Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
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the nature of action. It presuppose the Highest good as the supreme goal of human life. Human activities are therefore performed inconsonance with certain moral principles for the attainment of that supreme goal. The moral principles determine the human actions as moral or immoral. Moral actions gradually lead us to attain the ultimate goal i.e. (Height good) and the immoral actions lead one to suffering through the process of death and birth. Thus morality consists in both individual and social good.
For Gandhi morality consists in the act of self-transcendence to realise the essential unit of God in everything. So he says if the good consists in doing good to others, it would involve sacrificing one's personal motives for the good of others. In other words self-transcendence or love constitute the essence of morality.
Thus for Gandhi morality is nothing but discovering God in His creation which would be possible only loving all and serving all. D. M. Dutta observes, "The path to the realisation of the True self or God, lies through the love of others and the performance of duties towards others as love demands. Morality thus becomes the essence of religion.")
Religion and Morality :
From deep observation, we find religion and morality do share with some common points. Both share the postulates concerning the existence of God and the immortality of soul. Both of them give autonomy i.e. freedom of will to individuals. Thus the fact that there is a close relation between religion and morality has been discussed by all philosophy, European and Indian. We come across three views pertaining to the interrelation between religion and morality, i.e. (i) religion precedes morality, (ii) morality precedes religion and (iii) religion and morality are interdependent.
Western philosophers like Destartes, Locke, Pale and others hold that religion precedes morality, because it is religion that leads to morality. Other philosophers like Kant and Martineau stress upon morality which precedes religion, since it is morality that leads to religion. Mathew Arnold going one step ahead and say that religion is nothing but morality touched with emotion. Thus we find a close relationship between religion and morality claimed by both western and Indian philosophers particularly the theists. In order to have a clear idea of this deep relationship between religion and morality let me analyse the view points with definite characters of these two concepts.
It has already been pointed out that morality is interpreted in terms of self-realisation which consists in the reconciliation of the apparently
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