20 Facts about Ethics

Submitted by admin on Thu, 12/09/2010 - 09:10
THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS depict the development in the study of morality (Ethics) throughout history. Focused on atheistic ethics and God-based morality, some of these propositions mention of various philosophers and other thinkers who advocate either of the mentioned moral stands.
 
1.Morality refers to the rightness or wrongness, as of an action, while Ethics refers to a study of judgments of value, of good and evil, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable.
 
2.Moral duty or simply duty is that which behooves us to do, either because it is laid down in some moral code, or because it imposes itself, through our moral consciousness.
 
3. ‘Moral supernaturalism’ states that God, or Someone supernatural is the moral lawgiver or is the source of the human rules of decency.
 
4. ‘Moral secularism’ submits that morals come not from ‘above’ but from men themselves.
 
5. As to the question on who makes the moral rules, the Christian and the theist turn toward the Creator of the Universe. The secularist or atheist alternatively turns toward himself.
 
6. For the religious or supernatural ethicists, there is an inseparable connection between Ethics and Religion.
 
7. Christians particularly turn to God’s revelation to answer moral problems because they generally consider God to be the ultimate foundation of morality.
 
8. The secular ethicist contends that ethics is relative to human experience and human nature, and moral problems need not be derived from theological or metaphysical foundations.
 
9. “Self-absorbed” attitude is that which is based on a whole new set of assumptions about how we should adopt our values and the right of individuals to construct their own values.
 
10. Relativism is the view that there is no absolute knowledge, that truth is different for each individual, social group or historic period, and is therefore relative to the circumstances of the knowing subject.
 
11. Plato contended that there must be some universal or absolute under which the individual things (the particulars, the details) must fit and something beyond the everyday must be there to give it all unity and meaning.
 
12. Even the non-believer and existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, realized that a finite point is absurd if it has no infinite reference point.
 
13. John Locke claimed that all knowledge comes from sensation, and reality is limited to what we can see, hear, feel, smell, taste, or measure—there is not much room for revelation in his Philosophy.
 
14. Friedrich Hegel, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx believed that all living forms and social systems are mere result of progressive transformations over time, and man is shaped by either evolutionary processes and/or the culture that surrounds him.
 
They rejected the idea that man is born with some innate nature. (On Hegel's famous theory or method in philosophy, read: Dialectic: The Hegelian Method)
 
15. Charles Darwin propelled the abandonment of God and revelation by attempting to show that God was not even necessary in the creation of living things.
 
16. Friederich Nietzsche aimed to highlight the ethical implications of Darwinism; his "superman" concept transformed man into the maker of his own destiny, and Man became the measure of all things. As his "madman" said, “God is dead!”
 
17. Karl Marx subscribed to Feuerbach's claim that God was merely a human invention. Marx’s ideas provided a foundation upon which Lenin and Stalin were able to build a society around the power ethics of political rationalism.
 
18.  Niccolo Machiavelli implied that a ruler who wants to keep his post must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires, meaning, we must not concern ourselves with what is ethical to preserve our position.
 
19. Friedrich Nietzsche had proclaimed the coming of the “Master Race”, and a “Superman” who would unify Germany and hopefully the world.
 
20. Nietzsche's philosophy provided the framework for Adolph Hitler’s tireless efforts to obliterate the Jews and the weak of the world.
 

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Comments

applehead (not verified)

Mon, 12/13/2010 - 05:12

As far as I'm concern the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles. Moral principles may be viewed either as the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for themselves or as the body of obligations and duties that a particular society requires of its members.

applehead (not verified)

Mon, 12/13/2010 - 05:18

as what i understood, Morality is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong).

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