Thursday, April 12, 2007
The origins of Morality
Iris Murdoch was a powerful voice in the 20th century when it came topics dealing with religion. She madder her mark mainly through fiction, but also wrote nonfiction, like Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, in which the selection “Morality and Religion” can be found. In this section she philosophically examines religion and what it has to do with morality in humans. An important question to ask when looking at this topic is, “what is morality?” How was morality born and what does it have to do with religion? Morality is a byproduct of evolution. Morality cannot be found in nature, because other beings besides humans are not intelligent enough to have developed it, but what can be found in nature is the natural ability for animals to govern themselves. The strongest of a group of animals will become the leader and will protect the rest of the group. He will make the choices of when to move and when to fight. Humans still do this. We designate a leader to guide the rest of us, make our laws, command our military, and so on. The difference is that we are intelligent enough to foresee threats coming from within and outside society, and so measures must be taken to prevent these threats from occurring. This is where morality comes in. It is our attempt to prevent the destruction of society as a whole in a world that is based (naturally) on survival of the fittest individual. Humans naturally work to insure their own personal survival and success, or that of their family or offspring, so what morality does is to make is so many humans can live peacefully together while at the same time working for personal benefit. An example of this is two rival butchers. They both own similar businesses, so it would be most beneficial for one butcher to kill the other and therefore maximize his own income. Morality prevents this by structuring a code that shuns murder. While the murderous butcher may still desire to kill the other, he no longer does because morality has made murder taboo. This relates directly to religion because morality is almost always introduced into society in the form of a religion. This adds the only other aspect needed to insure the indoctrination of the moral code into the people, and this is punishment and reward. Threat of eternal suffering and the promise of everlasting life and happiness is enough to make even modern humans follow an idea.
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2 comments:
I agree with you here... but before i say anything else, why is it that whenever anyone in this class makes an example from "real life," killing is involved? ok. anyways, I was thinking about how you said that humans elect or choose a leader because they foresee bad things happening without it. However, is it everyone that does it? or could it possibly be that only a select few actually have the intellectual prowess to do so, and the rest are too timid to go against it. You can see it in nature with chimps and other monkeys/apes. Most of the groups have leaders, but they aren't actually chosen, and they also do little to prevent violence unless it were to involve them. Is it slightly the same with us? I mean, we only have a fifth of the country voting, right? (that may be wrong, but the numbers are low) Does that make us more like animals?
I feel like it’s hard to make a strong comparison between our government and the animal kingdom. Human societies and governments are so complex and involve so many people, in a way that an animal society is not. In a society with millions of people, it doesn’t make sense for every single person to have a say. In terms of survival, it isn’t necessary, either. We do have leaders, like animals, but we care about having a say in who that leader is. Our sense of morality is the reason why would even decide to have a thing such as a democracy. While many people do not vote, I don’t know if that makes us more like animals. It’s not like people don’t vote because they are too timid, weak, or stupid. If animals want a new leader, they physically attack the opposition or something. We don’t have to worry about that. At least not in this country, anyway. Many people don’t vote because they don’t care for some reason or another. That doesn’t make them less moral. Individual participation in the government is does not determine whether or not we have a higher morality. I think the fact that we can have a democracy at all shows that we have a kind of morality that animals do not.
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