mod 8 ethics

PHI210RS Module 8 AVP Transcript

Title: Ethics and Religion

Title Slide

Narrator: Welcome to this presentation on ethics and religion.

Slide 2

Title: The Relation between Non-Religious Ethics and Christian Ethics

Slide content: Photo of three sets of hands in front of a cross on a wall

Text:

· Multiple relations between non-religious and Christian ethics

· Best metaphors for this relation: cross-breeding or assimilation

Narrator: In this module, we’ve briefly looked at the claim that morality finds its source and authority in God’s commands. For believers in a creator God, this view can provide an answer to the question of why moral commands have authority over what we do. Here we will briefly look at whether the various approaches to ethics that were surveyed in this course have any direct bearing on Christian faith in a divine creator.

The final message of this section of the course is that there is no simple answer to the question of what is the relation between non-religious and religious ethics. By now, the interactions and influences between the two are multiple and varied. The best analogies would be cross-breeding or assimilation. Even what we take to be characteristically religious views have non-religious antecedents; and conversely, non-religious ethics did not develop in a religious vacuum.

Slide 3

Title: Virtue Ethics and Natural Law

Slide Content: Image of the word “ETHICS” in 3-D block letters

Text:

· Christian ethics has incorporated Aristotelian and Stoic virtue ethics

· Christian ethics has incorporated Greek and Roman conceptions of natural law

Narrator: Aristotelian and Stoic virtue ethics, not to mention Platonic ideals about the good, have been incorporated into Christian ethics. Indeed, ideas concerning what virtues are and how they are conducive to the good and to right action have been synthesized with Christian ideals most extensively by Aquinas in the 13th century. Contemporary discussions of the virtues in a Christian outlook have been conducted by Catholic philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre. Thus, non-Christian virtue ethics is not only compatible with Christian ethics, it has, in part, endured by being folded into Christian thinking about the moral life.

Something similar can be said about the conception of a natural law. Its source is pre-Christian, yet it too has been synthesized with Christianity. The idea that a just law must be in conformity with natural law, well- known to the American civil rights movement through the impact of Martin Luther King, Jr., had already been asserted by Augustine in the 5th century CE. Augustine has exercised a tremendous influence, not only on Catholic thought, but also on Protestant thought. Yet Augustine did not invent the ideas of just law and natural law. They were part of the legacy of Greek thought and Ancient Rome. While the notion of a natural law is pre-Christian, it does presume that the universe is ordered by some cosmic purpose. Thus the notion of a natural law requires more assumptions than contemporary secular conceptions of nature would allow. But it does not strictly require belief in the existence of a creator God.

Slide 4

Title: Rights

Slide Content: Photo of a scale and gavel

Text:

· The interaction between Christian and non-Christian ideas especially complex in the matter of rights

· Passive rights developed from non-religious sources

· Active rights developed under the influence of theological ideas and combined with natural law

Narrator: The relation between the notion of rights and religious ethics is a complex one. In the 20th century, one of the significant figures who contributed to the ideas that found their way in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain. In this respect, the notion of rights must be thought to be at least compatible with religious ethics. As we have seen in a previous module, the earliest conception of rights, developed in the 12th century, is of rights as passive rights or claim rights. It was developed by individuals who were in some way connected with the Church and the notion served to support the charitable functions of the Church. Yet the notion of a claim right is derived from commentaries on Roman law involving agreements among individuals or between individuals and the State. So the source of the notion of a claim right cannot straightforwardly be said to be of religious inspiration. The later notion of liberty rights, or active rights, developed beginning the 13th century, did find its inspiration in a religious doctrine concerning the relation of God to Earth. This is the notion that was later combined with a conception of natural law and used in a formulation of a doctrine of natural rights, as we find it in John Locke, notable for its influence on the US Declaration of Independence. The development of the notion of rights illustrates just how intricate is the relation between nonreligious and religious conceptions of morality.

Slide 5

Title: Duty

Slide content: Printed image of Immanuel Kant

Text:

· Kantian duties are the duties of Christian moral life

· The justification of duties is what is specific to Kantian ethics

· Kantian theory of duty intended to support the compatibility of secular and Christian ethics

Narrator: The duty theory of morality as articulated by Kant is often presented as an example of the independence between nonreligious theories of ethics and religious ethics. Nevertheless, the actual duties that Kantian ethics recommends were actually meant to conform to the expectations of Christian ethics. Indeed, Kant himself was deeply religious. As a thinker, his concern was with the issue of how the duties of Christian life are to be justified. He was deeply unsatisfied with the view according to which moral duties find their authority in the fear of being punished by God. If this is what makes a moral duty a moral duty, morality is a kind of childish egoism. Surely, he thought, fear of punishment is not intrinsically morally worthy. One must formulate moral motivation in such a way that it is intrinsically worthy of moral approval. Beings who are autonomous, who are capable of living in accordance with rules of action that hold for any autonomous being, are beings that act in a way that is morally praiseworthy and for motives that are morally praiseworthy. Nevertheless, he did believe that we should recognize the force of ideals, such as the ideal of an immortal life, or of a supreme being that gives order and meaning to the universe. He did not think these ideals give us knowledge that we can develop into science. He thought instead, that these ideals find their confirmation in our capacity to act freely. In a nutshell, Kant’s duty theory is intended to support the compatibility of secular and Christian ethics.

Slide 6

Title: Utility

Slide Content: 18th century caricature drawing of judges on the bench

Text:

· The theory of utility was historically developed to counter the effects of Christian customs and doctrines on laws and social practices

· Today, the theory is accepted and widely implemented even by individuals who are religious

Narrator: Like utilitarianism, some forms of religious ethics, such as ethics in the natural law tradition, do consider the consequences of actions in order to assess their morality. But utilitarianism is entirely forward-looking and does not consider intention, contrary to religious ethics. The motivation for the theory of utility, in the hands of Bentham and the British legal reformers, was to articulate a coherent policy that would enable them to offset what they saw as irrational and inhuman practices, many of which found their source in social and religious belief. For instance, utilitarian reformers, including the 18th century Italian reformer Cesare Beccaria, took a strong stand against blasphemy laws. As recently as the 18th century, people were still being tortured and put to death on grounds of blasphemy. It is indeed thanks to utilitarian reasoning about what promotes social welfare that laws punishing blasphemy have been largely purged from the constitutions of most liberal democracies. At the same time, many American politicians who are widely considered to be religious have publicly espoused utilitarian doctrines. For instance, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan mandated by executive order that all regulations be assessed in terms of their costs and benefits to society. The upshot is that, while utilitarianism is not a religious moral doctrine, it is now so deeply embedded in social and governmental policies that even very conservative, religious politicians find themselves advocating utilitarianism.

Slide 7

Title: Care

Slide Content: Close-up photo of a woman who appears emotionless and has red circles around her eyes

Text:

· The ethics of care was developed to convey the distinctive experience of women

· Care ethicists believe experience of care is not dependent on religious experience

Narrator: Many might see strong affinities between the doctrine of Christian love and the ethics of care. Yet, although in the United States, more women than men are religious, throughout the centuries religious organizations have not always been hospitable to women. The ethics of care, which advocates attention to the needs of others, is suspicious of religious outlooks that mandate relations of dominance and submission. The harshest commands of submissiveness have regularly fallen on women. Care ethicists, such as Nel Noddings, have stated that the ethics of care is founded on human caring. Caring belongs to this world. Care is also not a matter of following commands; it requires putting ourselves quietly in the presence of those who are cared. It draws on human memories and experiences of being cared for by other humans. Its source is not in religious experience. For all that, there is no incompatibility in being a care ethicist and being religious. But one does not require the other.