Unification Thought Study Guide



VI: Ethics

61. What is the difference between the concepts of ethics (Sittlichkeit) and morality (Mortalitat) from the viewpoint of the Divine Principle?

Ethics: This is the standard of conduct of a family member based on the family, or the standard required when each individual of a family lives as a connected body. Therefore, ethics is the objective standard.

Morality: This is the standard of conduct based on the internal conscience, oughtness (internal duty, Sollen), which each individual is to observe as an individual truth body. Therefore, morality is the subjective standard.

62. What is the relationship between love and ethics?

Conduct in a family means conduct which realizes love, because a family is the place where love is actualized. The ideal of creation of God who is the subject of Heart and love is to actualize His love through the family Four Position Base. Therefore, God's love is actualized divisionally by parental love, conjugal and children's love. So we need the practice of these three aspects of love. The purpose of the triple objects is in order for this to be realized. When we practice the three aspects of love in order to realize the purpose of triple objects, we necessarily need method and law, namely a standard. This standard is dictated by ethics. Thus ethics is basically family ethics whose content is love. If we expand family ethics to a social level, this becomes social ethics. If we apply this to a business office, this becomes office ethics, and if expanded to a national level, this becomes national ethics. When we say that in the future the world will be the society of one great family, we mean that after family ethics have been expanded to all mankind, all mankind will have relationships as brothers and sisters centering on love, with the parent of mankind in the highest position.

63. What are order and equality in ethics?

Since the four positions of the family Quadruple Base are the positions of order, love is actualized through order. It is because of these orderly positions that God's love is actualized divisionally. Thus, the principle of ethics is the principle of order. Ethics cannot be established without order. It is because the order of the world has been gradually destroyed that the world is today facing confusion.

True equality can be realized only through order. Rights can be exercised only by position. Since position is order or distinction, there is no real equality in rights. True equality is an equality of satisfaction of joy, that is, an equality of strength of emotion to feel one's life as worth living, an equality of happiness.

Joy and happiness can be gained when personality is fully respected in God's love. Therefore, equality is an equality of personality in perfect self- realization and an equality of love.

64. Simply criticize and conquer Bentham's utilitarianism.

Bentham's view of goodness is utilitarianistic, He regards materialistic pleasure (happiness) as goodness, whereas he regards pain (unhappiness) as evil. He intends to realize "the greatest happiness of the greatest number" which he regards as the ultimate goodness.

According to him, pleasure is materialistic. In reality, however, there are those people who are unhappy in spite of a luxurious life materialistically, whereas there are those who feel happy in spite of persecution and martyrdom. Man is a twofold being with Sung Sang and Hyung Sang. So, it's true that he needs Hyung Sang happiness, but it is even more important that he achieves Sung Sang happiness. That is the accomplishment of emotion to feel life as worth living, or the accomplishment of joy, by God's love. Therefore, true goodness is in the practice of love

65. What is the categorical imperative of Kant? Criticize and offer a counterproposal.

According to Kant, goodness is to obey an unconditional command of internal practical reason. This is what is called .. categorical imperative." It is not goodness to obey an internal conditional command, that is, hypothetical imperative, for the attainment of pleasure as Bentham claims. A conditional motive for a certain purpose can not be a motive of goodness. Will can be will of goodness only by an unconditional command of practical reason, that is, oughtness. And only when it is put into practice does it become true goodness. This is Kant's assertion.

However, since Kant's viewpoint of goodness excludes pure reason (theoretical reason) in conduct, it is impossible to know or judge whether or not the result of conduct is good. There is no way of finding a solution if the conduct of different people conflict with one another, or two categorical imperatives conflict with each other in some individual.

Moreover, since the categorical imperative of Kant is based only upon reason, man's conduct of goodness is inclined to be a cruel disciplined life. This can not give true happiness to man.

Goodness viewed from the Divine Principle is to actualize God's love. So position, object and purpose should always be clarified, and the result of conduct should be evalutated and reflected on by reason. Therefore, the motive of goodness must not be reason, but Heart. And as for reason and will, the both, along with Heart in this manner, become the power of love, which, heading for an object, appears in man's conduct. This is goodness.

66. What is pragmatism, especially instrumentalism of Dewey?

Pragmatism views that whether man's action is good or evil and whether it is true or false can be decided by determining how profitable its result is for human life (utility, effectiveness). More than that, Dewey maintains that not only man's actions but also all of his concepts as well (both metaphysical concepts of truth, goodness, beauty, love, God, righteousness, principle etc., and corporeal concepts of politics, economy, law, production, amusement, etc.), are true, if they are useful for life, and that they are not true if they are not useful. In this manner, as a thing becomes man's instrument because of its utility when man deals with things, so ideas and concepts are used because of their utility. Because of this, his theory is called instrumentalism.

67. Criticize the instrumentalism of Dewey and give a counterproposal of this.

Dewey views man's action and concept only from the standard of a materialistic life. He claims that everything, whether it is action or idea (concept), that is useful for a materialistic life, is true, and that it is false if it is not useful.

But first, there remains a problem as to what the standard of judging the utility of man's action is. For example, what is the standard of the utility of homicide in the case of war?

Secondly, even though concepts in ancient societies, for example, concepts and ideas in tales of the mythological age, can not give any effectiveness to our realistic and materialistic life today, scholars are still using them. It is difficult for instrumentalism to explain why.

According to the Divine Principle, an instrument is a materialistic means, and an object of man's dominion along with all things. Action is the practice and activity of dominating an object, that is, the outer give-and-take action which man, as a connected body, performs, whereas concept or idea is one of the elements of the Inner Quadruple Base in the mind of the subject. An instrument is an object (all things), whereas a concept belongs to the subject (mind). If the subject who has a concept (idea) practices God's love for the objects (all things or other people), this is goodness. Therefore, it is wrong to identify the concept of the subject with instruments which belong to the object.

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