One of the types of culture is Ritual and Religion, which gives us another example of a strategic, but imaginary, overcoming of the problem of death in the form of postulating life after death..
«But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things, and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far as we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything.» – this thought of Aristotle fits perfectly into the context of our hypothesis. If Aristotle speaks of overcoming death as a problem purely hypothetically, then with the development of science this goal can be quite specific and unambiguous for any activity that together make up the same general idea, «Are goods one, then, by being derived from one good or by all contributing to one good…» Yes, that’s the whole point. The only source is the understanding of death, and not only good, but also evil, and they both serve the idea of overcoming the problem.
It is necessary to clarify that it is the understanding of the problem that leads to the solution of the problem. If this is the case, then all the benefits and all the harms listed in the treatise Ethics, are reduced to solving the most common problem – death. This is partly revealed to us in reality. Today, in developed countries, the average life expectancy is at least twice the biological and anthropological norms, and that is a lot.
Conclusion: everything that a human does in all its diversity (individually, in society, and in humanity) to overcome death is good, blessing, and virtue. Everything that leads an individual, society, and humanity to death or decay is evil, harm, and vice.
At first glance, this essence of ethics seems too simple. It’s too obvious to be anything more than what we already see around us. But in fact, the opposite is true: yes, the principle is simple, but the tangle of interconnections, and the whole abyss of problems of the physical world around us, the social world is not at all obvious until now, and the manifestations of good and evil must be constantly identified by an ethical method.
In the process of cognition in nature and society, the more interrelations we identify, the more difficult it is for us to establish unambiguously which action and in what ratio with other actions will lead Humanity to the prosperity of life, and which ultimately, as a result of multiple interactions, will destroy it. And, nevertheless, the advantages of such a principle are also obvious. We have the most constructive system for assessing and predicting the path that humanity is following. Let the decisions made be hypothetical, but the criterion with which the result can be compared is clear. This is how morality works as an experience of evaluating the results of previous decisions.
It is necessary to make one more important point: the locality of development as opposed to global development. Historically, societies have developed locally, which gave rise to the well-known phenomenon of different good and evil. Friedrich Engels noted, «Ideas about good and evil changed so much from people to people, from century to century, that they often directly contradicted one another.» It was the locality of development that generated contradictions between societies and different interpretations of morality, since divided societies are situationally perceived as threats, therefore, problems for each other.
If the idea of overcoming death being implemented on a global level, when one part of humanity does not threaten to destroy another part of it precisely because both these parts equally need all possible development options, then the idea of overcoming death may well become a global Idea of Human Development.
Wittgenstein’s Guess
…if a man could write a book on Ethics which really was a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Lecture on Ethics (1929)
«Now instead of saying Ethics is the enquiry into what is good I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important, or I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what it is that Ethics is concerned with.»
At the beginning of a Lecture on Ethics in 1929, Ludwig Wittgenstein came quite close to understanding ethics, putting aside the generally accepted essential approach, and proposing ethics as research. A little more, and he would have come to our line of reasoning: ethics as a method of development based on an attitude to the problem (…what is really important…). Unfortunately, he does not go further in his insight, but still, the reasoning contains interesting points that can be discussed.
«…Ethics, if it is anything, is supernatural… The right road is the road which leads to an arbitrarily predetermined end and it is quite clear to us all that there is no sense in talking about the right road apart from such a predetermined goal.»
If we are talking about the understanding of death as the essence of human, then the purpose of the development of the essence will be overcoming death. And this is undoubtedly a supernatural task. It is as supernatural as any other task: human flight in the air, going into space, wandering underwater, landing on another planet, the ability to see atoms, or to keep the solar-temperature plasma on Earth.
«… the absolutely right road… I think it would be the road which everybody on seeing it would, with logical necessity, have to go, or be ashamed for not going.»
It is convenient to illustrate this point with a religious dogma. At a certain stage of human development, the belief in overcoming death by means of an immortal soul was a universal belief, and life after death was perceived as a reality. During this period, religion becomes precisely a universal road, an absolutely correct road, and there is quite real remorse for everyone who believes in a religious solution when losing this road. It is in religious dogma that we already have had an example of the absolutely right road. It was precisely a solution to the problem of death, which was overcoming death and nothing else. This required the creation of a metaphysical and fictional world, as Wittgenstein goes on to say.
«And similarly the absolute good, if it is a describable state of affairs, would be one which everybody, independent of his tastes and inclinations, would necessarily bring about or feel guilty for not bringing about.»
That’s exactly how it was: robbers and righteous, peasants and kings, or women and men wanted to save the soul for eternal life. The society found the strength and resources to support a special phenomenon – the monasticismthat dealt exclusively with the issue of salvation, and nothing else. Everyone, regardless of their tastes and preferences tried to make an overcoming of death, but called it a salvation of the soul.
«…is a chimera… No state of affairs