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Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, empathy, Reasoning or moral intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions. Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, and includes humanism, secularism and freethinking. A classical example of literature on secular ethics is the Tirukkural, authored by the ancient Indian philosopher Thiruvalluvar.
Secular ethical systems comprise a wide variety of ideas to include the normativity of , some form of attribution of intrinsic moral value, intuition-based deontology, cultural moral relativism, and the idea that scientific reasoning can reveal objective moral truth (known as science of morality).
Secular ethics frameworks are not always mutually exclusive from theological values. For example, the Golden Rule or a commitment to non-violence, could be supported by both religious and secular frameworks. Secular ethics systems can vary within the societal and cultural norms of a specific time period, and may also be used by a person of any religious persuasion, including atheists.
Many of these tenets are applied in the science of morality, the use of the scientific method to answer moral questions. Various thinkers have framed morality as questions of empirical truth to be explored in a scientific context. The science is related to ethical naturalism, a type of ethical realism.
In How Good People Make Tough Choices: Resolving the Dilemmas of Ethical Living, Rushworth Kidder identifies four general characteristics of an ethical code:
The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) is the world-wide umbrella organization for those adhering to the Humanist life stance.
Humanism is known to adopt principles of the Golden Rule.
Those who are unhappy with the negative orientation of traditional religious ethics believe that prohibitions can only set the absolute limits of what a society is willing to tolerate from people at their worst, not guide them towards achieving their best. In other words, someone who follows all these prohibitions has just barely avoided being a criminal, not acted as a positive influence on the world. They conclude that rational ethics can lead to a fully expressed ethical life, while religious prohibitions are insufficient.
That does not mean secular ethics and religion are mutually exclusive. In fact, many principles, such as the Golden Rule, are present in both systems, and some religious people, as well as some Deists, prefer to adopt a rational approach to ethics.
Famous biologist and writer Stephen Jay Gould has stated that "answers will not be read passively from nature" and "the factual state of the world does not teach us how we, with our powers for good and evil, should alter or preserve it in the most ethical manner". Thus, he concluded that ideas of morality should come from a form of higher mental reason, with nature viewed as an independent phenomenon.
Evolutionary ethics is not the only way to involve nature with ethics. For example, there are Ethical realism theories like ethical naturalism. Related to ethical naturalism is also the idea that ethics are best explored, not just using the lens of philosophy, but science as well (a science of morality).
"Secularism is a code of duty pertaining to this life, founded on considerations purely human, and intended mainly for those who find theology indefinite or inadequate, unreliable or unbelievable. Its essential principles are three: (1) The improvement of this life by material means. (2) That science is the available Providence of man. (3) That it is good to do good. Whether there be other good or not, the good of the present life is good, and it is good to seek that good."Holyoake, George J. (1896). English Secularism. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company.
Holyoake held that secularism should take no interest at all in religious questions (as they were irrelevant), and was thus to be distinguished from strong freethought and atheism. In this he disagreed with Charles Bradlaugh, and the disagreement split the secularist movement between those who argued that anti-religious movements and activism was not necessary or desirable and those who argued that it was.
According to Nietzsche, our understanding of cause and effect may be limited to a single will, an inclination that is identical to that of other living things. In this respect, Nietzsche's theory is more straightforward than Kant's since Nietzsche did manage clarify our sense of causality by considering simply the will to power, whereas Kant postulated two sorts of wills (free and unfree wills). We shouldn't "accept numerous forms of causality until the experiment of making do with a single one has been pushed to its farthest extent," according to Nietzsche, since the "conscience of method requires" it. The want to power appears to be practically beyond dispute, according to Nietzsche's formulation, and since causation is our ultimate certainty.
For instance, under Kantian ethics, if a person were to give money to charity because failure to do so would result in some sort of punishment from a god or Supreme Being, then the charitable donation would not be a morally good act. A dutiful action must be performed solely out of a sense of duty; any other motivation profanes the act and strips it of its moral quality.
In utilitarianism, it is the "end result" which is fundamental (as opposed to Kantian ethics discussed above). Thus using the same scenario as above, it would be irrelevant whether the person giving money to charity was doing so out of personal or religious conviction, the mere fact that the charitable donation is being made is sufficient for it to be classified as morally good.
Key philosophers and philosophical texts
Epicurus
Epicurus (341–270 BCE), in his philosophy of Epicureanism, posits an ethics of pleasure based on the study of nature, and teaches that we should carry out our choices and rejections based on hedonic calculus. Epicureanism also teaches a curriculum of control of desires based on the hierarchy of desires: natural and necessary desires are top priority, natural yet unnecessary desires are secondary, and those that are neither natural nor necessary are dismissed. The main texts of its ethics are the 40 Principal Doctrines (Kyriai Doxai) and Epicurus' Letter to Menoeceus. As per Principal Doctrine 5, the ethical code of the School promotes living pleasantly, justly, prudently, and correctly.
Valluvar
Thiruvalluvar (before c. 5th century CE), a South Indian poet-philosopher and the author of the Tirukkural, a non-denominational Tamil language work on secular ethics and morality, is believed to have lived between the 1st century BCE and the 5th century Common era. While others of his time chiefly focused on the praise of God, culture and the ruler of the land, Valluvar focused on the moral behaviors of the common individual. Valluvar limits his theistic teachings to the introductory chapter of the Kural text, the "Praise of God." Throughout the text thereafter, he focuses on the everyday moral behaviors of an individual, thus making the text a secular one. Even in the introductory chapter, he refrains from mentioning the name of any particular god but only addresses God in generic terms as "the Creator," "the truly Wise One," "the One of eight-fold excellence," and so forth. Translated into about 40 world languages, the Kural text remains one of the most widely translated non-religious works in the world. Praised as "the Universal Veda," it emphasizes on the ethical edifices of non-violence, moral vegetarianism, casteless human brotherhood, absence of desires, path of righteousness and truth, and so forth, besides covering a wide range of subjects such as moral codes of rulers, friendship, agriculture, knowledge and wisdom, sobriety, love, and domestic life.
Holyoake
George Jacob Holyoake's 1896 publication English Secularism defines secularism thus:
Nietzsche
Nietzsche's many works spoke of a Master-Slave Morality, The Will to Power, or something stronger that overcomes the weaker and Social Darwinism adaptation and will to live. Nietzsche expressed his moral philosophy throughout his collection of works; the most important of these to secular ethics being The Gay Science (in which the famous God is dead phrase was first used), Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and On The Genealogy of Morals.
Kant
On ethics, Immanuel Kant wrote works that both described the nature of universal principles and also sought to demonstrate the procedure of their application. Kant maintained that only a "good will" is morally praiseworthy, so that doing what appears to be ethical for the wrong reasons is not a morally good act. Kant's emphasis on one's intent or reasons for acting is usually contrasted with the utilitarian tenet that the goodness of an action is to be judged solely by its results. Utilitarianism is a hypothetical imperative, if one wants _____, they must do ______. Contrast this with the Kantian ethic of the categorical imperative, where the moral act is done for its own sake, and is framed: One must do ______ or alternatively, one must not do ______.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism (from the Latin utilis, useful) is a theory of ethics that prescribes the quantitative maximization of good consequences for a population. It is a form of consequentialism. This good to be maximized is usually happiness, pleasure, or preference satisfaction. Though some utilitarian theories might seek to maximize other consequences, these consequences generally have something to do with the welfare of people (or of people and nonhuman animals). For this reason, utilitarianism is often associated with the term welfarist consequentialism.
See also
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