Naturally bad
21 May '08 06:27I suspect that people do things for a lot of reasons. If I do something “good” (generous, compassionate, whatever) for someone because I want to, is that by definition selfish? (I don’t mind the tag, so cannot be offended by it.) Does it matter?
If I do something “good” for someone because I think that I should—well, does that mean that I simply want to do whatever I think that I should do? Does the decision to do what I think I should mean that I have placed some value on the should such that it becomes a want?
Does an act of moral “good” require, to be called such, that I absolutely do not want to do it—for any reason? Must I somehow feel “bad” about doing good? If I feel “good” about doing good, does that make it less virtuous? (After all, I like to feel “good”.)
Is it possible for morally good actions to simply flow from a person’s character, without any reflection about want or should at all?
What about morally evil acts? Most of the most egregious ones that you could list, I find that I simply have no desire to commit. Is that morally virtuous on my part?
I have never found morality—at least on the theoretical level—to be as simple and straightforward as some people seem to. I’m not at all sure that following some prescribed set of rules (shoulds) in all circumstances solves the problem. There is a quote that I stumbled on some time back that I like—
“When it comes to shaping one’s personal behavior, all the rules of morality, as precise as they may be, remain abstract in the face of the infinite complexity of the concrete.”
—Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (from the Foreword).
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If someone follows some religion simply to attain an after-life reward (or any other kind of reward), I would say that is selfish by definition (as I say, I don’t mind the label myself, so neither find nor intend it to be offensive).
However, I would also say that it is a pragmatic choice, not necessarily a moral one—that is, that it has nothing necessarily to do about morality one way or the other. How one goes about following that religion—what they are willing to condone or condemn, for example, in order to follow it—that certainly has moral implications.
If I do something “good” for someone because I think that I should—well, does that mean that I simply want to do whatever I think that I should do? Does the decision to do what I think I should mean that I have placed some value on the should such that it becomes a want?
Does an act of moral “good” require, to be called such, that I absolutely do not want to do it—for any reason? Must I somehow feel “bad” about doing good? If I feel “good” about doing good, does that make it less virtuous? (After all, I like to feel “good”.)
Is it possible for morally good actions to simply flow from a person’s character, without any reflection about want or should at all?
What about morally evil acts? Most of the most egregious ones that you could list, I find that I simply have no desire to commit. Is that morally virtuous on my part?
I have never found morality—at least on the theoretical level—to be as simple and straightforward as some people seem to. I’m not at all sure that following some prescribed set of rules (shoulds) in all circumstances solves the problem. There is a quote that I stumbled on some time back that I like—
“When it comes to shaping one’s personal behavior, all the rules of morality, as precise as they may be, remain abstract in the face of the infinite complexity of the concrete.”
—Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa (from the Foreword).
_________________________________________
If someone follows some religion simply to attain an after-life reward (or any other kind of reward), I would say that is selfish by definition (as I say, I don’t mind the label myself, so neither find nor intend it to be offensive).
However, I would also say that it is a pragmatic choice, not necessarily a moral one—that is, that it has nothing necessarily to do about morality one way or the other. How one goes about following that religion—what they are willing to condone or condemn, for example, in order to follow it—that certainly has moral implications.
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