Morality
 

I gather 5 below was going on about morality and values. It just so happens that I am reading Paul Tillich's "Love, Power and Justice" and came across this passage;

“Ethics is the science of man's moral existence, asking for the roots of the moral imperative, the criteria of its validity, the sources of its contents, the forces of its realization. The answer to each of these questions is directly or indirectly dependent on a doctrine of being. The roots of the moral imperative, the criteria of its validity, the sources of its contents, the forces of its realization, all this can be elaborated only in terms of an analysis of man's being and universal being. There is no answer in ethics without an explicit or implicit assertion about the nature of being.”


It does of course require knowledge of ontology but there is food for thought.;)

I've tried and tried to seriously read Tillich, but I just can't get very far into it before my ADD kicks in and I'm thinking about the light switch in the bedroom that needs to be replaced. What I've absorbed is pretty good stuff...and honestly, the fact that the delusional bible thumping literalists pretty much consider Tillich to be an atheist makes him way good enough for me. As a subscriber to Spinoza's universal conceptions of god, I think I probably agree with a lot of Tillich. And with Bob Newhart who (I think) once said, "Everything is a crock, the only real thing is golf."

The quoted matter has in it's first sentence a definition of ethics, quite matter of fact. This is followed by three sentences that each assert exactly the same thing: ethics must be understood through an understanding of the nature of being. So, what he says three times must be true?

What this 'nature of being' might be I haven't the foggiest.

It is like Socrates asking the question what is justice?

forget it you will never hear the true meaning...


somewhere along the line the concept of forms will arise.

One of the descriptions that caught my eye was the encounter between a man and a woman. He referred to it as a reuniting. In fact in one set of Catholic wedding vows the celebrant refers to the man and woman becoming one. This all struck me because I have always thought of Florence and I meeting as of 'something that was broken and lost being found and put together again'.

Then in the story I am writing I made a strong use of I Coriinthians:13 and he does it in the book as well.

Well it all keeps Alzhiemer's at bay.:)

You are a wise man.

AFAIK the 'nature of being' is quite simply just that, you and I exist we are beings. Atoms exist thus are being. So to Tillich Love, power and justice exist, are beings and not some abstraction or ephemera.

Love, power, and justice, then, are invisible beings. When you say 'justice,' there is nothing to point to, yet the idea seems to have existence, and to our perception, eternal existence at that.

They begin to sound like gods, these invisible beings.

well there are many things that cannot be seen such as energy,air,love but we know they exist by the way we feel,I say all things are of eqaul value in this earthly plane,or as someones once said,"nothing Is"

I'm not a minister, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a politician, I'm in another category.

Music is a language, you see, a universal language.

The world is in such a bad condition that if they don't find what you call a redeemer, every man, woman and child on this planet will be eliminated.

Now, this sickness and this death and all these things that happen here on earth are not necessary. It's totally out of harmony, coordination precision and discipline.

They don't know things and they're not trying to find out things except for money and sex and dope and religion and politics and all those things.

I'm dealing with the potential of people. I'm dealing with what they should be and what I see in them that isn't there but should be there.

It's such a tragedy that man endures in killing his brother and his own kind, putting him in jail and insane asylums, letting him lay out in the street.

It's totally wrong but people are self destruct. No one has to kill them.

In tomorrow's world, men will not need artificial instruments such as jets and space ships. In the world of tomorrow, the new man will 'think' the place he wants to go, then his mind will take him there. (1956)

I always say it's not my Arkestra, it belongs to some other force which wants certain things, to reach people.

I'm dealing with the potential of people. I'm dealing with what they should be and what I see in them that isn't there but should be there.From SUN RA