The first recorded moral codes that we possess, such as the Code of Hammurabi (1760 BCE) or the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic Law (MOO BCE] rely on the authority of divine commands. Some still debate today whether there can be morality without God. In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoyevsky famously states that '// God does not exist, everything is permitted'.However Socrates demonstrated that authority, divine or worldly, is never enough by itself. In a dialogue recorded (or imagined) by Plato, Socrates asks Euthyphro "is an action right because it is commanded by the gods, or do the gods command it because it is right? So, for example, would gratuitous cruelty be wrong only because God forbids it, or does God forbid it because it is wrong? Can right or wrong be known by divine revelation only, or may we be able to know them by examining the human world? Unless you take a very hard line for the first option then we cannot only appeal to religious traditions to define right and wrong. If we believe that there is some reason why a particular act is right or wrong then we must look for the general meaning of right and wrong by means of such reasons.
展开▼
