RE: Exploring Thought Episode #05 - Morality
Interesting reflection indeed. As for the word morality comes from the Latin moralis and means "what is relative to customs". Morality is what is right or wrong to do based on the customs of our ancestors, and as the ancestors of different cultures are different, morality is in effect, not subjective, but relative.
What I do think is objective and universal is good, justice, and all other ideas of this genre that we classify generally as moral, but they are not, but rather they are virtues.
Ethics is on the other hand the science that is responsible for studying which parts of morality are linked to the universal idea of good, and which others are simply adopted as correct because they are socially correct according to custom.
Again, interesting reflection, greetings!
In the online etymological dictionary I use I don't see anything about "what is relative to customs".
Here is what it says.
I think maybe the words customs and manners are being umm... Synonymously used here. But, there are quite a few different meanings from around the world and not just one meaning.
In response to you saying morality is relative, um... To an extent I agree, but I think it's also subjective and universal as well. I believe it's all of those things.
Could you expand on this a little bit? What about people who don't believe in good and justice? Also, how would you distinguish virtues from morals? I'm not trying to argue, I'm genuinely curious. :)
That's interesting cause when I read up on ethics I got the impression it was more of a "customs" sort of word than morality, though at this point I think the slang and blurring of things have pretty much turned the words into synonyms even if they technically do have some significant historical distinctions.
Thanks for thinking the reflection was interesting and for sharing some of your thoughts, I liked reading what you had to say and I learned a lil bit! Also, greetings to you as well. :)
Thanks! The difference between virtue and morality is that morality is acting based on the manners, as you say, of a society, doing the socially acceptable according to manners or customs, the traditionally correct. While the virtues are those qualities that refer to what is universally correct. Someone of a specific religion may be immoral in some place where their religion is not practiced, yet be virtuous at last.
People who don't believe in good and justice, and other similar ideas, tend to confuse it with morality and also believe that they are relative or subjective.
In case you are interested, here I leave a link for a post that I did talking about whether the good, the justice, etc. are relative or not.
You're welcome. Thank you as well for responding and going into more detail.
I'm not sure humans could ever agree on what is universally correct in almost any sense, but... I think I sorta get what you mean and I'm glad you brought my attention to this word after not hearing it much since I was a kid. I've found myself using the word virtue now numerous times in exchange of morality and I think it fits better in a lot of cases where I was using morality before.
Well, I asked for a similar reason as to what I just said above about universal agreement. Many people believe differently and who is to say who is right?
Also, thanks for the link... I'll check it out.
I think the same.