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Moral Responsibility (lemmy.ca)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Open question: What do you think a normal person's moral responsibilities are and why?

Some angles you can (but don't have to) consider:

To themselves, family, friends and strangers?

Do you have thoughts about what it takes to make a good person or at what point someone is a bad person? (Is there a category of people who are neither?)

What do you think the default state of people is? (Generally good, evil or neutral by nature?)

Conversely do you believe morality is a construction and reject it entirely? (Even practically speaking when something bad happens to you?)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I think part of the former may be a matter of culture and translation. In many languages and cultures the common sense interpretation of the former is equivalent to including the latter. (I would read the latter as how you would word a written rule or law people are going to try to get around). Some might suggest that "love others as you would love yourself," is of such weight that it automatically includes not doing obviously bad things. I tend to favor "laymen's" interpretations over "letter of the law," style, particularly since in the original context of the golden rule the people who were the problem themselves (Pharisees) were of the latter type.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

The history of the Golden Rule long predates Christianity (and, indeed, likely even Judaism), so its original context has nothing to do with Pharisees. It is arguably the oldest moral injunction in written history.

The positive formulation was used in Middle Kingdom Egypt (~2000BCE) while the negative was used in Late Period Egypt (~500BCE).
The Chinese, via Confucius' Analects (~500BCE), had it in the negative form.
The negative form was used in ancient India (~400BCE) and by ancient Tamils (~100BCE). (There are persistent claims that you can find the Golden Rule in Vedic texts which would place India as the originator at ~3000BCE if substantiated; I have not as yet found it, but neither have I looked very hard. It's a hard slog to read that.)
The Greeks used almost exclusively the negative (~600-300BCE) in their philosophical writings as did the ancient Persians via Zoroaster (~300BCE).
Interestingly the Romans had the positive formulation in an interesting hierarchical twist: treat your slaves as you would wish your master to treat you (~5BCE).

Note that all of those are dated "BCE" and are thus by definition precursors to Christianity. 😉