Morality and its diverse concepts
13
Feb
We think of morals as moralism, Puritanism or “certain” Christian morals, as a whole it involves love and so it also involves dialogue, but morality is
even more confused because it mixes with Kantian idealistic morals and state morals, the so-called “justice”.
Hellenic morality, of classical antiquity, is a fusion of Greek morality when it spreads through Asia Minor and the Mediterranean will meet the Roman “laws”, which is a nascent state morality, but separates from it as a form of stoicism.
This period was called by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884) for the first time Hellenic, and include among the thinkers Plotinus, Cicero, Zeno and Epicurus, they keep geometric and astronomical notions that merge with moral ideas, we know great phrases of this period, but not thought like Droysen did.
It can be synthesized in two currents, moral individualism or “inner” morality and Plotinus neoplatonism, which is similar to the thought of Augustine of Hippo, but different in terms of teleological morality, for Augustine, evil is the absence of good, not the opposite.
Kantian morality is essentially individualistic, “acts in such a way as to be a model for others” while state morality will be the rules that managed the social contract (previous post), Christian morality as current since the time of Jesus can be pharisaic and traditionalist (what is called fundamentalist), in essence it should be universal.
Loving everyone, including enemies, is not what most religious moralists do, their essence is still the “fight against evil” and not their overcoming through love and never hate.
