Mar 18 2017 71 mins
Do you live without regrets? Do you spontaneously follow rules? How did we first know if something is right or wrong? Does moral reasoning always progress in stages? Is this process always culture-relative? Can ethics, then, ever be universal? Must all ethical dualities be collapsed? Does bad become good when slaves become masters? Does our resentment for those with power give us satisfaction? Can we buy goodness? Does morality need faith? Must we behave decently even if existence is absurd? Is the individual always subordinated to the social? If human beings are self centred, then how do empathy, compassion or ‘commitment’ arise? Does self interest precede conventional morality? Can we sacrifice for the (contemporaneous) Other just as we do for our ‘own’ future other? Can moral law be like a law of nature? Is efficiency the principal ethic? Can the requirement of minimal liberty be Pareto inferior? Does ethicality primarily comprise in taking into account the spontaneity and the resistance of the Other? Who/what is the Other? Will everything be perfect in the end? SynTalk thinks about these & more questions using concepts from social psychology (Prof. Janak Pandey, ex-University of Allahabad, Allahabad), philosophy (Prof. Jules Simon, The University of Texas at El Paso, Texas), & economics (Prof. Sreenivasan Subramanian, ex-Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS), Chennai). Listen in....