Ethics

X

Ethics of the Church Fathers

One of the major shaping forces in Christian ethics was the competition with Manichaeism, a rival religion of Persian origin which held that good and evil (light and darkness) were opposite forces struggling for mastery. Manichaeism had an enormous following in the 3rd and 4th centuries ad. Saint Augustine, regarded as the founder of Christian theology, was originally a Manichaean but abandoned Manichaeism after being influenced by Platonic thought. After his conversion to Christianity in 387, he sought to integrate the Platonic view with the Christian concept of goodness as an attribute of God and sin as Adam's fall, from the guilt of which a person is redeemed by God's mercy. The Manichaean belief in evil persisted, however, as may be seen in Augustine's conviction of the sinfulness of human nature. This attitude may have reflected his own strong guilt over his youthful indiscretions and may account in part for the emphasis in early Christian moral doctrine on chastity and celibacy.

During the late Middle Ages Aristotle's works, made available through texts and commentaries prepared by Arab scholars, exerted a strong influence on European thinking. Because it emphasized empirical knowledge as opposed to revelation, Aristotelianism threatened the intellectual authority of the church. The Christian theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas succeeded in reconciling Aristotelianism with the authority of the church by acknowledging the truth of sense experience but holding it to be complementary to the truth of faith. The great intellectual authority of Aristotle was thus made to serve the authority of the church, and the Aristotelian logic was used to support the Augustinian concepts of original sin and redemption through divine grace. This synthesis is the substance of Aquinas's major work, Summa Theologica (1265-1273).

XI

Ethics and Penance

As the medieval church grew more powerful, a juridical system of ethics evolved, apportioning punishment for sin and reward for virtue in life after death. The most important virtues were humility, continence, benevolence, and obedience; inwardness, or goodness of spirit, was indispensable to morality. All actions, both good and bad, were graded by the church, and a system of temporal penance was instituted as atonement for sins.

The ethical beliefs of the medieval church received literary expression in The Divine Comedy by Dante, who was influenced by the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. In the section of The Divine Comedy called “Inferno,” Dante classifies sins under three main headings, each with a number of subdivisions. In increasing order of evil he places sins of incontinence (sensual or emotional sins); of violence or brutishness (sins of will); and of fraud or malice (sins of intellect). Plato's three faculties of the soul are repeated in their original order of importance, and the sins are regarded as corruptions in one or another of the three faculties.

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XII

Ethics After the Reformation

The influence of Christian ethical beliefs and practices diminished during the Renaissance. The Protestant Reformation effected a widespread return to basic principles within the Christian tradition, changing the emphasis on certain ideas and introducing new ones. According to Martin Luther, goodness of spirit is the essence of Christian piety. Moral conduct, or good works, is required of the Christian, but justification, or salvation, comes by faith alone. Luther himself married, and celibacy ceased to be required of the Protestant clergy.

The French Protestant theologian and religious reformer John Calvin accepted the theological doctrine that justification is by faith alone, and also upheld the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. The Puritans were Calvinists and adhered to Calvin's advocacy of sobriety, diligence, thrift, and lack of ostentation; they regarded contemplation as mere laziness, and poverty either as punishment for sin or evidence that one did not have God's grace. The Puritans believed that only the elect could expect salvation. They considered themselves elect but could not be sure unless they were given a sign. They believed their way of life was ethically correct and that it led to worldly prosperity. Prosperity was accepted as the sign. Goodness came to be associated with wealth, and poverty with evil; not to succeed in one's calling seemed to be clear indication that the approval of God was being withheld. The behavior that once was believed to lead to sanctity led the descendants of the Puritans to worldly wealth.

In general, during the Reformation, individual responsibility was considered more important than obedience to authority or tradition. This change of emphasis, which indirectly led to the development of modern secular ethics, is to be seen in the De Jure Belli et Pacis (The Law of War and Peace, 1625) by the Dutch jurist, theologian, and statesman Hugo Grotius. Although the work adheres to some of the doctrines of Saint Thomas Aquinas, it deals with people's political and civil duties in the spirit of ancient Roman law. Grotius argued that natural law is a part of divine law and is based on human nature, which exhibits a desire for peaceful association with others and a tendency to follow general principles in conduct. Therefore, society itself is properly based on natural law.

XIII

Secular Ethical Philosophies

In his Leviathan (1651), the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes assigned greatest importance to organized society and political power. He argued that human life in the “state of nature” (apart from or before the institution of the civil state) is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and that it is “a war of all against all.” Consequently, people seek security by entering into a social contract in which each person's original power is yielded to a sovereign, who regulates conduct.

This conservative position in politics assumes that human beings are evil and need a strong state to repress them. Nonetheless, Hobbes argued that if a sovereign does not provide security and order and is overthrown by the people, they revert to the state of nature and then may make a new contract. Hobbes's doctrine concerning the state and the social contract influenced the thought of the English philosopher John Locke. In his Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690) Locke maintained, however, that the purpose of the social contract is to reduce the absolute power of authority and to promote individual liberty.

Human reason is the criterion of right conduct in the system developed by the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In his major work, Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (1677; Ethics Demonstrated with Geometrical Order), Spinoza deduced ethics from psychology and psychology from metaphysics. He asserted that all things are morally neutral from the point of view of eternity; only human needs and interests determine what is considered good and evil, or right and wrong. Whatever aids humanity's knowledge of nature or is consonant with human reason is acknowledged as good. Since it is reasonable to suppose that whatever all people have in common is best for everyone, the good that people should seek for others is the good they desire for themselves. In addition, reason is needed in order to keep the passions in check and to achieve pleasure and happiness by avoiding pain. The highest human state, according to Spinoza, is the “intellectual love of God” derived from intuitive understanding, a faculty higher than ordinary reason. By the proper use of this faculty a person may contemplate the entire mental and physical universe and view it as comprising an infinite substance, which Spinoza terms God.

A

Newton's Laws

Most major scientific discoveries have affected ethics. The discoveries of Isaac Newton, the 17th-century English natural philosopher, provide one of the earliest and clearest examples of such an effect. Newton's laws were taken generally as evidence of a divine order that is rational. Contemporary thinking in this regard was expressed succinctly by the English poet Alexander Pope in the line, “God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.” Newton's discoveries caused philosophers to gain confidence in an ethical system as rational and orderly as nature was assumed to be.