Focus Article: Religious Tribalism: A Major Obstacle to Peace through Justice
by Dr. Robert D. Crane
The moral philosopher, Norman Kurland, a self-described ecumenical Jew, is struck by the obvious fact that everyone, even a baby, knows what injustice is without having to define it. On the other hand, hardly anyone knows what justice is, except as the opposite of injustice.
Justice and injustice can be approached from two perspectives. The first is the philosophical, which reasons top-down deductively from broad principles that promote happiness or else from principles that derive from respecting the sacredness of man created in the image of God as taught in religious texts. This philosophical approach can produce extreme opposites in application. Ideally, it can produce normative law, in which general principles deductively govern all specific applications of justice, so that specific regulations have meaning only as the exemplify the purpose or purposes behind them. Unfortunately, the philosophical approach can also lead to its opposite, as in the bottom-up approach of so-called Talmudic thought, which is common in every religion and can lead ironically to the principle that there are no principles other than the tyranny of the text without consideration of higher purpose. The ideal would promote respect for human life, whereas its opposite might justify genocide if the text can be so misinterpreted.
The second perspective, which may be a fearful reaction against the first one, is the evolutionary emotional, which operates entirely without principles or reason. According to David Brooks’ op-ed article in the New York Times of April 7, 2009, entitled ”The End of Philosophy,” this has now largely replaced rational thought as the basis for morality. He says that morality is now like aethestics. No-one can argue for any particular position because beauty and morality are in the eyes of the beholder. De gustibus non est disputandum is Latin for “one can not dispute the legitimacy of different tastes.” This is nothing more than the relativism of multi-culturalism, which denies all ultimate truth and all meaning in life.
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