A brief inquiry into the nature of morality
To break the ice and hopefully get some
interesting discussion going on here, I thought I would pick up on something
that sparked an enthusiastic dialogue today in class but unfortunately was curbed
due to time and scope. Two questions I will seek to say something about in this
post: a) what makes actions morally right or morally wrong? b) what gives
morality its sanctity?
Normative ethics has it that there are two
broad schools of thought regarding morality. The first being consequentialism and the second being nonconsequentialism. I believe these two
classes of normative ethics theory will be looked into in greater depth in
chapter two. However, for the purposes of setting up my argument I will briefly
define them. Consequentialism is the theory that says to judge whether
something is morally wrong or right we have to look at its consequences or
results. Actions with good outcomes would thus be morally good and actions with
bad outcomes would thus be morally bad. Essentially under this theory, the end
justifies the means. On the other hand nonconsequentialism states that actions
are morally wrong or morally right in of themselves, that is, despite their
consequences. Immanuel Kant in his argument on categorical imperatives supports
this second school of thought. Kant argues that some things are categorically
wrong even if they produce some greater good of some sort.
Though not fully a Kantian, I lean more
towards nonconsequentialism in understanding why some actions are morally wrong
and some are morally right. Some actions are morally wrong and some are morally
right despite their intended outcomes. The question that arose from my comment
in class was: what gives morality this sanctity if the outcomes do not matter?
Well, my short answer to the question is: the nature of morality gives it its
sanctity. To use Socrates' vocabulary in his dialogue with Glaucon and
Adeimantus in The Republic by Plato,
morality is of the highest class of goods. A society that condemns rape, murder
and theft as morally wrong is bound to better perform than a society that does
not recognize the immorality of these actions. Hence in the moral society,
morality would bear fruits such as longer lifespans, healthier citizens, safer
communities, etc. However, even if this is the case that morality is leads to
these sweet marvelous results, I still do not believe that it is these results
that justify the moral status of the actions and grant morality its sanctity. I
think the nature of actions and the nature of morality grants actions their
moral status and morality its sanctity, respectively.
Consider the following thought
experiment. If rape had no physical, emotional or psychological harm on the
victims, would it become morally right? I am inclined to say no and this should
serve to illustrate that the moral status of an action is not determined by its
outcomes but rather its nature. Furthermore, it should show that morality is
certainly unique and worth upholding for its own sake, that is, despite the
outcomes it produces. I can imagine that one objection to this argument could
be that there is nothing unique or exceptional with morality. The objection
might suggest that morality is simply a set of ideas and feelings that have
been passed down from generation to generation. Well I disagree with this view.
I think there is something unique with morality that even if we were the first
generation to this planet it would still be objectively wrong to murder, rape
and enslave fellow human beings.
A penny for your thoughts! J
