokes
external sanctions as a reason for doing what is right. At the same
time, it is an ethics that places love above mere literal compliance
with the law. These two aspects do not sit easily together. Can one
bring oneself to love God and neighbour in order to be rewarded with
eternal happiness in another life?
The fact that Jesus and the Apostle Paul too believed in the imminence of the Second Coming led them to suggest ways of living that were scarcely feasible
on any other assumption: taking no thought for the morrow, turning the
other cheek, and giving away all one has. Even Paul’s preference for
celibacy rather than marriage and his grudging acceptance of the latter
on the assumption that “it is better to marry than to burn” makes some
sense, once one grasps that he was proposing ethical standards for what
he thought would be the last generation on earth. When the expected
event did not occur and Christianity became the official religion of the
vast and embattled Roman Empire, Christian leaders were faced with the
awkward task of reinterpreting these injunctions in a manner more suited
for a continuing society.
The
new Christian ethical standards did lead to some changes in Roman
morality. Perhaps the most vital change was a new sense of the equal
moral status of all human beings. As mentioned earlier, the Stoics had
been the first to elaborate this conception, grounding equality on the
common capacity to reason. For Christians, humans are equal because they
are all potentially immortal and equally precious
in the sight of God. This caused Christians to condemn a wide variety
of practices that had been accepted by both Greek and Roman moralists,
including many related to the taking of innocent human life: from the
earliest days Christian leaders condemned abortion, infanticide, and
suicide. Even killing in war was at first regarded as wrong, and
soldiers who had converted to Christianity refused to continue to bear
arms. Once the empire became Christian, however, this was one of the
inconvenient ideas that had to yield. Despite what Jesus had said about
turning the other cheek, church leaders declared that killing in a “just war”
was not a sin. The Christian condemnation of killing in gladiatorial
games, on the other hand, had a more permanent effect. Finally, but
perhaps most important, while Christian emperors continued to uphold the
legality of slavery,
the Christian church accepted slaves as equals, admitted them to its
ceremonies, and regarded the granting of freedom to slaves as a
virtuous, if not obligatory, act. This moral pressure led over several
hundred years to the gradual disappearance of slavery in Europe.
The
Christian contribution to improving the position of slaves can also be
linked with the distinctively Christian list of virtues. As noted above,
some of the virtues described by Aristotle—for example, greatness of
soul—are quite contrary in spirit to Christian virtues such as humility.
In general it can be said that, whereas the Greeks and Romans prized
independence, self-reliance, magnanimity, and worldly success,
Christians emphasized meekness, obedience, patience, and resignation. As
the Greeks and Romans conceived virtue, a virtuous slave was almost a
contradiction in terms; for Christians, however, there was nothing in
the state of slavery that was incompatible with the highest moral
character.