Definitions of ethics and morality

Dear Dino

According to the vast majority of philosophers - from Baruch Spinoza via Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jürgen Habermas to Slavoj Zizek - yes, these people have got it all wrong. Even Habermas makes the distinction that morality is the opposition of good vs evil and ethics the division between right vs wrong and thereafter concerns himself only with ethics, leaving morals to theologians. So should we. Why add to the confusion when we can be part of the clarification? Especially as we want to communicate that Zoroastrianism is not moralizing and not Abrahamic but is ethical and concerned with cause and effect within a probabilistic universe as its basis for values and valuations.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/12/15 Special Kain

Dear Alexander

I know philosophers who claim that "morals" are concerned with one's character and what's right and wrong in relation to one's personality and that "ethics" are concerned with behavior in relation to social systems, such as professional ethics at the workplace. Would you now say that they got it all totally wrong?

Ushta, Dino

--- Alexander Bard schrieb am Di, 15.12.2009:


Dear Tomash

The problem is that "good thoughts, good words, good deeds" is such a sloppy and outright poor translation.
It invokes simplicity and moralism where Zarathushtra instead understood that life is complex and one should be ethical and not moralizing (ethics is values that refer to cause and effect, morality is values that are just blindly obeying the orders of superiors, such as the Abrahamic gods).
So a much better translation would be: "A constructive mindset fosters a constructive language which in turn fosters constructive actions which in turn fosters constructive thoughts." A strictly ethical feedback loop putting causes and effects together, exactly the way the world works.
What is the right thing to think, say and act then? Well, it is what inside of you which makes you truly you. It is that which you define yourself with. What kind of person are you to yourself? It is not even what you should do but in a deeper sense what you WILL do.
Which is why it is so crucial to us as Mazdayasni to FIRST decide who we are to ourselves. This is why we meditate and this is what we meditate on in the mornings.
Who are you today? How do you plan to meet and greet the world? This is what we focus on when we recite the Ashem Vohu.
Plato wrote a lot of great stuff. But his dualism is problematic to us as Zoroastrians. The same thing goes for Aristotle. Among the Greeks, the Stoics and Heraclitus have much more in common with Persian philosophy.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/12/15 Tomash


Dear Dino,

I'm having hard time understanding what is good and what is bad. In a moralistic sense it is easy to understand it: what the society sees as good or bad. But I still haven't grasped what it means in Zoroastrianism. What does Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds actually mean. And whether this is an accurate rendition into modern languages.

Ushta,
Tomash / still a pathfinder