Podstawy moralności w religiach niechrześcijańskich

Abstract

The study concernis only so called cosmocentric religions and not those based on the historic revelation. Moral laws are here neither codified nor formulated rationally but are experienced as belonging to the omnipresent Cosmic Reality (Cosmos). The author examines the experience of Cosmos in its three essential aspects: as the Unity and organic Totality, as the self-subsistent Life, and as the Order and Harmony. In correspondence to the experience of Cosmos as the Unity and organic Whole and of man as its integral part, the moral appears as being not an individualistic one but rather a kind of group morality. This is first of all the case of primitive civilizations where individual conscience seems entirely merged in the collective conscience and the sense of good and evil is completely socialized. The experience of Cosmos as the self-subsistent Life – which is holy in its very foundations and structures – underlies the moral law of preserving every form of life and the vitalistic character of good and evil in many cultures. The Cosmos in experienced above all as the universal Order and Harmony, and the morals is only one of its multifold manifestations. The evil is here conceived as a disturbance of this cosmic Order and Harmony. Between man and Cosmos there are numerous correspondences and man is generally viewed as the World in miniature, i.e. as the microcosm. The conception of man as manifesting in himself the normative cosmic-moral Order underlies the rational formulation of the moral law of human nature with leading Confucians. In the conclusion there are distinguish two types of morality: one is based on the affirmation of Cosmos and integration into the cos mic Whole, in the other the phenomenal world is viewed more or less as illusory one and the morals is served as a means of the „flight” from this world into the Ultimate Reality.