Posted: Oct 11, 2013 6:09 pm
willhud9 wrote:Animavore wrote:willhud9 wrote:Animavore wrote:
It doesn't mean it wasn't a completely stupid prioritization even back then. I don't buy into moral relativism at all. What he said brought much untold suffering and unnecessary shame and continues to do so. It should be kicked into the annals of completely messed up ideas and forgotten about, not subject to a resurgence.
Anyway, my comparison with On the Jews and Their Lies was more to do with the justification for a "believe or die" mentality as mentioned in my sig below.
My bold. That's a bummer as it is quite easy to anachronistically place our 21st century morals and values when reviewing history, but by not allowing moral relativism we do not understand the drive that shapes the historical culture. Yes, from a 21st century outlook that is a stupid priority as rape clearly outweighs masturbation in criminality. But Aquinas was not the only person in that time period to hold this view and it was a dominate view regardless of Aquinas' writings. What he said was a standard line and mentality from that cultural period. With moral relativism we can look at that period without biasing it with our, arguably superior, morals and perspectives.
No. I don't agree with that. Because you're effectively saying that if someone else were around in Aquinas's time totally disagreed with Aquinas on the basis that masturbation affects no one. unlike rape which does, (which seemingly people did think as per Objection 1) then that person's moral view is wrong because it doesn't go with the majority. And that it wouldn't become right until later, ie. after the Renaissance and Reformation when the view subsequently became the majority.
No their moral view wouldn't be wrong as we are relatively looking at morals. The person who would have disagreed with Aquinas would have been an odd man out, but his morality wouldn't be any more correct or incorrect as Aquinas'. It wouldn't be mainstream.
Let's bring an example into the the 21st century. Abortion. Many pro-life people are morally opposed to the concept of abortion and wish to offer the fetus legal protection. Many pro-choice people are not morally opposed to the concept of abortion, but are morally opposed to the government denying a woman a reproductive health service.
Now there is disagreement between the two positions, but is one morally superior? Is one morally correct and the other just wrong? Not at all. Both positions are morally correct from a relativist perspective. Does morally correct mean factually correct? Not necessarily.
I would say abortion is far more grey so I don't think it's a good analogy. Aquinas was putting an act which is definitely harmless above a definitely harmful act in terms of it's severity. To me it's like putting cutting carrots above genocide. So yes, I do think the odd man out would've been a more moral person (that's if he really was the odd man out, people probably didn't listen to half the crap the clergy came out with even back then). And I do think Aquinas was morally* wrong and still is and will forever be even if his fundamental and sexually backward way of thinking came back.
*Well, more ethically wrong, I'm not too keen on morals.