Scientists nowadays point out that morality in fact has deep evolutionary roots pre-dating the appearance of humankind by millions of years. All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation. For example, when wolf cubs play with one another, they have 'fair game' rules. If a cub bites too hard, or continues to bite an opponent that has rolled on his back and surrendered, the other cubs will stop playing with him.
In chimpanzee bands dominant members are expected to respect the property rights of weaker members. If a junior female chimpanzee finds a banana, even the alpha male will usually avoid stealing it for himself. If he breaks this rule, he is likely to lose status.
Sayfa 118Kitabı okudu
Greeks attributed much less importance to all these questions than we do. But once all that is granted or assumed, one point still remains irreducible: they nonetheless concerned themselves with such matters, and there were Greek thinkers, moralists, philosophers, and doctors who believed that what the laws of the city prescribed or prohibited, what the general customs tolerated or rejected, could not suffice to regulate properly the sexual conduct of a man who cared about himself. The manner in which this kind of pleasure was enjoyed was considered by them to be an ethical problem.
The Suicide’s Room
I’ll bet you think the room was empty.
Wrong. There were three chairs with sturdy backs.
A lamp, good for fighting the dark.
A desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers.
A carefree Buddha and a worried Christ.
Seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer.
You think our addresses weren’t in it?
No books, no pictures, no records, you
Mainlander accepts two of Schopenhauer’s cardinal doctrines: that the will is the thing-in-itself; and that life consists in suffering, so that nothingness is better than being. But he departs from central doctrines of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and ethics: his transcendental idealism, i.e. the theory that the external world consists only in our representations; his monism, i.e. the postulate of a cosmic will that exists in all individual wills; and the thesis that the criterion of morality consists in selfless actions.
Joseph Conrad
Yes, egoism is good, and altruism is good, and fidelity to nature would be the best of all ... if we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well—but as soon as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, the strife—the tragedy begins. We can’t return to nature, since we can’t change our place in it. Our refuge is in stupidity ... There is no morality, no knowledge, and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that ... is always but a vain and floating appearance.
