MORAL PHILOSOPHY: BASIC QUESTION

It pops up early in Genesis: Am I my brother's keeper? Only two answers are possible: yes or no. (Let's not quibble about situations or semantics. That's
diversionary.) This is Kant's Categorical Imperative! The question, and how it's
answered, reveal the two basic types of people: the truly religious, and the truly
irreligious. (I'm being descriptive here, not judgemental). Religion is fundamentally and intrinsically relational. It may be both vertically and horizontally relational
(Judeo-Chris., Muslim, Hindu), or just horizontally so (Buddhism and Confucianism). If you want clarification on any of these, see Houston Smith: The
World's Religions. (There are better [more thorough] treatments of individual
faiths, but this is the best all-around authority on all the great religions, and is written
clearly. I used it as a text in religion classes for twenty years.)

If your answer to the basic question is "yes," you are a communitarian, whether you know it or not: shared responsibility (which is what "keeper" means) includes shared
effort and energy. If your answer is "no" then you are a libertarian (or social Darwinian), whether you know it or not. That doesn't make you a "bad" person, just an irreligious one, in any true meaning of that term. (For more on this, read any of Martin Buber's works, such as I-Thou and Good and Evil.)

We're talking basic beliefs here, not actions. Social Darwinists do charitable acts for any number of reasons. They just don't believe they have to do them. Genuinely religious people (communitarians) have no option in helping the needy. That's true in all the major religions. It's summed up in the Golden Rule, found in some form in all of them. More on this later, when I hope to get into food issues. (Not as unrelated
as you may think.)
To be continued. Write me at jgoodwin004@centurytel.net