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Religion, Virtue and Ethical Culture

1. Introduction: the link between religion and morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

John Cottingham
John Cottingham
Affiliation:
University of Reading.
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Extract

There is a long-standing tradition in Western thought that sees religion as a bolster for morality. In its vaguest version, the idea is that religious belief provides a kind of social cement, fostering an ‘ethos’ in which traditional moral values are respected.1 Religious observances are thus often prized by the ethical conservative, who fears secularization as subversive of the moral and social fabric. Religion, at the very least, serves to keep people in line: as Descartes put it, ‘since in this life the rewards offered to vice are often greater than the rewards of virtue, few people would prefer what is right to what is expedient if they did not fear God or have the expectation of an after life’.2

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 69 , Issue 268 , April 1994 , pp. 163 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1994

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References

1 See Basil, Mitchell, Law, Morality and Religion (Oxford University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

2 Descartes, Meditations, [1641], Dedicatory Letter: AT VII 2: CSM II 3.Google Scholar (In this paper, ‘AT’ refers to the standard Franco-Latin edition of Descartes by C., Adam, & P., Tannery: (Euvres de Descartes, (12 vols., revised edn., Paris: Vrin/CNRS, 1964-1976).Google Scholar ‘CSM’ refers to the English translation by J., Cottingham, R., Stoothoff and D., Murdoch: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vols. I and II (Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, and ‘CSMK” to Vol. Ill, by the same translators plus A., Kenny (Cambridge University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

3 ‘Creatoris agnitio iisdem [notionibus] plenam insuper praestat auctoritatem.’ Richard, Cumberland, De Legibus Naturae [1672], reprinted in Raphael, D. D. (ed.), British Moralists 1650-book1800, (Oxford University Press, 1969), para 106.Google Scholar

4 Compare, for example, Descartes′ celebrated account of the divine creation of the eternal verities: ‘The mathematical truths which you call eternal have been laid down by God and depend on him no less than.the rest of his creatures... They are all inborn in our minds just as a king would imprint his laws on the hearts of all his subjects if he had enough power to do so.’ (Letter to Mersenne of 15 April 1630, AT I 145: CSMK 23.) For another example, compare Malebranche on the role of God in underpinning physical causality: ′[une] cause veritable est une cause entre laquelle & son effet l′esprit appercoit une liaison necessaire; il n′y a que Dieu qui soit veritable cause et que ait veritablement la puissance de mouvoir les corps, Recherche de la Verite [1674–5], VI, ii, 3.

5 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism [1861], Ch. 2.Google Scholar

6 Newman, J. H., ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ [1866].Google Scholar

7 Compare Satan′s speech of defiance containing the famous line ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav′n.’ (John Milton, Paradise Lost [1667], Book I, 242ff.) C. S. Lewis allows a similar sneaking admiration to colour his portrayal of the atheistical scientist ‘Weston’, who stubbornly refuses to submit to divine authority even when his schemes are vetoed by direct angelic intervention {Out of the Silent Planet (London: Bodley, 1938), Ch. 20).

8 An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit [1699], Book II, Part ii, Section 1, reprinted in Schneewind, J. B. (ed.), Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant (Cambridge University Press. 1990), Vol. II, p. 498; emphasis supplied. Compare Samuel Clarke, A Discourse of Natural Religion [1706], in Raphael, op. cit. para 225.Google Scholar

9 For an interesting development of this theme in a slightly different connection, see J., Teichman, ‘Humanism and the Meaning of Life’, Ratio, Vol. VI, no. 2 (1993), pp. 159ff.Google Scholar

10 Though I do not want to get into the difficult territory of the current debates about the status of religious language, there seems to be a parallel here with the pitfalls of religious literalism as exposed by neo- Wittgensteinian philosophers of religion. Those who hold, for example, that Christ′s (presumed) divinity validates his teachings seem to be putting the cart before the horse in a way analogous to what is done by those who maintain that the supposedly divine origin of Judaeo-Christian morality provides a justification for our moral allegiance to it.

11 ‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe [Achtung], the more often and steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me’ (from the concluding paragraph of the Critique of Practical Reason [1788]).

12 See E., Craig, The Mind of God and the Works of Man (Oxford University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

13 For the role (and limitations) of coercive argument in philosophy, see R., Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Oxford University Press, 1981), Introduction.Google Scholar

14 Martha, Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 69.Google Scholar

15 Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, Ch. 6. Compare the following commentary: ‘Enkrateia, or self-control, is that subordination of appetite to the moral will, which is for Kant the highest expression of a moral nature, is for Aristotle a mere pis alter. The very moral struggle which arises when our human passions pull against the demands of right action is, to the Aristotelian way of thinking, already a sign that all is not as it should be. Far from earning extra points on the scale of goodness, selfcontrol is a second best virtue, rescuing (but in no sense transfiguring or validating) the life of the individual whose emotional and behavioural habits have not been properly and harmoniously laid down.’ J., Cottingham, ‘Partiality and the Virtues’ in R., Crisp (ed.), How Should One Live? (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).Google Scholar

16 I do not wish to rule out completely the possibility that someone brought up in a culture that fails to lay down the right pathways of emotion and action could nevertheless strive to achieve a morally good life. A heroic moral and intellectual effort could, for example, allow someone brought up in a blinkered sexist culture to transcend the destructive ingrained attitudes of his society. But such radical self-remaking will, unfortunately, be beyond the reach of all but the exceptionally gifted few. See the penultimate paragraph of the present paper for further reflections germane to this point.

17 Cf., Plato, Republic, Book III (388b-e).Google Scholar

18 Paul, Theroux, The Happy Isles of Oceana (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 282.Google Scholar

19 I am grateful to Dr. Brad Hooker for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.