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The Dialogue of Cultural Traditions:
a global perspective
Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics
William Sweet
President, Canadian Philosophical Association
Professor of Philosophy
Director, Centre for Philosophy, Theology and Cultural
Traditions
St Francis Xavier University, Canada
Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics
General Problematic
Old ways of thinking about ethics
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Religion-based / traditional
(Enlightenment) Reason-based
Affectivity and ‘intuition’ based
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Generic humanistic and ‘conventionalist’ accounts
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Dialogue, Cultural Traditions and Ethics
General Problematic
 Ethics and values as central to culture
 Ethics deals with ways of living
 BUT, in a world
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that is Pluralist and diverse
that is Postmodern
In which we are aware of historicity, subjectivity, and
contingency
how can we be ethical?
Old ways of thinking about ethics
1. religious / tradition-based
 focus on 3
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classical Jewish/Christian/Islamic approaches
classical Asian approaches to ethics
Aristotelian virtue ethics; Stoic (and later) natural law
religious / tradition-based
Jewish/Christian/Islamic
1. What are the key ethical principles?
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10 commandments (Hebrew Scriptures)
sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7), also
Matthew 22: “The Greatest Commandment”
Qur’an / Sunna and Hadith; also Sharia
religious / tradition-based
Jewish/Christian/Islamic
2. What is the nature of this ethics?
 - rules /laws
 - sometimes abstract; sometimes concrete (e.g.,
love thy neighbour vs. dietary laws)
 - the aim of ethical behaviour is…..
 - difficult to separate ‘purely’ ethical from the
religious
religious / tradition-based
Jewish/Christian/Islamic
3. What is the source of this ethics? /
How is this ethics authoritative?
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from God
or conventions or past practice from interpreters of
texts (rabbis, imams, etc….)
perhaps rules are reasonable or ‘natural’, but not
why they command / are authoritative
religious / tradition-based
Jewish/Christian/Islamic
4. this ethics depends on God
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universal and particular
Why does God command this? (any reason?)
Are God’s reasons good reasons? (Euthyphro
problem)
OR are these beyond reason?
religious / tradition-based
Classical Asian approaches
A preliminary question. Is there Asian philosophy?
 Asian philosophy as a western invention
 distinguish original (and/or philosophical)
Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism from
Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist popular cultures or
spiritual life.
religious / tradition-based
Classical Asian approaches
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Asian philosophy?
recognizes:
the value of diligence and work
the value of studiousness
the value of the family and relatives
the value of community and one’s responsibilities to
the community.
religious / tradition-based
Classical Asian approaches
Nature of ethics
 abstract principles AND concrete rules of conduct
 the aim is to do one’s duty
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of varna [caste] / classes of society or social life
may involve rites and rituals
development of (personal) virtue – i.e., it is a
personal task, not subjective
to achieve enlightenment (moksa) / liberation
(nibbana)
applies to all nature
religious / tradition-based
Classical Asian approaches
Source of ethics
 Sometimes theistic, sometimes not
 A principle of order (e.g., Heaven [T’ien])
 Natural law or nature
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e.g., karma in Indian philosophy
BUT not obviously human nature
rooted in texts / scriptures
religious / tradition-based
Classical Asian approaches
So, this ethics depends on nature and tradition
 V
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religious / tradition-based
Aristotelian / Stoic
Nature of ethics
 abstract principles
 fewer concrete rules
 Role of practical wisdom [phrónêsis] and
[phronimos] .
 e.g., be virtuous
 "moral virtue/excellence": “a disposition or
characteristic involving choice in observing the
mean relative to us” Nicomachean Ethics II, 6
religious / tradition-based
Aristotelian / Stoic
seek happiness:
 Happiness = df "an activity of the soul in conformity
with virtue through a complete life via acting in
accord with the rational element of the soul (I, 7)
religious / tradition-based
Aristotelian / Stoic
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courage {Gk. andreia]} between
rashness and cowardice;
temperance {Gk. sophrosúnê]} intemperance and
insensibility;
generosity between wastefulness and stinginess;
magnanimity {Gk. [megalopsychia]} between vanity
and pusillanimity.
religious / tradition-based
Aristotelian / Stoic
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social, but also self-directed
again, involves the development of (personal) virtue
particular duties determined by function
an obligation to contemplation, meditation?
ultimately to achieve happiness
religious / tradition-based
Aristotelian / Stoic
Source of ethics
 How do we know the good?
 What is reasonable (cosmopolitan)
 Natural law or nature
 Determined by function
 In fact, determined largely by tradition
religious / tradition-based
Aristotelian / Stoic
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So, it depends on….
Enlightenment / reason-based
- most modern ethical theories
 4 principal kinds (though there are more)
 - contract based
 - principle based (deontological)
 - consequence / result based (e.g., utilitarianism)
 - right-based
Enlightenment / reason-based
contract based
 Rousseau; Hobbes, Locke, Plato (Thrasymachus);
John Rawls
 What principles would a (rational,) self-interested,
individual agree to, in order to live in society?
 ‘social contract’
 not “purely” rational (see Hobbes); a desire to avoid
pain and suffering
 some general ‘natural laws’
Enlightenment / reason-based
principle based (deontological)
 Kant
 Again, what would a rational being discover and
‘assent to’?
 Law
 Can be rationally grasped and recognised as true
(and obligatory) by all rational beings (not just
human beings)
 autonomy = giving this law to oneself
Enlightenment / reason-based
principle based (deontological)
How is this law known?
the categorical imperative:
 “act only in accordance with that maxim through
which you can at the same time will that it become
a universal law.”
 "Act so as to use humanity, in your own person or in
others, always as an end, and never merely as a
means."
Enlightenment / reason-based
principle based (deontological)
 universal and absolute – a priori – (without
exception)
 ‘recognized’ and enacted by reason alone
 doesn’t matter if people agree to it or not
 does not – cannot – depend on external lawgiver
 does not depend on consequences or results
Enlightenment / reason-based
consequence / result based
 Again, what would a rational being discover and
‘assent to’?
 e.g., Mill
 also Jeremy Bentham, William Godwin, Henry
Sidgwick; today: Peter Singer.
 “The creed which accepts as the foundation of
morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle,
holds that actions are right in proportion as they
tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to
produce the reverse of happiness.” Ch 2.
Enlightenment / reason-based
consequence / result based
 not proven from 1st principles, but still proven
 see Utilitarianism Ch 4
 “happiness is a good: that each person's happiness
is a good to that person, and the general happiness,
therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.”
Enlightenment / reason-based
consequence / result based
 has a lawlike character
 Can be seen by all rational beings
 ‘reasonable’ rather than “purely” rational
 In a way this is universal and in a way absolute
 What utilitarianism amounts to in practice depends
on the circumstances
 important to have experience, be attentive to details,
and develop moral expertise
 does not depend on any external lawgiver BUT
does depend on a theory of motivation
Enlightenment / reason-based
Right based
 e.g., Locke?
 Again, what would a rational being ‘assent to’?
 Based on ‘natural law’ = ‘a law of reason’
 preservation of life and liberty
 Liberty fundamental:
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“natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power
on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority
of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.” Second Treatise of Government, Ch 4:
State of nature: "A state of perfect freedom...within the
bounds of the law of nature".
Enlightenment / reason-based
Right based
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limits on what we can do:
not violating a like liberty/freedom
‘as much and as good for others’
Can be seen by all rational beings
more ‘reasonable’ than “purely” rational
Is this universal and absolute?
empiricistic
depend on an external lawgiver? Unclear (probably not)
Sentiment / pitié
E.g., Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).
 4 basic, inborn characteristics of humans:
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Basic drive to care for self (amour de soi)
pitié
Perfectibility
Freedom
How ought people to treat others ?
First, amour de soi
also la pitié – pity (or sympathy or empathy for
the other).
Sentiment / pitié
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What is pity? In Discours sur l'origine et les fondements
de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (1755), 1ère partie :
“pity is a natural feeling, which, moderating in each
individual the activity of the love of oneself, contributes
to the mutual conversation of all the species. It is it
which carries us without reflexion to the help of those
that we see suffering; it is it which, in the state of nature,
holds place of laws, manners, of virtue, with this
advantage that no one is not tempted to disobey its soft
voice;
Sentiment / pitié
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not something rational
Not mutual
does not imply a shared sentiment or interest or
mutual recognition; one simply has this “reaction”.
Not clearly moral; no sense to say that one (morally)
ought to “feel” sympathy.
pitié exists regardless of social life or socialization,
Needs imagination (i.e., the capacity to imagine
beyond our own interests)
Sentiment / pitié
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David Hume (1711-1776).
judgments / traditional morality arise from a moral
sense, not reason.
A matter of fact (discoverable by experience), virtue
is always accompanied by a feeling of pleasure,
and vice by a feeling of pain.
moral approval is a feeling, similar to an aesthetic
feeling; not an act of reason, like a mathematical
inference.
Humanistic ethics / ethics by
convention
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E.g., Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
human centred
conventional (Jack Donnelly)
designed to achieve certain underlying values
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E.g., human being as autonomous and equal
has become "deeply rooted" and is recognised
No moral or natural foundationalism.
Rights - the product of historical accident; may change.
serve as a regulative political ideal