What is it about?
Religion endorses both the two broad dimensions of morality, that is the interpersonal one and the impersonal deontological/collectivistic one; in other words, both care and (moral) order. What when the two are in conflict?
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Morality is essentially and universally across cultures a question of care for others; but it also often extends, to additional norms and values, typical of conservative individuals and collectivistic cultures. Religiosity relates to both kinds of morality. But what happens when the two are in conflict? For instance, does religiosity predict white lies if it is for good reasons? Or, on the contrary, respect of honesty, integrity, and authority even if this respect will harm the well-being and life of loved others? We found that when the negative consequences for the acquaintances are very weak, rigid morality prevails in religion; but not when the negative consequences are too important--care then plays a protective role.
Perspectives
Religion is neither only about "love your neighbor" nor only about "respect the rules never mind the consequences". More generally, holistic ideologies with a humanitarian flavor (e.g. laicity, secularism) often suffer from the conflict between their prosocial goals and the respect for order and other, higher or more abstract, principles, that may turn out to conflict with the prosocial goals. For instance, can I lie to save my friend's life or not? Should we prohibit Muslim women's veil to protect the secularity of public space?
Professor Vassilis Saroglou
Universite catholique de Louvain
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Valuing Care Protects Religiosity from the Antisocial Consequences of Impersonal Deontology, Journal of Empirical Theology, December 2016, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15709256-12341339.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
