Posted by prof C on March 19, 2008, 1:04 pm, in reply to "Re: Sartre's response to Arthur"
132.239.208.141
In the nick of time, huh?
Arthur says religion is not necessary for morality, I think everyone understood that.
Sartre is an atheist and notes that this does not make ethical behavior and moral choice impossible, but it creates a very big problem: you can no longer be certain of what is right and what is wrong, because if you doin't believe in a Sumpreme Being who (so to speak) "tells" mankind what is right or wrong, how are you supposed to know what such notions mean?
So religion may not be necessary for moral choice (from S.'s point of view, individuals always make moral choices, even if they want to pretent to themselves that they don't)--but it is necessary for moral certainty. So if God doesn't exist, we still have choices, just no certainty as to whether or not we've made the right ones in any objective sense. The "first premise/principle" becomes a subjective affair, a matter of "opinion."
So, as he notes, if you abandon belief in a Supreme Being, it's not the same ball game as when you do believe--but there's still morality and moral choice, it just lacks certainty and an "objective" base of right and wrong. (So...you argue and counterargue...seems pointless--but it's not).
See Kafka re the problem of our laws: we'd like to get rid of this law of the nobility...but then, what shall we do, if we abandon this one law, there won't be any objective law left, just the laws we make for ourselves (which we can easily ignore!).
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