Journal Marxist Hacker 42's Journal: Rights must always come with duty 15
" Many people today would claim that they owe nothing to anyone, except to themselves. They are concerned only with their rights, and they often have great difficulty in taking responsibility for their own and other people's integral development. Hence it is important to call for a renewed reflection on how rights presuppose duties, if they are not to become mere licence."- Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate
This, to me, is the center of moral relativism- that rights have become mere license, without the duty to support them. It's why the world economic system has crashed, it's why the demand for social services keeps increasing, it's why China is buying up natural resources all over the world, it's why we're stuck in Afghanistan and Iraq and can't seem to fins a way to leave.
moral relativism (Score:2)
When there is no God save one's impulses, you see the current kind of confusion, and vacuous celebrities treated like deities.
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When there is no God save one's impulses, you see the current kind of confusion, and vacuous celebrities treated like deities.
This may be the case today. But, I think it bears asking: Has it ever been otherwise? Are you sure the present is so unlike the past, in this regard?
Because I'm not so sure.
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Well, at one point in the past, we had Guild Feudalism as an economic system- and the right to eat was directly linked to what you could do for the Lord of the Land you lived in.
But I'm with you that I'd put the start of this much further back- with the Reformation and the Englightenment.
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Funny, I see more confusion when somebody tries to impose their god upon me. The result is eternal blowback, which can manifest itself as perversely as the imposition. It has been a constant back and forth throughout the ages. Authority comes from man, based on the idolatry of false gods, and it too comes with responsibility, the very first would be to impose such rules on one's self before attempting to apply them to others. For the most part the demand for social services comes from the people who are ful
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I'm still not sure it isn't the fruit of the englightenment itself. The whole idea that rights are innate just by being human, rather than a part of duty.
I can see the argument for what Pope Benedict XVI calls "necessary rights" in the above- for Maslow first-order needs, for which if you cut off all access to any one of them the human being will cease to be a part of this world fairly quickly. But the right to migrate? The right to marry your lover regardless of relation or gender? These rights become
I've been saying this for years... (Score:2)
It's nice to see His Holiness spell it out so succinctly. This is nothing new. _I_ certainly didn't think of it myself, and the Pope didn't suddenly just realize it either. It's part and parcel of everything (the good stuff anyway) that came out of the Enlightenment, which itself was properly an evolution of medieval and renaissance thinking, not a departure. Of course, many errors were also introduced at that time as well.
Our politicians say this too, but they think the "duty" part only applies to mone
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Far too often, today, though the advantaged don't even have the duty to surrender to the State- most corporations pay less than 1% of their real gross in taxes. Likewise the disadvantaged often succumb to the temptation of fraud.
You're right though- It is indeed a seriously degraded understanding of liberty- when liberty is always take and never give.
Should, not must (Score:1)
Yeah, and when people only think of themselves, they join the Hitler youth in order to earn a *tuition credit*.
I'm aware that:
1) You think that this man is Christ's vicar on earth and,
2) Everyone is a sinner so the office of Pope would be vacant if that were a disqualification,
but I find it obscene when this particular Pope lectures anyone on the need for some balance between rights and responsibilities.
From a moral standpoint, it is true that people should be responsible for the en
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but I find it obscene when this particular Pope lectures anyone on the need for some balance between rights and responsibilities.
The office has a tendency to change the man in this case. Many said the same thing about the ultra-right-wing Karol Wojtyla after his years of being the religious face of Poland's solidarity movement and his involvement in the Vatican Banking Scandal- yet he published Centesimus Annus [vatican.va], one of the big forerunners to this document, that was as critical of capitalism as it
Rights and Duties (Score:2)
The easiest and foremost recognition of rights v. duties in the "moral relativism" movement is that a right granted is a duty to respect that right for others.
Literally, you are not special, all people were created equal, and endowed with the same rights.
It's the principle of the "your right to swing your fist around, stops at my face."
The biggest problem with what caused the world market crash is a failure to apply this rule appropriately. We created a system where every investor has the right to be ensur
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I think you're bang on with this. Moral relativism, as it currently exists, is NOT being correctly applied- for it does NOT include the *equal* application of rights. And I'm not sure you can draw a bright line between Christianity and moral relativism- the rational argument exists that modern post-Reformation Christianity, while not explicitly morally relativistic, did indeed contain in the Five Solas enough freedom of thought to create moral relativism as it is currently practiced- all rights, no respons
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I think you're bang on with this. Moral relativism, as it currently exists, is NOT being correctly applied- for it does NOT include the *equal* application of rights. And I'm not sure you can draw a bright line between Christianity and moral relativism- the rational argument exists that modern post-Reformation Christianity, while not explicitly morally relativistic, did indeed contain in the Five Solas enough freedom of thought to create moral relativism as it is currently practiced- all rights, no responsibilities, for if there is no human judgement there is no down side to sin in this world.
Ah, you missed what I was trying to say. I wasn't trying to draw a line between moral relativism and Christianity, rather I drew a line around all moral systems that notes that all moral systems can be abused, and have been abused.
But I offer you this thought- if all rights are earned by duty, which under a moral absolutist system they must be, and if there is only one answer for any moral question, which is the definition of moral absolutism, then are not all rights applied equally to all in a moral absolutist system?
Moral relativism holds that all rights bear a duty, not that they are earned by a duty. One of the fundamental principles of moral relativism is that a group of people may select any valid and sound set of morals. Valid and sound requiring that the rights granted be recognized
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Moral relativism holds that all rights bear a duty, not that they are earned by a duty. One of the fundamental principles of moral relativism is that a group of people may select any valid and sound set of morals. Valid and sound requiring that the rights granted be recognized to all applicable individuals.
Right, but I was talking about a true moral absolutist system- where all rights are *earned* by duty, only given to those who have shown the responsibility that they can handle the right.
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Moral relativism holds that all rights bear a duty, not that they are earned by a duty. One of the fundamental principles of moral relativism is that a group of people may select any valid and sound set of morals. Valid and sound requiring that the rights granted be recognized to all applicable individuals.
Right, but I was talking about a true moral absolutist system- where all rights are *earned* by duty, only given to those who have shown the responsibility that they can handle the right.
Since *anybody* in a moral absolutist system (even the farmer's kid pulling the sword from the stone) can show, by taking on duties, that they *deserve* the rights, the rights are equally applied to all.
First, the farmer's kid didn't pull the sword from the stone. And actually, Arthur were a squire at the time. And additionally, Arthur was the child of Uther Pendragon, and was thus by right of birth king... it was just not known to people at the time. (See: Historia Regum Britanniae)
Next, you claim that there is a single and solely available "moral absolutism"... this is however incorrect. You hold to yourself that there is only one right one, but this is because of your strict absolutism that states t