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Word Gems
Morality and Goodness
Personal Statement #67: The Hidden Meaning, the Many Faces, the Subtle Nature, of Evil! Would you recognize it if you met it, on the street, or in the mirror? Mortimer Adler: Syntopicon essay: "Good & Evil" R. M. MacIver: The Deep Beauty of the Golden Rule Ayn Rand: Values, Virtues and Life Politics & Morality: The End of "Character Doesn't Matter" Craig Hamilton:A Moral Obligation to Transform: “Why is it that so few of us get
the results our spiritual practices are designed to deliver? How is
it that after decades of earnest spiritual seeking, most of us
ultimately settle for an attainment far less profound or dramatic
than the one we were aiming for when we started on the path? … I
would like to suggest that the supreme and lofty goal of profound,
life transforming spiritual liberation is not only possible in this
lifetime, but is in fact well within reach of anyone of reasonably
sound mind and stable character.”
Immanuel Kant: "Act so that your principles of action might safely be made a law for the whole world." Liz Taylor: "The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues." Bob MacFarland: "Moral relativism is a term (like secular humanism) often bandied about by right-wing religious zealots whose appeal lies in their ability to take all of the complex and dynamic issues we face as humans and paint them as either black or white, thus satisfying the basic human desire to bring order to chaos, and allowing their simple-minded followers to not have to decide anything for themselves and remain in a state of blissful ignorance." Walter Lippmann: "At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a version of history. To human nature (of the sort conceived), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply." John Locke: "To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues." Thomas Henry Huxley: "The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge." Friedrich Nietzsche: "The struggle against a purpose in art is always a struggle against the moral tendency in art - against its subordination to morality. Art for art's sake means, Let morality go to the Devil." Ayn Rand: "Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law." Mark Twain: "Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians. Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country- hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of." Ayn Rand: "Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone." William Blake: "He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer." Dr. Gerald Schroeder, Genesis and the Big Bang: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Lev.19:18) is the great principle of the Torah... In the Talmud we are ... told that Hillel the Elder, in the first century BCE, was asked by a skeptic to teach the entire Torah, the guide that had directed Hillel in his life's journey, and to do this while he stood on one foot. Hillel fulfilled the request. What is hateful to you, he said, do not to your friend. This is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Go forth and learn." Don Feder, Feb. 5, 2001: "West of Austin, Texas, investigators have found what they believe to be the remains of the archbishop of atheism, Madalyn Murray O'Hair. God rest her soul. O'Hair and two family members were abducted and murdered in 1995 in the course of a robbery, apparently by an ex-employee of her American Atheists Inc... O'Hair died horribly, a victim of the world she helped to shape. Without the Deity she fought so hard against, there is no right and wrong, increasingly people are ruled by their passions and humanity is a tragedy waiting to happen." Dr. Mortimer Adler, Syntopicon essay, Truth: "But the ancient controversy in which Socrates engages with the sophists of his day, who were willing to regard as true whatever anyone wished to think, seems to differ not at all from Freud's quarrel with those whom he calls intellectual nihilists. They are the persons who say there is no such thing as truth or that it is only the product of our own needs and desires. They make it 'absolutely immaterial,' Freud writes, 'what views we accept. All of them are equally true and false. And no one has a right to accuse anyone else of error' ... If all opinions are equally true or false, then why, Aristotle asks, does not the denier of truth walk 'into a well or over a precipice' instead of avoiding such things. 'If it were really a matter of indifference what we believed,' Freud similarly argues, 'then we might just as well build our bridges of cardboard as of stone, or inject a tenth of a gramme of morphia into a patient instead of a hundredth, or take tear-gas as a narcotic instead of ether. But,' he adds, 'the intellectual anarchists themselves would strongly repudiate such practical applications of their theory.'" Albert Einstein: "The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth." Betty J. Eadie: "Everything we do ripples out; we affect others, and they in turn affect us. Sometimes the ripples create huge waves that wash over humanity, changing it forever, as Christ's life did. Sometimes they are so small that they remain relatively unknown in this lifetime." M. Scott Peck: "The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost." C.S. Lewis: "The rescue of drowning men is ... a duty worth dying for, but not worth living for. It seems to me that all political duties (among which I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself." St. Paul, Romans 14, The Message translation: "Cultivate your own relationship with God, but don't impose it on others. You're fortunate if your behavior and your belief are coherent. But if you're not sure, if you notice that you are acting in ways inconsistent with what you believe--some days trying to impose your opinions on others, other days just trying to please them--then you know that you're out of line. If the way you live isn't consistent with what you believe, then it's wrong." Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: "Part of the function of parentage is the transmission of a moral code. For the child is more animal than human; it has humanity thrust upon it day by day as it receives the moral and mental heritage of the race. Biologically it is badly equipped for civilization, since its instincts provide only for traditional and basic situations, and include impulses more adapted to the jungle than to the town. Every vice was once a virtue, necessary in the struggle for existence; it became a vice only when it survived the conditions that made it indispensable; a vice, therefore, is not an advanced form of behavior, but usually an atavistic throwback to ancient and superseded ways. It is one purpose of a moral code to adjust the unchanged - or slowly changing - impulses of human nature to the changing needs and circumstances of social life. Greed, acquisitiveness, dishonesty, cruelty and violence were for so many generations useful to animals and men... [E]very society inculcates a moral code, and builds up in the heart of the individual ... social dispositions that mitigate the natural war of life; it encourages - by calling them virtues - those qualities or habits in the individual which redound to the advantage of the group, and discourages contrary qualities by calling them vices." Will Durant, The Story of Civilization: "Modesty ... enabled the girl, where she had any choice, to select her mate more deliberately, or compel him to show finer qualities before winning her; and the very obstructions it raised against desire generated those sentiments of romantic love which heightened her value in his eyes." Michael S. Russo, Molloy College, Department of Philosophy: "Virtue as Knowledge: The ultimate aim of Socrates' philosophical method is always ethical. Socrates believed that if one knows what the good is, one will always do what is good. Thus if one truly understands the meaning of courage, self-control, or justice, one will act in a courageous, self-controlled and just manner. The corollary to this view is that all vice, then, must be due to ignorance. Nobody, he believes, knowingly does what is wrong: they always think that what they are doing is right. Can you imagine someone saying, for example, 'I know that this act is completely wrong and totally wicked, but I am going to do it anyway.' In fact, even the person who performs the most heinous acts imaginable always thinks that he is doing them for some good reason. It follows that Socrates could never accept the possibility of what Aristotle would call 'moral weakness' (acrasia ) - that is 'knowing the good and yet doing the evil.' In his view, we deceive ourselves into thinking that the evil we do is actually good, so that we can justify our wicked actions. In this sense, the evil-doer neither really knows what the good is nor does he intentionally choose evil." Professor Daniel N. Robinson, Georgetown University: Socrates says we are inclined by pleasure and pain -- people tend to do things that please them and avoid things that cause them suffering. "Sometimes we are so driven by these sensual desires that our rational powers are trumped" ... how do we discover the right cause of action [in light of this internal struggle]? ... harmony and balance are the goals and guides of life. We are to avoid excesses. Socrates is persuaded that the spiritual dimension of life can be corrupted ... by our experiences. To be exposed, early in life, to discord and disharmony, is to condition the soul to be at home with these imbalances; it is to make one comfortable with that which is false and untrue. The souls of children must be so conditioned as to find pleasure in the proportional, the balanced, the beautiful and the good; and to eschew the monstrous and the discordant... Can virtue be taught? Socrates says that it can, but not to everyone, and not at all times. [The moral-learner must be ready and able to receive such instruction; the good and the excellent must find resonance deep within the learner, must be voluntarily accepted. The rational powers of reason must be aided, ideally, by early education, in order to help the moral-learner overcome the sometimes short-term benefits and allurements of ill-gotten pleasures]. Thomas Jefferson: "Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook." Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History: "Moral codes differ because they adjust themselves to historical and environmental conditions. If we divide economic history into three stages -- hunting, agriculture, industry -- we may expect that the moral code of one stage will be changed in the next... [Regarding agriculture,] children were economic assets; birth control was made immoral. On the farm the family was the unit of production under the discipline of the father ... and paternal authority had a firm economic base... [Males] married early ... all he needed was land, a plow and a willing arm... As for young women, chastity was indispensable, for its loss might bring unprotected motherhood... For fifteen hundred years this agricultural moral code of continence, early marriage, divorceless monogamy, and multiple maternity maintained itself... the Industrial Revolution changed the economic form and moral superstructure... Men, women and children left home to work as individuals, individually paid, in factories... children no longer we economic assets; marriage was delayed; premarital continence was more difficult to maintain. The city offered every discouragement to marriage, but provided every stimulus and facility for sex... The authority of father and mother lost its economic base through the growing individualism of industry... education spread religious doubts; morality lost more and more of its supernatural supports. the old agricultural moral code began to die... So we cannot be sure that the moral laxity of our times is a herald of decay rather than a painful ... transition between a moral code that has lost its agricultural basis and another that our industrial civilization has yet to forge into social order and normality." Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, 1849: "I think we should be men first, and subjects afterwards. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right." Aristotle: "All virtue is summed up in dealing justly." Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, entry for April 5, 1935: "The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves." C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." Meister Eckhart (1260-1328): "People should think less about what they ought to do and more about what they ought to be. If only their being were good, their works would shine forth brightly." Joseph Goldstein: "The commitment to morality, or non-harming, is a source of tremendous strength, because it helps free the mind from the remorse of having done unwholesome actions." Joseph R. Fornieri, The Lincoln Forum, Lincoln Revisited (2007): Fornieri, in this collection of Lincoln essays, helps us to understand Judge Douglas’ central undergirding platform, the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” which would allow new territories to extend or deny the institution of slavery. This precept of self-determinism is “perfectly logical,” responded Lincoln, “if there is no difference between hogs and negroes… [but the question is] whether a negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man … he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man [shall he not] also govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man [without that other man’s consent], that is more than self-government – that is despotism.” Lincoln went on to explain how the European “Divine Right of Kings,” something from which we had recently extricated ourselves, employed, in principle, this same notion of privileged and superior certain ones ruling over a lesser class of beings. All of this violated the “ancient faith,” a term by which Lincoln referred to the precepts of the Declaration of Independence, the moral foundation of the nation, in its statements that “all men are created equal.” “No man,” Lincoln asserted, “is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle -- the sheet anchor of American republicanism.” Douglas weakly responded with a claim that God had placed Adam and Eve in the garden and had told them to make their choice – exalting “choice” as a universal trump card. Lincoln bashed this sophistry with “God did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice. On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree, of the fruit of which, he should not eat, upon the pain of certain death.” Fornieri, speaking even more plainly: “If taken to its logical conclusion, Douglas’ reading of the Bible would obliterate any firm basis for moral judgments by making them entirely relative to personal choice.” Lincoln then goes further and eviscerates notions of choice and prattle of self-government as nothing more than an undisguised policy of “self-interest” masquerading as morality . Lincoln began speaking of these issues with earnest in 1854, after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. His continued insightful commentary culminated in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Judge Douglas won the Illinois senate seat in ’58 – but Mr. Lincoln, his punch-and-jab speeches gaining the respect of some and the attention of all, found himself catapulted to the Presidency only two years later.
Thomas Sowell
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