I. Kant

The Problem of Modern Morality
Filed under: Christianity — by VisionsOfGlory14 @ 19:56
In a given metaphysical order, the moral and ethical precepts required of that order have a specific place in the hierarchal obligations of that system. These moral obligations function as boons to metaphysical completion in a given being. The rites in Catholicism and Mahayana Buddhism designed to achieve the purification from sin and the attainment of merit are perhaps the most explicit forms of this, and here, the moral elements of the rites are clearly put in service of the need to achieve a specific metaphysical aim: the attainment of Heaven or deliverance. When serving its proper function, morality meets its desired end.

When the sense of metaphysical reality is lost, the proper place for morality in metaphysical relation is lost as well. This is seen most explicitly in the modern world. Where morality ceases to serve its higher principle, it becomes abstract, loses its positive world-forming function, and has a deleterious effect on the virile functioning of the person. Made individual, morality loses its demonstrable value; there is no longer an effective basis for spreading its fruits.

Kantianism’s tyrannizing effect is both empirically seen among its practitioners and philosophically understood once one realizes the reality of the multiple states of the being. While claiming to give the individual the right to determine his own unique moral values, it actually subjects being to a series of rules that have only an illusory material value and no real collective spiritual significance. When put into full effect, the practice has only a limiting effect on the being’s potential and creates an impossibility for the individual to even imagine the existence of higher horizons.

Once the mistake of Western Philosophy is realized, that being is not the core of the individual and that this is obvious since its conscious and unconscious alteration is not only possible but continuously accomplished, both the allure of Kant’s philosophy and the illusion of its actualization are dispelled. Once realized, one understands that there cannot be a ‘moral basis for civilization,’ much less a universal brotherhood based on ‘common moral principles.’ Such bonds have a higher basis.

The initial reaction in the West to the sense of being’s loss as the center of the individual has been Nihilism and the claim of becoming as the only determinant. But it is not that being has no existence, only that it is conditioned and changeable by a spirit more transcendent. Similarly, morality is conditioned by being and is not the conditioner. This reversal has led to something of a denial of reality by claimants who do not understood that morality can be error or even downright immoral when its True awareness of the spirit and the ability to create moral order are only possible when this is known.