Correct or good morality, if valid, should always have good consequences. Incorrect or bad morality should always have bad consequences. The fact is that all wrong or immoral acts and attitudes bring on "good" or pleasant feelings. Moral relativism has never produced people worthy of praise. It has never produced good societies. History proves that the societies founded by Moses and Confucius lasted longer than those by Mussolino and Mao Tse Tung and that moral societies endure (Kreeft).
Tradition is not on the side of moral relativism. Moral absolutism is, in fact, the traditional morality (Kreeft 2003). It may be commonly thought that tradition is for snobs, but these snobs are really few and a minority. The truth of the matter is that absolutism has remained the norm in history. For ages, these snobs have remained in the minority and have only managed to impose their elitist "relativist" attitude on popular opinion (Kreeft).
Moral experience is the simplest argument against the weakness of moral relativism (Kreeft 2003). From birth, a person goes through moral experience, which is always and plainly absolutistic. It is only later in his life that this is altered by sophistication. Right at the start, he knows what should or ought to be done and what is right or wrong. Everyone experiences moral obligation without being taught beforehand. Moral absolutism, therefore, is a basic human experience. An innate sense of moral obligation moves a person towards an end from above or within. It is clearly inherent but empirical at the same time (Kreeft).
Moral protest also provides strong evidence of the correctness of moral absolutism and a fundamental weakness of moral relativism (Kreeft 2003). Every person by nature feels moral protest when treated wrongly or unfairly. Spousal infidelity clearly illustrates that an offended spouse feels wrong treated. Relativism appears to be personal rather than philosophical and has more hypocrisy in it than hypothesis. There is contradiction between its theory and its practice (Kreeft).
The language people use actually underlies moral absolutism and not moral relativism (Kreeft 2003). People really argue and fight over what they inherently feel to be right or wrong. They praise, blame or command according to that inherent sense of right and wrong. This built-in sense is what renders their...
Similarly, when a member of society becomes too feeble to contribute, leaving them in the snow is deemed the proper solution. Both practices are deemed proper, as they increase the survival chances of the tribe as a whole. Thus, while another society may cringe at the idea of infanticide and leaving the elderly to die, Eskimo societies see the survival of the tribe as the paramount concern. There are many
Morality in America Morals are defined as a set of principles of right action and behavior for the individual. The traditional morals of any given society are the set of moral principles by which the majority of its members have lived over a long time, a consensus which that society has reached on what is considered correct and decent behavior. It is the way one's society expectsone to behave, even if
Moral Community: A group in America that is clearly being marginalized politically and socially is the community of undocumented immigrants. An estimated 11.1 million immigrants are living and working in the United States, and notwithstanding that the U.S. Senate and the executive branch have passed a bill allowing undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, the Republicans resist supporting this legislation. Cultural relativism helps to understand why 11.1 million people are
Moral Good and Moral Value Determining moral "good" is a fundamental philosophical study. Only the lazy philosopher would revert to codes of ethics. Ethical standards come from somewhere, and generally those standards can be grouped into three main categories of analysis: consequentialism, deontological ethics, and virtue or character ethics. While these three modes of thinking about the moral good can sometimes interact with one another to create more complex moral analyses,
Relativism Moral relativism seems as polarizing as any individual moral belief, with objectivists insisting that some acts are immoral under all circumstances and relativists pointing to the intrinsic moral value of tolerance. In "Folk Moral Relativism," Sarkissian et al. (2011) offers a more nuanced perspective somewhere between the two poles of absolute relativism and objectivism. To help clarify the differences between relativists and objectivists, Sarkissian et al. (2011) present a series
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice developed as a cohesive field in the late twentieth century, with the establishment of the Ethical Theory and Moral Practice Journal, in 1998. The theory therefore represents a culmination of scholarly thought and analysis in the fields of philosophy, sociology, and psychology. As a cross-disciplinary theory, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice reveals the increasing hybridization of fields that relate to normative ethics. Because Ethical Theory and
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