Objectivity & Universality

There’s some very interesting discussion going on right now at www.philaletheia.thetruthtree.com over Euthyphro’s Dilemma. Here is a summary taken from the post:

Socrates asks Euthyphro: “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” In monotheistic terms, this is usually transformed into: “Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it’s commanded by God?”.

It’s brought up the issue of objectivity in moral philosophy. You’ll just have to read the post and comments to get the whole story, and it’s definitely worth it. But one thing has become clearly important and worth posting about, the definition of objectivity.

Ethical Dissonance

The following explications of the 10 reasons for wandering are more like memoirs than hard logical reasonings. While I do hope to engage in dialogue concerning the validity of any reasoning used in the posts, my wanderings are not purely reason based. I don’t think that all of our reasonings are ever purely rational or logical. I am an emotive, historical being with a matrix of epistemological, aesthetic and ethical inheritance. I know I operate out of that, and even rejection of it is delineated by the contours of it.

Ethical dissonance is probably the most difficult and personal issue for me. I’ve heard many times before the debates and discussions concerning the topic, but it still hits me at an existentially deep place. I don’t understand how there can be such a history of difference between the way that christianity has behaved and the teachings of its founder. The most common explanation I’ve heard is that those who behaved in such a way were not acting in accordance with the teachings of Jesus. One apologist has said that the actions of say the Crusades were not the logical outworkings of the teachings of Jesus whereas something like the Holocaust were the logical outworkings of atheism or social Darwinism. If there are other approaches I’d love to hear and discuss them. However, I have a few problems with any such, or similar, approach.