Sit beyond good & evil

"Morality is impossible without Religious Devotion To Duty"
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John Kavenaugh wrote this intriguing article for that left-wing Catholic magazine America. In it, he states that the real problem with moral relativism is that you end up demanding that Other people follow rules that you won't follow yourself- and that the Philosopher Kant argues against this, while arguing for freedom.I find this fascinating, because I myself have a basic philosophical problem with freedom: Political and Religious Freedom contains the Freedom to Do Good, but it also contains the Freedom to Do Evil.Immanuel Kant counters this with the idea that if you're going to hold to a principle, you should hold it yourself as a religious duty to the greater good. After all, what good is having a rule if you won't follow it yourself?This, to me, is the core of morality- to do what is right in the service of the greater good. It's also the core of just about every major religion on the planet, save Protestantism, which has the concept of being saved by Faith Alone (despite the Biblical pronouncement against this in the book of James- which claims we are saved NOT by faith alone, but by good works).September 2008 taught us that free markets, in the absence of strict ethics and moral code, will fail- that freedom contains the freedom to do evil. Only by adhering to a duty to do good, can we overcome this.
posted by Ted Seeber at 12:22 PM on Apr 20, 2009

Eiko Onoda said...
>Political and Religious Freedom contains the Freedom to Do Good, but it also contains the Freedom to Do Evil.Yes, but we mustn't do evil, because it restricts itself -the freedom to do evil. As long as we do good, we keep on having two freedoms -freedom to do good or evil. Therefore we need to do good. >which claims we are saved NOT by faith alone, but by good works). Paul once said a guy who doesn't work is worse than the guy who doesn't have faith. Spiritual civilisation stands on the firm material civilisation.
April 21, 2009 6:49 AM