From my final paper for my Ethics class.
Few doubt that our world and what we can directly perceive are but one piece of a much greater and mysterious ultimate reality. Throughout the course of human history, certain individuals, gifted in the greatest of spiritual intelligence, have by whatever cultural explanation claimed to have become conscious of this ultimate truth, and in the form of a message that the worldly around them could comprehend, founded what would become the great religions of human history as shamans, prophets, and sages. Preceding our modern world of globalization and multicultural exchange was a time when one single “grand narrative” was generally understood as the ultimate guiding truth by the vast majority of people within any given society. As John Esposito, a scholar on Islamic studies at Georgetown explains, what distinguishes the modern world from that of the past is that we are ever immersed in cultural and religious diversity explained by a new “metanarrative” of pluralism: “No single story,” he writes, “can possibly be all encompassing for all people in a given culture, especially as global culture emerges and the world’s religions are found in everyone’s home town. Diversity relativizes all stories” (Esposito 24-25). The often overwhelming perplexity that is religious diversity may itself be a reason for the modern world’s loss of tradition and even a driving force behind moral relativism. In modern times, the followers of each tradition must ask: does the diversity of the world’s religions necessarily negate their validity, and must the existence of cultural diversity necessitate moral relativism?
In his essay “The Case Against Moral Relativism,” Louis Pojman manages to construct a list of ten non-arbitrary rules of morality:
Do not kill innocent people, do not cause unnecessary pain or suffering, do not cheat or steal, keep your promises and honor your contracts, do not deprive another person of his or her freedom, do justice, treating equals equally and unequals unequally, tell the truth, help other people, at least when the cost to oneself is minimal, show gratitude for services rendered, and obey just laws (Pojman 184).
Our ability to construct a list of universal rights and wrongs matched by traditions across the globe seems in itself, at the very least, to limit the likelihood of moral relativism. However, it seems that there are some societies, such as the Kwakiutl and clans of Melanesia which reputedly embrace violence and murder as virtues and thus violate some of these principles. Perhaps, then, these may not be called universal per se. The existence of exceptions may turn what would otherwise be called universals into general tendencies at best, but it does not in any way mean that the values of differing cultures may not, nonetheless, have a common point of convergence, even a unified origin.
The common origin of world languages is the human brain. Despite the outer diversity of human languages, all languages follow systematic patterns which can be predicted by the presence of other, corresponding patterns. Each of such patterns generally occurs in one of a finite number of forms, abiding by linguistic universals. Knowing much about how nouns work in a certain language, for example, a linguist can predict with a great deal of accuracy, in accordance with documented linguistic universals, how verbs work in that same language. A proportionally small number of universals, however, are almost always violated in the grammar of any given language. Understanding, then, that language is a part of culture, the existence of universal moral principles as manifested in human culture is in fact not refuted by the existence of cultural outliers such as the Kwakiutl.
The great religions of the world, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Chinese religions among others, all can be said to vary extensively. On an esoteric level, however, as in the case of language, there appears to be an innate, transcendent unity from which they all mutually originate. Each tradition calls for adherence to the same principles listed by Pojman, manifested through specific cultural norms. Moreover, each tradition in its orthodox form necessitates rite of tradition as a means of social unity and as a reflection of one’s submission to a higher power through belief in the mystical and unseen. How this higher power is described, as an inactive and impersonal force of “the Buddha nature” (Esposito 25), a fatherly personification, or yet by different explanation, is an understandable cultural variance considering the magnitude and intensity behind the concept of the Divine which in its purity exists arguably quite far beyond the worldly understanding.
The existence of universal, fundamental truths, which exist regardless of change in culture across time and space, is necessary in order to make judgments of what is right and what is wrong. It is debatable as to whether these absolute truths are or are not merely the creation of mankind. Each of the great religious traditions teaches that the origin of these truths is, in fact, not the product of man’s reason, but a revelation of the Divine Truth, God in the Western tradition. Just as different languages may convey the same powerful and emotional concepts using different combinations of simple, arbitrary sounds, many of the different religious traditions of the world may express the same innate and unworldly, underlying sapience, molded in the form of the worldly externalizations and cultures on which we are dependant.
Many believe that the best way to respond to the perplexity of religious diversity is syncretism, not merely accepting truth in multiple traditions but in fact combining them into one, single tradition. This is difficult to defend, however, for two principle reasons. Any polarized distinction between what is religious and what is merely cultural is in itself an artificial construction, and so all the religious traditions in their orthodoxy intertwine faith with law, rites, and dress. It is simply impossible to merge multiple religions in all their complexities into one tradition and still give each its due. Moreover, a consciously and intentionally syncretic faith would be an artificial construction necessitated by belief in the authentic, divine revelation of the traditions before it. Each religion was founded by sages, and each came with its own traditions believed to be authentic according to the founder’s enlightenment. To follow an artificially constructed religion would be to follow a tradition that is not recognized to be authentic by any religion, and the argument that the Divine Truth is lost in so doing is easily made. One cannot fully practice two religions at the same time just as one cannot follow two paths at once, even though the two paths may converge at the end.
A belief in the transcendent unity of religions, collectively housing a single “perennial philosophy,” is one that is held by many scholars of all the major world traditions. The practice of one tradition does not in itself disprove all others, and many of even the most orthodox of each tradition hold dear to this fact. In the Islamic tradition, the Holy Quran teaches that Jews, Sabians, Christians, and anyone who believes in God and does good deeds will have "nothing to fear or regret" (5:69). Moreover, the Quran explains that "for every nation there is a messenger" (10:47), that the Quran is not a new message but merely the confirmation of previous ones (12:111), and that all divinely inspired religious traditions received their scriptures as a part of the same universal message or "Umm Al-Kitab," that is, "the Mother of the Book" (43:4).
As another example, the Hindus have always advocated the common origin and unity of different, often seemingly conflicting, traditions. Jagadguru Chandrashekarendra Saraswati explains the lack of significance of the word Hindu in his essay The Vedic Religion: "Only when there are a number of religions do they have to be identified by different names" (Saraswati 13). However, as the Jagadguru declares, there is only one religion. Similarly to the Islamic concept of the Umm Al-Kitab, he affirms:
"For all the divisions in our religion there is but one scripture—a scripture common to all—and one Godhead which is known by many names. The Vedas are the common scripture and the Godhead common to all is the Brahman. Thus we can say with finality, and without any room for doubt, that all of us belong to the same religion" (19).
Despite the fact that the Hindu vision of a single Godhead is often manifested in multiple forms, this argument mirrors the centerpiece of Islamic monotheism: "La ilaha illa Allah," there is no god but God, which is not only a command to worship none but the One, but in fact a testimonial that there exists none but the only One, and that all the gods that can be said to exist have two possibilities: either they do not truly exist, or they are actually God. What may seem exclusivist on the surface, then, is in fact innately universal and pluralistic.
In Charles Colson’s “The Volunteer at Auschwitz,” Father Kolbe sacrificed his life for the life of another prisoner (Colson 529-534). This was particularly meaningful as, in the concentration camps, no value of human life was recognized. Those deemed useless to the agenda of the state were executed without concern. Those deemed to be useful were kept as long as they were such, often as guinea pigs in degrading and dehumanizing experiments. Father Kolbe’s actions served as a contrast to this environment, to remind humanity that each and every one of us is living due to the same force of life-creation as all others. In contrast to what the military machine in Auschwitz believed, life does and must have a meaning, as human life has a universal, underlying nature that makes it what it is.
All the traditions recognize the sanctity of life and seek to explain its origins. In the Holy Quran, God says that He breathed His Spirit into Adam (15:29). Many traditions discuss the concept of man as created in the form or likeness of God, and mystics all over the world from different places and times have envisioned man as almost nonexistent, merely a this-worldly shadow or reflection of the Divine Reality. While some may have a different answer, and others may suggest there is no answer at all, this, in some form or another, is the basis in all the great traditions for human life. To say that life is aspirated into our bodies by God is to say that while human life flows in our world, its origins are something beyond the dimensions of time and space that we may usually observe. The life-consciousness and self awareness of one person is equally valuable to one’s own because both lives are of the same essence that makes them life, and each originates from a mysterious common source that puzzles the religious and secular alike.
On the surface, the existence of religious pluralism creates a myriad of conflicting truths from which the conclusion of moral relativism may seem reasonable. However, there are universal, underlying similarities shared among each of the great traditions which suggest not only a common message but a common origin, the perennial philosophy. Man’s existence itself is dependent on truth, as nothing can exist without it. It is our duty then, as human beings, to seek and protect it. If we conclude that the Ultimate Truth is God, then we have the responsibility of following Him. If we recognize divine prophecy, then we must attempt to follow one of the many revealed traditions, in all its form, in the most traditional way we can and without syncretism, in order to become fully human. While we seek the big questions as the religious and secular alike, we discover that diversity does not negate truth but is a miracle left as a sign of its existence, the garden of one underlying, transcendent truth from which many traditions flow.
Notes
Colson, Charles. "The Volunteer at Auschwitz," Louis Pojman, ed. The Moral Life. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 529-34.
Esposito, John L., Fasching, Darrell J. and Lewis, Todd. Religion and Globalization: World Religions in Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 24-25.
Pojman, Louis. "The Case Against Moral Relativism", Louis Pojman, ed. The Moral Life. Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 166-90.
Saraswati Swamigal, Jagadguru Chandrashekarendra. “The Vedic Religion: Introductory” Introduction to Hindu Dharma: Illustrated. Online Library, The home page of World Wisdom - Perennial Philosophy and the World's Great Spiritual Traditions. http://www.worldwisdom.com.
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