"Haidt wants us to understand that our moral instincts are inherently judgmental: being moral makes us moralistic. Much of the book is devoted to the experimental evidence that shows how often moral judgment is a case of us v them rather than right v wrong. In Haidt's terms, morality "binds and blinds". It binds us to the group and blinds us to the point of view of outsiders. This has profound implications for how we might think about some of our most deeply held beliefs."
- Review of Jonathan Haidt's new book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
- Review of Jonathan Haidt's new book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
2 comments:
Jonathan Haidt's new book is so wide ranging that I can only comment on one aspect: the relationship between conscience and morality. He says that political (secular) and religious views of morality frequently divide people. Many of us may have both. In my free ebook on comparative mysticism, "the greatest achievement in life," is a chapter called "Duel of the dual." Here are four paragraphs from it:
The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology defines conscience as “a reasonably coherent set of internalized moral principals that provides evaluations of right and wrong with regard to acts either performed or contemplated. Historically, theistic views aligned conscience with the voice of God and hence regarded it as innate. The contemporary view is that the prohibitions and obligations of conscience are learned."
The Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion lists some interesting historical observations on the word. Socrates said that conscience was the inner warning voice of God. Among Stoics it was a divine spark in man. Throughout the Middle Ages, conscience, synderesis in Greek, was universally binding rules of conduct. Religious interpretations later changed in psychiatry.
Sigmund Freud had coined a new term for conscience; he called it “superego.” This was self-imposed standards of behavior we learned from parents and our community, rather than from a divine source. People who transgressed those rules felt guilt. Carl Jung, Freud’s famous contemporary, said that conscience was an archetype of a “collective unconscious”; content from society is learned later. Most religions still view conscience as the foundation of morality.
Perhaps conscience can be viewed as a double-pane window, with the self in between. On one side, it looks toward ego and free will to obey community’s laws. On the other side, it is toward the soul and divine will to follow universal law. They often converge to dictate the same, or a similar, course of conduct…and sometimes not. The moral dilemma is when these two views conflict.
Thanks for Ron for the excellent comment. I like to read you ebook too.
I admire Haidt's works because he has bought the conversation about morality to the center again. May be time was banish some of his ideas but he deserves the credit of bringing morality as an important subject that can be studied (may be as a science) and spend a life time researching it.
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