Sharpening the Weapon of Love: From Moralism to Morality
Topic: morality
Additional subject to explore: church oceanside
Sharpening the Weapon of Love: From Moralism to Morality
In his 1985 article, “Market Economy and Ethics,” then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger writes, “A morality that believes itself able to dispense with the technical knowledge of economic laws is not morality but moralism. As such it is the antithesis of morality.
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A Church Divided: Religion, Morality Never Far From Issue of LGBT Rights
"Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians," he wrote. "The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite ...
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Question by Hulk Smash: If morality is subjective, why do we still insist in different punishments for different crimes?
If morality is subjective, whose morallity should we use as basis for the law? If there is no good or evil then why do we insist on different punishments for different crimes? What if rapists and murderers came to power and decided that their actions are lawful? Because since we insist good and evil are subjective terms, why would we still argue that the law should be banned? Do human rights even exist if morals do not? If so, what justification can we give for them?
Discuss. I hope this will be fruitful.
Best answer:
Answer by Houston, we have a problem
- There's a difference between morality and law. There are things that are legal that are not moral, and there are things that are moral that are not legal.
The punishment for crimes are intended to deter crimes, and punishments, give or take, are designed to deter that crime in a (hopefully) fair and just manner. This is subjective to the ruling community and culture.
The punishment for immorality is simply your conscience,and if you are religious, your god's wrath. This is subjective to your personal moral growth. The morality of a 6 year old is not the same as the morality of a 26 year old.
Don't let theocratic laws confuse you. These are laws passed for the purposes of morality. They are still only laws, and their allotted punishments are for the law, not the immorality, regardless their origins.
If human rights were objective, they would not need to be stated as such in law. Cultures name their human rights. As slave ownership and infanticide are "human rights" in certain cultures, the term is misused, implying a moral position where it is simply a subjective template for a legal position.
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The Minimum Wage, Guns, Healthcare, and the Meaning of a Decent Society
A society necessarily determines how the “market” is to be organized. Standards of morality and decency play a large role in those decisions. We set minimum standards for worker safety and consumer protection. We decide young children shouldn't be in ...
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Morality is not subjective. Only the details are subjective. Most people who commit murder, for example, are amoral rather than immoral.
If you focus entirely upon the subjectivity involved in moral judgements, as you have done, you certainly can wind up concluding that "anything goes." You therefore wind up in an extreme position of advocating nihilism, the banning of laws, the denial of basic human rights, etc., etc. Most of us would rather not live in such a world of murder and mayhem.
Conventional morality is based upon general consensus. From an abstract, "philosophical" point of view, morality indeed may seem totally subjective. But in actual everyday life here on this concrete earth of ours, many (perhaps most) people would tend to agree that certain behaviors are praiseworthy while others are despicable. For most of us this may seem quite self-evident. And as for punishments, most would agree that murders deserve a more severe punishment than those who have cheated on their fifth grade spelling test.
If we lived in a perfect world in which we always treated each other with kindness and dignity, there might be no need for laws and punishments. But our actual world is flawed, and those of us inhabiting it are too. We are stuck here, and in order to live together is reasonable harmony, laws are necessary and are beneficial (in spite of their underlying basis in subjectivity).
Subjectivity does not imply that every human being truly has a totally different view of all things. In reality this does not seem to be the case at all. There is actually a pretty high consensus about all sorts of things, including the desirablility/undesirability of basic patterns of conduct.