TRADITION, Bikramdutt

TRADITION, Bikramdutt

All existing things have a past. Nothing which happens escapes completely from the grip of the past; some events scarcely escape at all from its grip. Much of what exists is persistence or reproduction of what existed earlier. Entities, events or systems, physiological, psychological, social and cultural, have careers in which at each point the state of the system stands in some determinate relationship to the state of the system at earlier points, those can be called as tradition. An ethical tradition is a group of things that one group of people think are right and wrong. People believe that these things are right and wrong because other people think that way and they have thought that way for a long time.

An ethical tradition can be like a set of laws because most people agree with it and only do what it says is right. However an ethical tradition is not normally written down and is not enforced by a police force.The branch of philosophy called ethics is not the same as an ethical tradition. This is because ethics is about asking questions and not just thinking what other people think. However some ethical philosophers want to know why people follow ethical traditions. They also want to know what ethical traditions are the same for different groups of people. This type of ethics is sometimes called the science of morals.

Battlefield ethics is among the hardest question any legal system confronts because the starting point is that there are situations in which you can kill innocent people on the battlefield. This lecture will explore when, if, and how people may be killed in the course of battle in the Jewish tradition. This issue has implications both for the Israeli military and for Jewish soldiers in the Diaspora. Using the organizing concept of a tradition, it shows that ethics offers many different languages for moral debate rather than a set of unified doctrines. Each chapter describes the central concepts, premises, vocabulary and history of a particular tradition and explains how that tradition has dealt with a set of recurring ethical issues in international relations. Such issues include national self-determination, the use of force in armed intervention or nuclear deterrence, and global distributive justice. Written by leading specialists in the USA and UK, Traditions of international ethics treats the subject in an encyclopedic way, allowing readers to identify internal tensions within, as well as points of agreement and disagreement between, a wide variety of traditions. It is an invaluable source that students and specialists of international affairs, moral philosophers and theologians will consult for information on the full range of reflection on international ethics.

Conclusion: Tradition is now just mirth, the younger generations are evolving to have a life of their own and not live their parent's dreams. You cannot live someone's life; you do have a life of your own and the sooner you can live, then and only then will you become a man or a woman. Good question and thought provoking, it took me some time to contemplate my answer - at least you got my brain cells working.