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Science & Morality

Einstein’s Morality

Ching-Hung Woo looks at the many facets of Albert Einstein’s approach to ethics.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) regarded morality as indispensable to the survival of humanity, and he devoted considerable effort to the formulation of a coherent position on the relationship between morality, science, and religion. In his view morality should be decoupled from religion and treated as a secular matter of bringing dignity and happiness, as much as possible, to all people.

The main source of disharmony among both individuals and groups seemed to Einstein to be an exaggerated sense of self-importance. Hence he applied his proven ability for correcting misconceptions to the problem of human conceit; and this led him to point to our feeling that we have autonomous free will as a key mistake. The non-existence of free will seemed to Einstein so obvious that he did not bother explaining his reasoning in any detail, but the subject does present a serious obstacle when people try to follow his thinking on morality.

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