Religious Authority Concerning Classical and Modern Moral Philosophy

John Rawls explores the differences between classical moral philosophy and modern moral philosophy. Focusing mainly on the religious influences of the different historical and cultural times.

Beginning with classical moral philosophy, Rawls establishes that it was a civic religious culture with attention on the participation in public civic festivals and public celebrations, rather than the ideas of immortality and eternal salvation. They celebrated Homer and taught his Homeric poems, instead of being basing it off of sacred texts, such as the Bible (“Modern” 3). The philosophical criticisms were on the Homeric ideal of the heroic warrior and feudal nobility. Rawls gives general points of the philosophical moral views of the Greeks (“Modern” 4). First, they focused on “the idea of the highest good as an attractive ideal”, being the reasonable pursuit of true happiness (“Modern” 4). Second, being concerned with “this good as a good for the individual” (“Modern” 4). Third, they saw virtuous conduct as a good that should be with other goods in the good life, and looked for a beginning of the highest good to become a basis of comparison to see how this could be done. Finally, this moral philosophy was solely the exercise of free, disciplined reason and was not based off of religion.

Rawls’ description of modern moral philosophy is more in-depth, as it dealt with three major historical developments. Focusing solely on the first major development, the Reformation, Rawls explains its importance due to it fragmenting the unity of the Middle Ages (“Modern” 5). He begins by explaining the five important features of medieval Christianity (“Modern” 6). It was an authoritative, doctrinal, and expansionist religion, was a religion of salvation, and also a religion of priests who held the sole authority to dispense means of grace (“Modern” 6). In distinction to the classical moral philosophy, “the moral philosophy of the medieval Church was not the result of the exercise of free, disciplined reason alone” (“Modern” 6). The main moral philosophy of the medieval Church rested on the idea of God’s divine law, “the consequences of the laws laid down by God who creates all of us… to whom we are everlasting obligated” (“Modern” 7). Rawls has us ask “What is it like for an authoritative, salvationist, and expansionist religion such as medieval Christianity to fragment?” (“Modern” 7). The Reformation created a rival for medieval Christianity now that there are new religions that differ in only some ways from the original. This also led to the question, especially since they are all religions of salvation, “Which religion then leads to salvation?” (“Modern” 7).

The key distinction between classical moral philosophy and modern moral philosophy is the religious authority that influenced each philosophy. Classical philosophers explored the virtues that were not highly established in the Homeric poems, but their criticism of them did not create great conflicts within the community (“Modern” 8). Modern philosophers had to confront the sole religious authority that based itself off God’s divine law (“Modern” 7).

My question for Rawls is if he believes that we would be better off going back to the social environment of classical philosophy due to its seemingly non-hostile approach to philosophers’ criticisms? I believe Rawls would respond to this question by explaining that as Sidgwick mention, “we can hardly understand Greek moral philosophy,” and it is because of modern moral philosophy’s conflicts with the Church we are able to explore more possibilities (“Modern” 2).