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Friday, April 22, 2011

Are Human Rights Universal?

If human rights are universal, then there has to be a universal justification for them — they have to be equally valid no matter which society you come from. What is this justification? John Locke, who is largely responsible for human rights talk, thought that they came from God. The writers of the American Constitution agreed with him. [It has been argued that we still accept universal human rights even though we have done away with the theological underpinning for them and have not found a replacement for it.]

Immanuel Kant thought that they come from reason, via the Categorical Imperative. It is common nowadays to claim that they come from the nature of a human being, though the details of how they so arise differ between many authors. Is it merely the concept of a human (or more commonly, a person) — and if so, which features of that concept? Is it our rationality (Kant), our special status granted by God (Locke), our immersion in community, our ability to empathize, our ability to have moral views, or something else?

If you believe that morality is relative — that what's right for me (or for us) may not be right for you, then it is difficult to see how you can support universal human rights at all. One account of rights is that they are granted by governments or rulers. If this is the case, then they differ from one society to another, and cannot then be universal.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Should We Obey Immoral Laws?

Gandhi came to grips with this question. Martin Luther King grapples with it in his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail.’ My view, like King's, is that there are certain laws which are inherently immoral, and that therefore (provided the immorality is serious enough) I am morally bound to disobey them.

The difficult philosophical question is what grounds I have for claiming that a law is inherently immoral. King had an answer to that one — an immoral law is one that is at odds with God's Law. However, there are serious problems with basing morality on God's Law, as Plato pointed out in the Euthyphro. Does God promulgate His law because it is right (in which case what makes it right is something other than God's word), or is anything that God endorses therefore right — even the murder of innocent children (Abraham and Isaac)?

Of course, many answers have been advanced as to how we can tell what is inherently moral or immoral, while others have argued that there are no inherently moral truths — that morality is relative. The latter view makes civil disobedience very problematical, but I don't hold it.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Why Do We Exist?

Each of us, at some time in our lives, is brought face to face with the contingency of our own unique existence. If your parents had not met, you would not have existed. Neither of them would have existed if their parents had not met, and so on. You are a fluke, and so am I. Your existence is a gigantic improbability and so is mine.

Of course, if neither of us existed, neither of us would be asking the question. But that is not an adequate answer.

If you believe in God, then here's a way to make sense of the fact that someone named ‘Kim’ exists. God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. In creating the universe, God knew the precise date that Kim would be born, and, being all-good, his decision to create a universe in which Kim would exist was motivated by the thought that, taking everything into account, a universe containing Kim was better than a universe without Kim.

The trouble is, that doesn't answer the question. The question that still grips me, and the question that ought to grip you is, ‘Why did I have to be in the universe?” One can say the same thing about Kevin as I have said about Kim. God saw the possibilities that each of these two individuals represented and approved. Yet still I am gripped by the question, ‘Why did I have to be Kevin?’ And similarly, you ought to be gripped by the question, ‘Why did I have to be [insert your name]?’ I cannot ask your question and you cannot ask mine. It is a question that each human being can only ask about themselves and no-one else.

It is not as if it would make any sense to imagine that I might have been someone else other than Kevin. As the eighteenth century philosopher Leibniz famously commented, “To imagine myself being Descartes is to imagine myself not existing and Descartes being in my place.” If all your thoughts, feelings and experiences are replaced by Descartes’ thoughts, feelings and experiences then there is nothing left of 'you' to think the thought: 'Now I know what it is like to be Descartes!'

So what we are left with is a mystery, the mystery of I. There is no answer from science. There is no answer from theology. The only contribution that philosophy has to make is to point out that the real problem is prior to the question 'Why...?'. For no philosophical theory, that I know of, has succeeded in explaining how there can be such a thing as the sheer fact that I exist.

Friday, April 1, 2011

How Can Good Exist Without Evil?

What are we implying? Is it that good cannot be seen to exist without the contrast of evil? Or that good only exists to destroy evil? Whichever is implied we are still left with a teasing dilemma. If God is the creator of the universe, why allow evil into the creation in the first place? Or could it be that God did not have all his own way, working as the creator of good alongside the creator of evil? Some religious people believe in the existence of a very strong Devil.

There is no doubt that the battle between good and evil seems to have been going on since the world began, but in a “natural” world a caring God seems to take second place. However, as the question implies, it would appear that the evil we see round about us stimulates the concept that there must be some power for good to which an appeal can be made. There is also the notion at the root of religion that the world is the creation of a 'good' power, but, somehow, evil has managed to gain access. Some claim that a mistake was made initially by God when he allowed humans to have a certain amount of freewill.

Then there is the question of evil itself, with all its variable concepts. Many regard the perceived cruelty of nature itself to be evil: what is regarded by many as a natural and necessary food chain to maintain the balance of nature, is seen by others to be an unnecessary form of cruelty which extrapolates to evil. Here is another dilemma: take the simple case of a domestic cat coming in from the garden with a dead bird in its mouth; the owner of the cat gives the animal a good beating. Which action can be interpreted as evil, the action of the cat in killing the bird, or the action of the owner in beating the cat, or both? Some will say that a natural action, though cruel, cannot be evil, but an action punishing natural activity is both cruel and evil. So, we are presented yet again with a complicated problem regarding God. If God is the creator of nature, surely He could have presented us with a kinder regime of nature. How could a loving God confront us with such cruelty?

Separate from nature are the choices regarded as evil, or which lead to evil, made by humans themselves. A choice to murder, rob, deceive, inflict pain, betray, hate, etc. Pertinent to our question, it might appear that God is somehow responsible for the evil which the question suggests He cannot live without. However, the existence of God depends on factors other than evil, the general claim is that the universe must have a creator, and most are content to believe that this must be God. Regarding God as the creator means that he exists whether or not evil is present. Perhaps the “Grand Design” must include evil to make it work properly. Supporters of God would not argue with this seeing that their apology rests on the premise that God knows best. As Kant implied, our minds are not constructed to go beyond a certain level of knowledge, i.e. there are things which will remain outside the powers of human understanding.

How many times have we looked back at something evil and destructive in our lives, only to find that if it had not happened the subsequent good arising from it would have been denied us? There are so many things in our lives where good has had to be preceded by bad.