Morality

From AnthroWiki
Revision as of 06:38, 29 October 2021 by Odyssee (talk | contribs)

Morality (Latin: moralitas, from mores "manner, customs, usage, habits") in the philosophical sense comprises a system of values and norms by which the right actions of individual human beings, larger communities of human beings or entire cultures are measured. The term was coined by Cicero in his philosophia moralis as a translation of the Greek term ἠθική (êthikê "Ethics").[1] At the same time, the emphasis shifted from the knowledge of the spiritual source of the good, guided by reason, to the practical realisation of established moral norms and values.

Morality and prenatal existence

„Among the gods we acquire the gift in our pre-earthly existence of looking at the other human being, of noticing how he feels, how he thinks, of grasping with an inner share what he is. And if we did not have the contact with the gods that I have described, we would never be able to develop that looking into the other human being on earth, which alone makes earthly life possible. When I speak of love in this context, and especially of general human love, you must think of love in the concrete sense I have just described: in the sense of a truly intimate understanding of the other human being. And if one adds this understanding of the other human being to general human love, then one has at the same time given with it everything that is human morality. For earthly human morality, if it does not move in mere phrases or fine speeches or in resolutions which are not carried out or the like, is based on the interest which one human being takes in another, on the possibility of looking over into the other human being.

The person who has an understanding of man will receive the social-moral impulses from this understanding of man. So that one can also say that man has attained all moral life within the earthly existence in the pre-earthly existence, attained in such a way that from the coexistence with the gods the urge remains for him to form such a coexistence at least in the soul also on earth. And this shaping of such a life together, so that one human being accomplishes the earthly tasks, the earthly mission, with the other, leads in reality alone to moral life on earth. We see, then, that love and the effect of love, morality, are by all means a consequence of what man has gone through spiritually in the pre-earthly existence.“ (Lit.:GA 219, p. 62f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ Cicero, De fato 1; Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie: Moral, moralisch, Moralphilosophie, Vol. 6, p. 149
Retrieved from "https://en.anthro.wiki/index.php?title=Morality&oldid=8268"