Q&A: Morality in the Ancient World and in Our Time
Morality in the Ancient World and in Our Time
Question
When one studies the morality of the ancient world, one sees that the moral level was much lower.
The world of ancient Greece and Rome was a world devoid of compassion, a world in which the killing of unwanted infants by their parents was routine, bloody gladiatorial combats were an accepted form of entertainment, society rested on the labor of masses of slaves who had no rights, and incest in all its forms was considered normal.
I was especially struck by a letter from a first-century Roman citizen, in which he casually instructs his wife that if she gives birth to a boy in his absence, she should keep him, and if she gives birth to a girl, she should get rid of her. That is how those empires operated, even though they were considered the height of culture and enlightenment in their time. It is important to understand this in order to grasp just how far-reaching the changes humanity has undergone have been, and how those values mentioned at the beginning of the book are by no means something accepted by every basic human society. On the contrary, basic human society was violent, forceful, and cruel, and concepts like equality and human rights were utterly foreign to it.
What, then, caused the change? How did the transformation in the Western worldview take place? And what in our time causes secular people to behave morally in a way that even the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) did not succeed in bringing about over thousands of years?
Answer
In my opinion, it is the progress in moral perception and in legal and normative enforcement mechanisms. It advances just as every scientific and technological field advances.
With the Rabbi's permission, I’d be happy if I may answer Yossi — it seems to me that the Rabbi’s answer focused more on how things happened than on what caused the process to happen, and it seems to me that the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) has a significant and central contribution to driving this process: from the attitude toward human life, equality before the law, the social sphere, and many other well-known things. I can especially recommend the wonderful book by Rabbi Dr. Moshe Rat, “Truth and Obligation,” specifically chapter 30, whose subject is “The Moral Revolution of Judaism.”
And regarding the last question, I wouldn’t be so quick to conclude that the prophets of Israel failed. One could say that their words had a long-term influence on all the processes that took place in humanity, until those ideas seeped in and spread — something that in the short term is not noticeable and does not always have an immediate effect.
The Rabbi once wrote something along the lines that secular society has more of a psychological basis for living in a moral way, but not necessarily a philosophical basis that justifies it.