[Serious] The Humanities

[possibletarian]

It would be more accurate to say that what determines "good" for a particular writer in a particular era is determined by the framework through which he interprets the world. A good ending for a Christian writer may well be different from a good ending for writers from different frameworks. 

But clearly a writer from a different framework? could just as easily write a similar ending.

It looks to me as if some people here think of religion as some detachable accessory in a culture. At best a decorative veneer, at worst an oppressive overlay. 

This may be how modern atheists see religion. Our own framework for interpreting the world isn't religious, so we may make the mistake of thinking that earlier eras were the same. We may think that there is some natural and universal way of interpreting the world, and that religion in any time and place is added on to that.

I think this view is false. Religion in past times was frequently the major structure through which people interpreted the world and their place in it. The absolutely crucial judgments about value, meaning, use, objectives, etc. -- all the things that are not detectable to science, but are still indispensable in the human world -- these were derived from the dominant religions of the day. The religion was not an add-on but the main framework through which the world was read. 

The religions themselves came from those values, one can see how religions evolve through the human experience, and also what happens when people allow religion to as you say  be 'the main framework through which the world is read' it really is easy to see the stupidity of relying on 'religion' as being a wise framework to put any human values in.

If we want to understand people in different places and times it's important not to project our modern frameworks onto them. Things were different. 

well of course if we are talking about the past, but primarily as I understand your post, it's more of a 'what now'

Of course their understanding of the world was not monolithic. Of course everyone is influenced by multiple aspects of life. The people of Heian Japan were influenced in their views by climate and the local vegetation and the facts of human anatomy, among many other things. But this doesn't change the fact that the conceptual framework through which they experienced their lives was Buddhist. And that this is revealed in their literature. Of course their culture includes Shintoism -- no one who's read the book forgets the emotional struggles around Rokujo-no-miyasudokoro leaving the capital when her daughter is chosen to be priestess of the Shrine at Ise. And the government is based on inconsistently-applied Confucianism. But people's sense of time, their judgments about how to spend that time, their ideas of what constitutes a good life and a happy end, while enduring a constant sense of melancholy and mono no aware, are Buddhist, and constitute the main themes of the book.

The fact that there as so many different religions, with different beliefs seems to testify that religions were culture made, not the other way around.  Despite many religions being centuries old they have evolved and the writing now mean different things than they would have then.

In my opinion it really is time to get rid of religions as a framework for anything, at best they tend to simply muddy the waters, especially ones that champion the supernatural world, and or the absolutes of a god. At worse they add a sense of fantasy to the way we look at the world, allowing themselves to be used as an excuse for heinous murders and mayhem for the pettiest of behaviour.