“Choose a Gentle, Winding Path”: an essay on ethical choice

By Marty Price

Each of us is an individual, a person possessed of autonomy and, using Immanuel Kant’s Enlightenment definitions, deserving of Freedom and Dignity. Each of us is also a part of the whole – actually many wholes: family, community, society, and the planet Earth. As such, we have both rights and obligations. This essay offers my reflections on those rights and obligations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781387774234

Book preview

Chapter One: An Introduction

Just as Thoreau wandered off to, according to his own claim, examine the value of life – or perhaps as Melville suggested, some of us fall into ruminations rather like a dyspeptic whale – I have decided to think through and record my ideas of what constitutes an ethically responsible life. Whale vomit, ambergris, was once the base for fine perfume. I would be delighted if one or two of my words were worth so much; my only hope is that they prove a bit deeper than commonplaces and ‘chicken soup.’

I am the sort who spends time, whether or not productive, on thought and personal reflection. It has occurred to me to gather, in some systematic notion, my own ethical philosophy. I do so:

Because I am both an individual and a constituent element of this Universe, the planet we call Earth, and my own society.

Because I have some personal and eccentric, but generally systematic, ideas regarding my place in society, on this Earth, in this Universe and in whatever realms we may dream lie beyond.

Because I have read enough and studied enough to imagine my words are not the mere products of my own ego.

Because I am deeply committed to forwarding to those who might hear me some fundamental notion of human optimism, some measured and careful idea that all life, including human life, is possessed of some integral value. I want to try to say that we, our lives, and the Universe in which we live matter.

What constitutes a systematic inquiry into ethical thought? My own rules include:

I must begin by acknowledging something of my own fundamental assumptions. I speak from my own perspective, and am well aware I hold personal notions which others may not share. I begin with the simple claim that I am possessed of an immortal soul. Have I proof? None. It is a fundamental intuition, a claim that the center of I has some reality beyond the functional attributes of ‘mind’ and the physical attributes of ‘body.’

This soul, this element of self, gives cohesion to the particular mind and body I now inhabit and carried out a similar role – I would merely guess – in other such ‘lives’ in previous incarnations and will take on further identities in future incarnations. That is speculation, In most areas of applied ethics, such points scarcely matter, so I will ask patience from any readers chuckling at my mystical bent.

That I do have a soul does matter – but not so much in terms of my identity as in terms of my responsibilities, my relationships with the rest of this Universe (or the bits of it with which I interact). If I have a soul and it occupies its given place in this physical world, it logically follows that creatures with bodies and minds like my own are likewise possessed of souls. I should be able to, with little difficulty, assume that other members of the human species are likewise mind, body, and soul. Other mammals? Almost certainly, as the internal mix of instinct, emotion, and thought in my dog and myself differ in measure rather than in fundamental form. Likewise that other standard domestic companion, the cat, whose behavioral qualities are – admittedly – significantly different from mine or my dog’s. What about other animals? It becomes difficult without indulging in unjustifiable anthropomorphism to locate ‘human’ qualities in a monitor lizard. However, the monitor lizard does possess individuality so I see no justification to deem it ‘soulless,’ though I would find its mind a buzz of appetites and instinct and – to my knowledge – would be unable to locate any ‘higher’ values there. A tree? It is alive; I know not how plants think, but there is evidence that they do. A star? Alive in its active nature and its internal evolution. A planet? Regarding a chunk of rock like Mercury, by my standards it would be hard to say. However, Mars, Jupiter, and such – each, in its way, is alive as this planet Earth.

So for all these living beings I have obligations, obligations discernable by my own desires. Do I desire to be treated with respect? Do I desire the opportunity for self-actualization