The precepts are not works of ethics in the philosophical sense. No attempt is made to find any underlying principles of conduct that might provide a more systematic understanding of ethics. Justice, for example, is given a prominent place, but there is no elaboration of the notion of justice or any discussion of how disagreements about what is just and unjust might be resolved. Furthermore, there is no probing of ethical dilemmas that may occur if the precepts should conflict with one another. The precepts are full of sound observations and practical wisdom, but they do not encourage theoretical speculation.
The same practical bent can be found in other early codes or lists of ethical injunctions. The great Code of Hammurabi is often said to have been based on the principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” as if this were some fundamental principle of justice, elaborated and applied to all cases. In fact, the code reflects no such consistent principle. It frequently prescribes the death penalty for offenses that do not themselves cause death—e.g., for robbery and for accepting bribes. Moreover, even the eye-for-an-eye rule applies only if the eye of the original victim is that of a member of the patrician class; if it is the eye of a commoner, the punishment is a fine of a quantity of silver. Apparently such differences in punishment were not thought to require justification. At any rate, there are no surviving attempts to defend the principles of justice on which the code was based.
The Hebrew people were at different times captives of both the Egyptians and the Babylonians. It is therefore not surprising that the law of ancient Israel, which was put into its definitive form during the Babylonian Exile, shows the influence both of the ancient Egyptian precepts and of the Code of Hammurabi. The book of Exodus refers, for example, to the principle of “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” Hebraic law does not differentiate, as the Babylonian law does, between patricians and commoners, but it does stipulate that in several respects foreigners may be treated in ways that it is not permissible to treat fellow Hebrews; for instance, Hebrew slaves, but not others, had to be freed without ransom in the seventh year. Yet, in other respects Hebraic law and morality developed the humane concern shown in the Egyptian precepts for the poor and unfortunate: hired servants must be paid promptly, because they rely on their wages to satisfy their pressing needs; slaves must be allowed to rest on the seventh day; widows, orphans, and the blind and deaf must not be wronged; and the poor man should not be refused a loan. There was even a tithe providing for an incipient welfare state. The spirit of this humane concern was summed up by the injunction to “love thy neighbour as thyself,” a sweepingly generous form of the rule of reciprocity.
The famed Ten Commandments are thought to be a legacy of Semitic tribal law from a time when important commands were taught one for each finger, so that they could be remembered more easily (sets of five or 10 laws are common among preliterate civilizations). The content of the Hebrew commandments differed from other laws of the region mainly in its emphasis on duties to God. This emphasis persisted in the more detailed laws laid down elsewhere; as much as half of such legislation was concerned with crimes against God and ceremonial and ritualistic matters, though there may be other explanations for some of these ostensibly religious requirements concerning the avoidance of certain foods and the need for ceremonial cleansings.
Moses receiving the Ten CommandmentsMoses receiving the Ten Commandments. His brother Aaron stands to his right with Israelites waiting at the foot of the mountain. Miniature illuminated manuscript, c. 1322.The British Library (Public Domain)
In addition to lengthy statements of the law, the surviving literature of ancient Israel includes both proverbs and the books of the prophets. The proverbs, like the precepts of the Egyptians, are brief statements that do not demonstrate much concern for systematic presentation or overall coherence. They go farther than the Egyptian precepts, however, in urging conduct that is just and upright and pleasing to God. There are correspondingly fewer references to what is needed for a successful career, though it is frequently stated that God rewards the just. In this connection, the Book of Job is notable as an exploration of the problem raised for those who accept this motive for obeying the moral law: why do the best of people frequently suffer the worst misfortunes? The book offers no solution beyond faith in God, but the sharpened awareness of the problem it offers may have influenced some to adopt the belief in reward and punishment in another realm as the only possible solution.
The literature of the prophets contains a good deal of social and moral criticism, though most of it consists of denunciation rather than discussion about what goodness really is or why there should be so much wrongdoing. The Book of Isaiah is especially notable for its early portrayal of a utopia in which “the desert shall blossom as the rose…the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb.…They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain.” India
Unlike the ethical teachings of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, Indian ethics was philosophical from the start. In the oldest of the Indian writings, the Vedas, ethics is an integral aspect of philosophical and religious speculation about the nature of reality. These writings date from about 1500 to 1200 bce. They have been described as the oldest philosophical literature in the world, and what they say about how people ought to live may therefore be the first philosophical ethics. (See Indian philosophy.)
The Vedas are, in a sense, hymns, but the gods to which they refer are not persons but manifestations of ultimate truth and reality. In the Vedic philosophy, the basic principle of the universe, the ultimate reality on which the cosmos exists, is the principle of rita, which is the word from which the Western notion of right is derived. There is thus a belief in a right moral order somehow built into the universe itself. Hence, truth and right are linked; to penetrate through illusion and understand the ultimate truth of human existence is to understand what is right. To be an enlightened person is to know what is real and to live rightly, for these are not two separate things but one and the same.
The ethics that is thus traced to the very essence of the universe is not without detailed practical applications. These applications were based on four ideals, or proper goals, of life: prosperity, the satisfaction of desires, moral duty, and spiritual perfection—i.e., liberation from a finite existence. From these ends follow certain virtues: honesty, rectitude, charity, nonviolence, modesty, and purity of heart. To be condemned, on the other hand, are falsehood, egoism, cruelty, adultery, theft, and injury to living things. Because the eternal moral law is part of the universe, to do what is praiseworthy is to act in harmony with the universe, and accordingly such action will receive its proper reward; conversely, once the true nature of the self is understood, it becomes apparent that those who do what is wrong are acting self-destructively.
These basic principles underwent considerable modification over the ensuing centuries, especially in the Upanishads, a body of philosophical literature dating from about the middle of the 1st millennium bce. The Indian caste system, with its intricate laws about what members of each caste may or may not do, is accepted by the Upanishads as part of the proper order of the universe. Ethics itself, however, is not regarded as a matter of conformity to laws. Instead, the desire to be ethical is an inner desire. It is part of the quest for spiritual perfection, which in turn is elevated to the highest of the four goals of life.