morality

The little respect paid to chastity in the male world is, I am persuaded, the grand source of many of the physical and moral evils that torment mankind, as well as of the vices and follies that degrade and destroy women; yet, at school, boys infallibly lose that decent bashfulness, which might have ripened into modesty at home.

Growing up I often wondered how the world would be today if, since the beginning of human life, every person acted as I did.

Through the imagination and the human sense of creativity, the book will examine not only raw clinical data but philosophical perspectives as well. As within many moral fables, animals will be used, at times, to convey a a fundamental truth of human nature. More simply stated, animals that elicit human empathetic responses, will be examined in a religious context. So, starting with cats, dogs and ultimately other primates, as moral experiments of imagination, we can perhaps understand differing cognitive processes that could have shaped our religious purview. It might be even stated that they should shape our opinion, especially in a reevaluation of the spiritual present and coming future. When this happens, it will help humanity create a unique pristine outlook on its religious traditions.

There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.

When he answered, he went all the way back to beginnings. He instructed me about the individual, about freedom and dignity, about the human being as subject and the fact that one may not turn him into an object. __on__ you remember how furious you would get as a little boy when Mama knew better what was good for you? Even how far one can act like this with children is a real problem. It is a philosophical problem, but philosophy does not concern itself with children. It leaves them to pedagogy, where they__e not in very good hands. Philosophy has forgotten about children._ He smiled at me. __orgotten them forever, not just sometimes, the way I forget about you.___ut . . .___ut with adults I see absolutely no justification for setting other people__ views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves.___ot even if they themselves are happy about it later?__e shook his head. __e__e not talking about happiness, we__e talking about dignity and freedom. Even as a little boy, you knew the difference. It was no comfort to you that your mother was always right.

I can__ look people in the eye and tell them that they__e going to die anymore.

Belief is a wonderful way to pass the time until the facts come in.

If the soul is immortal, it demands our care not only for that part of time which we call life, but for all time; and indeed it would seem now that it will be extremely dangerous to neglect it. If death were a release from everything, it would be a boon for the wicked, because by dying they would be released not only from the body but also from their own wickedness together with the soul; but as it is, since the soul is clearly immortal, it can have no escape of security from evil except by becoming as good and wise as it possibly can. For it takes nothing with it to the next world except its education and training...

Innocence could be lost more than once after all.

According to Melanie Klein, we develop moral responses in reaction to questions of survivability. My wager is that Klein is right about that, even as she thwarts her own insight by insisting that it is the ego's survivability that is finally at issue. Why the ego? After all, if my survivability depends on a relation to others, to a "you" or a set of "yous" without whom I cannot exist, then my existence is not mine alone, but is to be found outside myself, in this set of relations that precede and exceed the boundaries of who I am. If I have a boundary at all, or if a boundary can be said to belong to me, it is only because I have become separated from others, and it is only on condition of this separation that I can relate to them at all. So the boundary is a function of the relation, a brokering of difference, a negotiation in which I am bound to you in my separateness. If I seek to preserve your life, it is not only because I seek to preserve my own, but because who "I" am is nothing without your life, and life itself has to be rethought as this complex, passionate, antagonistic, and necessary set of relations to others. I may lose this "you" and any number of particular others, and I may well survive those losses. But that can happen only if I do not lose the possibility of any "you" at all. If I survive, it is only because my life is nothing without the life that exceeds me, that refers to some indexical you, without whom I cannot be.

The world you are in __s the true hell.The journey to Truth itselfIs what quickens the heart to become lighter.The lighter the heart, the purer it is.The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.And the heavier the heart,The more chained to this hellIt will remain.

Do unto others_ is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that__ exactly what it is - a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I__ good. I just don__ believe I__l be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It__ knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that__ where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. __o this or you__l burn in hell._ You won__ burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

Practical wisdom," Aristotle told us, "is the combination of moral will and moral skill.

Love sets the foundation for all human values.

Christianity is at its purest a philosophy about a person, Jesus Christ, and at its dirtiest a philosophy about requirements and law.

If you boil it down, just because someone else does the wrong thing we are not exempt from doing what__ right.

... what you think is right isn't the same as knowing what is right.

Where there is desire, the means to fulfill it are endless.