Answer these questions according to each of the three philosophies defined below. Bring your answers to class this Wednesday evening, 6:30 pm, 9/27.  

1.          If you decided today to some serious soul searching, what would the first question you would ask yourself?

2.         If you were asked to make the case for the existence/nonexistence of God, how would you begin?

3.         If you were asked for proof of your moral fiber, in what way or with what example would you establish it?

4.         Considering each philosophy as a basis for a religion, if you were to build a small altar in your home what item(s) would you place on it to represent the tenets of this religion?

[These questions, or the ideas for these questions, came from If... Questions for the Soul, by Evelyn Mcfarlane and James Saywell, Villard/New York (1998).]

The three philosophies

1.         humanism

Belief that individual human beings are the fundamental source of all value and have the ability to understand—and perhaps even to control—the natural world by careful application of their own rational faculties.

2.         relativism

Belief that human judgments are always conditioned by the specific social environment of a particular person, time, or place. ... relativists hold that there can be no universal knowledge of the world, but only diverse interpretations of it. ... relativists hold that there are no universal standards of moral value, but only the cultural norms of particular societies.

3.         existentialism

A (mostly) twentieth-century approach that emphasizes the primacy of individual existence over any presumed natural essence for human beings. ..., existentialists generally suppose that the fact of my existence as a human being entails both my unqualified freedom to make of myself whatever I will and the awesome responsibility of employing that freedom appropriately, without being driven by anxiety toward escaping into the inauthenticity or self-deception of any conventional set of rules for behavior, even though the entire project may turn out to be absurd.

This definition may be prove to be useful:

moral / non-moral

Distinction between types of value, judgments, or propositions. Although a precise line is difficult to draw, there seems to be a genuine difference between universalizable moral concerns that impinge upon other people and merely personal matters of taste. For example:

"Murder is wrong." is a moral assertion, but

"This coffee is good." is a non-moral assertion.

[The definitions are from: http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/index.htm]