Ethics and religion

Religion has played an important role in ethics. In India it is a common practice among the people arguing for professional ethics that ethics are supported by religions and spiritualism though one cannot deny the fact that the ethics has become an independent discipline itself. It is no more dependent on religion anymore and has developed its own problems, arguments, theorems, jargons and models. No wonder, while some think that in various ethical discourses including bioethics “religion has faded” and the ethical discourse has increasingly acquired a secular or liberal overtone, many others think that religion still plays a major part in it. There is an apparent revival of interest in religion in bioethics (Jonsen, 2006). Religion can promote business ethics but not always. It depends on how religion is defined by the subject. In India religion is closely intertwined with strong family values, caste and kinship values, and communal identity. If a person identifies too closely with family, kinship, caste or community it is possible that for him the broad view of business is to help his own people but such a view would be in conflict with the universal moral values or the values of a plural society. What does one do in situations of moral dilemma is existential and quite difficult to predict. On the other hand if one takes a more humanistic view of religion he is more likely to act in an ethical manner, in the larger interest of humanity. The answers are not simple.