I have many biases. One of them involves ‘ethics.’ My current thinking is that what we call ‘ethics’ is a wasteland. Thousands of books and chapters and essays have been written on the topic. These include learned books, popular books, books that argue and books that exhort. Many of them are empty and nearly all of them are vain (I did warn you, gentle reader, that I have a bias). Some claim that pleasure is the good; some prefer the more seductive word happiness; others reject both and speak of equally elusive goals such as self-fulfillment. Others claim that the good is to be found in looking away from the self, in devotion to the whole – but which whole? – in the service of God – whose God? – even in service to the State – who prescribes and defines service? Which, if any, of these doors should one open and enter?
Why do I think all of this? My reason is simple: You say, “This is the way you should behave.” But then I say, “No, that is not the way.” You say, “This is right!” But I reply, “No, that is wrong, and this is right!” You then appeal to experience and I appeal to experience against you. You appeal to authority – but this authority is not the authority I follow. What is left we might ask (if we take deep breaths and don’t come to blows). Well, if you are strong, you can punish me for behaving and for thinking my way. But this only proves that you are stronger than I am. Does your strength prove the notion that we still live with today that ‘might makes right?’ Is the slave-owner right because he holds the whip or is the Grand Inquisitor right because he can send his heretics to the fire?
This is an ethical dilemma. How can ethics lay down any principles, much less ‘final’ principles of behavior that are not your values against my values or your group’s values against my group’s values? This does not mean that your rules are any less valid for you simply because they are not valid for me. Only a shallow person or an autocratic person would entertain such a conclusion.
Integrity is crucial [my belief]. For the sake of your integrity you must hold on to your own values, no matter how much others reject them. Without your values you are nothing; without my values, I am nothing. I also believe that we should search them and test them and learn by our experiences and gain wisdom where we can. Our values can guide us through life AND we have to be awake and aware so our eyes can guide us – we can, I certainly have, be the blind that leads the blind when it comes to ‘we’ being the ones who are blind leading ourselves. You and I will have different guides and we will then go different ways; sometimes we will have the same guide and interpret our guides words or directions differently and we will then also end up going our separate ways. So far as we diverge, values are relative between us. BUT your values cannot be relative for you or mine for me – if nothing else, the martyrs have taught us this.
On the other hand, the differences in values between you and me and between your group and mine and between your sect and mine and between your culture and mine almost guarantee that we will not find the common ground that ethics encourages us to find [we might well find some plots of common ground, perhaps even some acres and that might be enough].
By ‘ethics’ I mean the philosophy of how we should behave in our relations to one another. I am talking about philosophy, not religion. When one has a creed, one can derive from it ethical principles. Philosophy does not begin with a creed; it begins with thinking about and reasoning about the nature of things. Hence, philosophy cannot presume that the values of the ‘other’ are to be regarded less than ‘my’ or ‘our’ values. If such happens, we move from philosophy to dogma – and, dogma is the ‘enemy’ of philosophy [I am thinking of the type of dogma that has been the source of endless tyranny and repression and I believe, gentle reader, that if you pause and reflect you will soon discern the form that such dogma has taken and still takes to this day].
I leave off today with a question for us to hold: Can it be a philosophy worth the name that makes a universal of your values and thus rules mine out of existence – ruling out those values that differ from yours?
Searcher-Seeker 