Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics

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The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions a global
perspective

• Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics
• Lecture 4
• Challenges to old ways of thinking about ethics
• William Sweet

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Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• i) modernity
• a) reason
• i) rationalist-based natural law
• - Grotius, Hobbes, Locke
• - note differences of law (a priori and a
  posteriori)
• ii) Enlightenment (and post-Enlightenment)
  rationalism and scepticism
• - Kant Mill (Hegel, Marx)
• - Hume (is/ought)
• b) foundationalism
• c) the turn to the subject
• - Descartes

3

Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• i) modernity
• a) reason
• i) rationalist-based natural law
• The state of nature has a law of nature to
  govern it, which obliges every one and reason,
  which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will
  but consult it, that being all equal and
  independent, no one ought to harm another in his
  life, health, liberty, or possessions

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Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• nor can any edict of any body else, in what
  form soever conceived, or by what power soever
  backed, have the force and obligation of a law,
  which has not its sanction from that legislative
  which the public has chosen and appointed for
  without this the law could not have that, which
  is absolutely necessary to its being a law, the
  consent of the society, over whom no body can
  have a power to make laws, but by their own
  consent, and by authority received from them
  sect 134

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Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• Enlightenment is man's release from his
  self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's
  inability to make use of his understanding
  without direction from another. Self-incurred is
  this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of
  reason but in lack of resolution and courage to
  use it without direction from another. Sapere
  aude! "Have courage to use your own reason!"-
  that is the motto of enlightenment.
• As things now stand, much is lacking
  which prevents men from being, or easily
  becoming, capable of correctly using their own
  reason in religious matters with assurance and
  free from outside direction.
• --- Kant, What is Enlightenment?, 1784

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Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• In every system of morality, which I have
  hitherto met with, I have always remark'd,that
  the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary
  way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a
  God, or makes observations concerning human
  affairs when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find,
  that instead of the usual copulations of
  propositions, is, and is not, I meet with an
  ought, or an ought not. This change is
  imperceptible but is, however, of the last
  consequence. For as this ought, or ought not,
  expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis
  necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and
  explain'd and at the same time that a reason
  should be given, for what seems altogether
  inconceivable, how this new relation can be a
  deduction from others which are entirely
  different from it . . . . I am persuaded, that
  this small attention wou'd subvert all the vulgar
  systems of morality, and let us see, that the
  distinction of vice and virtue is not founded
  merely on the relations of objects, nor is
  perceiv'd by reason.
• David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. III, 1. 1

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Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• Foundationalism
• A belief is justified if and only if
• (1) it is justified by a basic belief or beliefs,
  or
• (2) it is justified by a chain of beliefs that is
  supported by a basic belief or beliefs, and on
  which all the others are ultimately based.

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Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• "turn to the subject." (Descartes)
• - epistemology over metaphysics,
• - priority of knowledge of the self over
  knowledge of other things
• Anything not directly and indubitably knowable by
  the self needs evidence and justification.
• This standard for knowledge applied to
  metaphysical and epistemological questions, and
  was extended to moral theory and moral practice.
• two consequences
• First, morals need to be justified,
• second, this must be a justification that can be
  known by the subject.

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Modern and postmodern criticisms of Religion /
tradition-based Ethics

• ii) post-modernity
• a) religion and tradition as racist, class and
  gender-based, anthropocentric / speciesist
• b) some examples
• Relations between men and women
• Large families, lack of education, arranged
  marriages (based on social class)
• Relations between humans and nature
• dominion

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Postmodern criticisms of of Enlightenment/ reason
based Ethics

• a) versus rationalism
• - rationalism as just another tradition
• b) versus anthropomorphism
• c) historicity versus essentialism, natures and
  natural laws
• d) subjectivism
• e) the post-modern alternative Richard Rorty and
  the education of the sentiments

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Postmodern criticisms of of Enlightenment/ reason
based Ethics

• a) versus rationalism
• - rationalism as just another tradition
• We've replaced God the father with reason,
  basically. Reason is a wonderful human quality,
  but it's just one of the human qualities and it's
  by putting it up on the throne all by itself that
  we've cause it to do the opposite of what it
  ought to be doing. We've turned it into
  unreason.
• -- John Ralston Saul
• "There is no way to settle ourselves in beliefs
  beyond doubt by rational means"
• --Richard Rorty, 1993 162.

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• Cultural diversity and pluralism

• a) relativism and subjectvism
• some examples
• b) anti-foundationalism and humanist-based ethics
  
• c) ethics by convention
• c) anti-humanism (eco-philosophy and deep ecology)

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• Ethics by convention

• E.g., Universal Declaration of Human Rights
  (1948)
• human centred
• designed to achieve certain underlying values
• E.g., human being as autonomous and equal
• has become "deeply rooted" and is recognised
• No moral or natural foundationalism.
• Rights - the product of historical accident may
  change.
• serve as a regulative political ideal

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• Conclusion