Sunday, September 13, 2009

Thought for the day

There is no good and evil — or rather, good and evil are subjective, not objective. There is however, right and wrong. (Paraphrase of Swami Dayananda Saraswati from a Q&A session at Arsha Vidya Gurukulam on its 23rd anniversary.)

2 comments:

Sabine Hossenfelder said...

Unless you are talking of a mathematical proof, right and wrong are context dependent. If you want to reach xyz, something might be the right thing to do, something else the wrong thing. Even if you know that, the question remains, do you want to reach xyz in the first place?

CapitalistImperialistPig said...

I seem to recall that Nietsche was interested in this point (The geneology of morals). I think one needs to be careful how one defines ones terms in such an inquiry - Bee's point, I think.

I am inclined to think that humans do have an innate moral sense, though pretty clearly it is limited and fragile.