Significance of Early Values - Essay Example

Church & Morality Name: Roll No: Class: Teacher: Subject: March 03, 2008 University: Contents Contents 2 Introduction 2 Significance of Early Values 3 Prime Themes in Moral Philosophy 3 Castlehaven Case in Seventeenth Century 4 Moral Reforms in 1690 4 Communal Moral Obligations 5 Views of Biblical Scholars 5 Role of Religious Institutions 6 Loss of General Interest by People in Churches 6 Identification of Right from Wrong by Community 7 Conclusion 8 References 8 Introduction The yardstick to determine the morality of society or morality what is wrong or right is becoming more open. There are so many different aspects of life defining that morality is bad or good or community played a vital role in comparison with church or secular courts to secure morality. People guard against the offensive of the negative forces but in the process also take necessary care to ensure that safeguarding of ethical and traditional values should not be reduced to just an exercise in patriotism. No community in the world is static and free from influence of others. (Ian McCormick. 1997) Morality means conduct and behavior which does not disgrace community rather adds to its development in different fields of life. It is not only to respect tradition and culture but respecting other tradition and culture. Morality also means devotion and commitment toward one’s family, work and society. This then is the spirit of morality and as long as it admires the basic facts of what make up public morality. Society in fact means a community of view and without combined ideas on morals, politics and ethics no community can exist. If both women and men attempt to establish a community in which there is no basic consensus about evil and good they are bound to fail; if having founded it on usual agreement, the agreement continues and the community disintegrates. (Sarah T. 2001)1 Significance of Early Values Morality must precede understanding as only understanding can develop just after the fundamental values have been established. As such the early values are the most significant as they later on become the parent of all succeeding values; consequently additions must include previous decisions as those previous decisions are beyond the approach of community. This random set of principles in community is the morality of persons, beyond promise, argument or threat and determines the way in which they view reality. For community is not anything that is preserved together actually; it is in fact maintained by the unseen bonds of general thought. If the bonds were too much relaxed the community members would drift distantly. One of the major problems of all times has been that the elites mostly in politics, media and community and also in religious circles such as churches mostly turn their backs on the conventional conceptions of wrong and right. Though some do this intentionally- others support views and causes that have the unintended impact of undermining impact of undermining values to which they are generally committed. The need for moral values as part and parcel of the fabric of community does not entail support for a traditional and established church or government support for religion. (Sarah T. 2001) Traditional liberalism rejected the authority and control of institutions to thoroughly impose obligatory morality. The basic objection to enforcement of morality is that any authority vested with specific powers is most likely to be dominated and captured by groups or persons whose primary interests will not always match with virtue. Moral values suffered as a consequence of the harsh clerical authority and control of Roman Church. The rise of need for community to enforce morality is due to the general belief that religion and individual responsibility are more personal relationship between God and man. (Karen H. 1999) Prime Themes in Moral Philosophy One of the prime themes in moral philosophy is the vital rule of community in shaping and forming our moral universe. Authors like Richard Bernstein, Alasdair Macintyre and Martha Nussbaum are united mostly in their insistence that moral action and conviction can be instilled only in other’s company. We educate to be moral be replicating on others whose integrity and judgment we respect. Even when we surpass or reject our models we do such a thing in a social context. (Laura G. 1996) A system designed for authoritative moral and ethical values is essential for honest and decent conduct. Community requires people to work under a code of conduct. An intelligently worked and implemented code of conduct needs intellectual effort, intelligence and a great level of personal integrity. It is a common feature to search and depend on particular reasons for supporting a specific position which is in the interest of community to establish fair conduct of morality. (Anthony Fletcher. 1995) Castlehaven Case in Seventeenth Century Mervin Touchet who was the 2nd Earl of Castlehaven was tried on April 25, 1631 before a jury at a particularly convened Court of Lord High Steward. There were certain horrific crimes charged against him. The prosecution presented their case by stating that Castlehaven had arranged for Anne Stanley- his 2nd wife and the daughter of William Stanley, to be raped by Giles Broadway his servant. The prosecution also challenged that Castlehaven had in fact committed sodomy with one of his servants Fitzpatrick. The jury comprising 27 peers found him guilty on both charges and as such he was executed on May 14th 1631, beheaded on Tower Hill. This case was one of the most sensational and amazing scandal of the decade of 1630s that was resolutely prosecuted by a King with the aim on enforcing much severe codes and rules of sexual morality. The trial of Castlehaven despite of the non-significance of its defendant became a picture upon which a complete palette of social concerns could be exhibited. Verse libels, six in number, were written on the scandal survive, the most famous is an epitaph that was written in the voice of Castlehaven and imitates the defense of Earl in court, charging adultery with his wife and plan against him. 2 A 2nd verse supports part of the allegations by epitaph while two verses written in the voice of distressed Countess- counter them directly. Two poems in fact dwell on the actions of justice in the case of Castlehaven, one noticing legal flaws and the other one scorning the proceedings of prosecution’s case. Others admire the proceedings and vilify monstrous transgressions of Castlehaven. (Cynthia Herrup, 1985) Moral Reforms in 1690 A prime preoccupation in the decade of 1690s was the concept of moral reform. Propounded by different lowest and highest in the land, interest and curiosity in the moral reform exceeded sectarian differences and party boundaries encompassing Williamites and Jacobites, Dissenters and Anglicans alike. The particular movement took different forms, both in social and political. It had a particular parliamentary political dimension with most of the country MPs demonstrating against events of parliamentary corruption. It also received endorsement from Mary II and William III who were anxious to make royal court a source of piety and morality. (Hayton D, 1990) Their supporters exhibited the queen and king as trying to bring actively an entire new era in which irreligion and vice would be ultimately swept. Moral reform also had a powerful voluntary communal dimension and no more so in the form of the communities for the Reformation of Manners. These were interdenominational groups that were formed by a variety of laity and clergy and were mostly independent of state. Their prime objective was to enforce morality and the moral legislation that was present on the statute books; they were successful in doing this by publicizing moral tracts and supporting keynote sermon while most of their members policed the demeanor of associates and neighbors, informing on blasphemers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. (Hayton, D. 1990) The extraordinary fervent and widespread concern about the moral state of the country and the explosion of actions in trying to reform it can be viewed as a direct answer to the three decades prior to the year 1688, a period that, from the point of view of 1690s had permitted debauchery, decadence and irreligion to thrive almost unchecked. Such a description of the Restoration period was a specifically supportive take on the areas of James VII and II and Charles II for those who helped the Revolution and desired to validate it. But apprehensions over religion and morality had predated the Revolution. Communal Moral Obligations Morality is viewed to be grounded in independent moral agents who make contact with each other in awareness of community structures and who should also favor fair equality and free choice of opportunity over specific, particularly communal moral obligations. Enforcement of morality occurs in relation to community- whether such communities we chose intentionally or those we become a part without our consent. The medium in society for enforcing morality is challenged with the stories told by the community. The particular topic of morality is the self in association to the world. Central to such formation is the influence of stories with their enclosed visions and symbols of good life. Yet the self is always in association and morality mostly comes out of community, people play a crucial role in the formation of characters of an individual. Some of the work in Christian ethics has been particularly interested in community role in the moral life. This role can be narrated as developing among biblical scholars and ethicists as a response to the community. The ethicists’ concerns have shifted from attempting to incorporate biblical morality to the paradigm of deductive argumentation to a general interest in Scripture as preliminary to the arrangement of communities of moral group. (Sarah T. 2001) 3 Views of Biblical Scholars The biblical scholars were aware of the social consequences primarily of biblical faith and also interested in drawing moral and social analogies between our own and biblical world. The stress on community has made scholarship on biblical ethics more cognizant of the biblical text not only as evidence for the moral community formation or the early church but also as proposal to impact the moral formation of all generations of the community. It is generally acknowledged that intelligence is the particular commodity that provides supports to humanity its strength over entire creatures but it is not mostly understood that the reliance of this facility is upon an essential foundation of unquestioned values. Intelligences facilitate understanding but this should reflect a morality. Some values are supplied being the part of life but in they are a value. The blend of morality and capability to reason against which certain reason is applicable is in fact the significant requirement for the perception. Role of Religious Institutions It is pertinent to understand the role of region in restricting a person who is tempted by all means to commit an unethical and illegal sex offense of which community highly disapproves. Religious institutions place huge emphasis on morality and particularly sexual morality. They seek to enforce the morality through public opinion, law, custom and as a whole through community. The offender is condemned rigorously but rarely studied for identifying the moral order that is unsuccessful in restraining him. The Christian faith specifically intended not to control public through law but to empower them. (Sarah T. 2001) As such persons having faith in Christianity but who lapse particularly into sex offenses would be sinners and considered personal failures; yet they also exhibit failures and non-accomplishments of Christian community also, in that it is not successful to enable most of the people for living up to the superior high class standards it proclaims. The morality standards had declined mainly due to the decline in the control and authority of religious tradition and institution hence Church and secular courts were not successful as compared with community in enforcing morality. Loss of General Interest by People in Churches Church is not better than community in enforcing morality particularly by law as people quitted churches in significant number because of disagreement on morality issues. Even people who think themselves as religious conceded that they mostly take part in unethical issues not consistent with their religious beliefs. Partly the deterioration of morality resulted from some confusions over the position of church. The impact of religious involvement and faith on morality was responded differently by the people as they gave proof of neglected elements in the dominion of moral empowerment. On the whole religion not impacted the moral struggle significantly with just one exception; when moral standards and religious faith were experienced as commitments to support and value persons and embodied in associations with those person. “The religion exercised insignificant power to restrict people from indulging in immoral practices when particular opportunity arose. Restraint did not come through the control and authority of secular courts and churches or the power of thoughts but through the combined efforts of community with people having trust and love.” (Ludmilla J. 1989)4 The race prejudice existed among the members of church in similar percentage as among non-church members with the exclusion for highly involved and highly committed people. The dependence upon cognizance for meaning of morality revealed the significance of morality as this was the foundation of understanding. Meaning of morality generated from the set of different values that were adopted and allowed for invoking a particular reason and determined the meaning of lives of common people. Morality is the recognition of wrong and right as determined by the implementation of beliefs; instructions to perform or not to perform specific acts- the beliefs that control the awareness. Morality is also termed as set of beliefs that ultimately control the understanding and significant basis of every understanding. Identification of Right from Wrong by Community Community provided the capability to recognize and differentiate right from wrong independently of personal feelings and allowed rational thinking with discipline to resist the impact of personal feelings. It recognized the grave need for sacrificing self for the advantages and benefit of others. In order to enforce morality community necessitated the notion of duty and justice as what a person should do and not do irrespective of personal feelings. “Community formed the belief that the devoted and loyal persons should be rewarded whereas the non-committed and disloyal people should be punished.” (Porter R. 1995) Implicit in the personal acknowledgement of a community code was the notion that people were of less significance than the community; this meant that personal well being was considered as inferior to the needs and requirements of society. This permitted to face the death prospects with some calmness as people knew that they eventually die the most significant thing – the community- ultimately survives. The result shared through this understanding was that a community that was autonomous of the private feelings of a person a single location of values could be acquired by a specific group to establish a single communal cognizance that facilitated them in performing as a single creature. Community had the ability to recognize the wrong from right autonomously of personal feeling as cognizance was founded upon a particular set of values that ultimately set personal needs as paramount, passive only to the requirements of convenience. This obtained irrational thoughts as personal feeling rule reason and the pursuit of instant gratification irrespective of others. Community required the exercise of qualities that church was not successful in accomplishing like justice and truth. Justice being what the fancies and fears of the awareness demanded from others and truth as an observation that became the ultimate servant of private fancies and fears. As for the secular courts there was a closeness of punishments, but this did not impact the entry of person into a world of the antecedent after death. Moreover these predecessors bother malefactors with their illness and different kinds of misfortunes they performed similar to the conscience of individual, punishing an individual for the infringement of patriarchal values of that segment. As described by Robert S in his publication, “In Christianity even though one could had all of this yet there was an addition of the vital characteristics of delayed rewards or punishments that were meted out after death.” (Robert S. 1998) Conclusion Community dealt with a thoroughgoing evaluation of religions about morality that involved delayed rewards and punishments quite dissimilar to the immediate or this-globally compensations meted out to be ancestors or deities. Religions did not possess the social morality and in the ostensible historical regions that developed during sixth century B.C. also called ‘Axial Age’ and after this the social morality was redefined as an inherent religious morality that had profound implications for culture, society and the conscience. Christians usually view that the morality that is expressed and narrated in Ten Commandants is exclusive in nature, yet community overall was successful in enforcing morality instead of churches and secular courts. References Anthony Fletcher. 1995. Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500-1800, p87 Cynthia Herrup. 1985. Law and Morality in Seventeenth-Century England. Past and Present p-106 Hayton D. 1990. Moral Reform and Country Politics in the Late Seventeenth-Century House of Commons, Past and Present, no. 128, pp. 48-91   Ian McCormick (ed.). 1997. Secret Sexualities: A Sourcebook of 17th and 18th Century Writing p-43 Karen H. 1999. The Majesty of the Masculine Form: Multiplicity and Male Bodies in 18th Century Erotica’, in Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen (eds.), English Masculinities 1660-1800 pp. 193-214   Laura G. 1996. Domestic Dangers: Women, Words and Sex in Early Modern London Ludmilla J. 1989. Sexual Visions: Images of Gender in Science and Medicine between the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries Robert S. 1998. Gender in English Society 1650-1850: the Emergence of Separate Spheres? Porter R. 1995. The Facts of Life: the Creation of Sexual Knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 Sarah T. 2001. Private rooms and back doors in abundance: the illusion of privacy in pornography in seventeenth-century England', Women's History Review, 10:4, 701-19   Read More