Big Big Question

Tue 1 Jul 2008

1. whir
   July 1st, 2008 at 9:48 am

   Ok, I don’t understand the question. I mean, the answer is both, right? An ethical system gives you a framework in which to evaluate the moral value of different actions.

      0 votes
2. Eideteker
   July 1st, 2008 at 10:26 am

   If this is a morality debate, I refuse to participate on ethical grounds. If it’s an ethical debate, I refuse to participate as it would violate my morals.

      2 votes
3. mullacc
   July 1st, 2008 at 10:48 am

   wat

      0 votes
4. Meatbomb
   July 1st, 2008 at 12:01 pm

   lame.

      0 votes
5. russilwvong
   July 1st, 2008 at 7:58 pm

   What is morality?

   [Hans] Morgenthau’s point of departure [in his 1934 thesis La Realite des Normes, written at a time when international norms of morality were collapsing] is the explicit opposition of Sollen and Sein, of the ought to be and the is….

   For Morgenthau, norms are prescriptions laid down by human beings, and they consist of two elements. The content of the norm (i.e., the command) designates what ought to be…. The validity element (i.e., the sanction) refers to the reaction triggered by behavior in violation of the norm.

   The psychic reality of a norm, Morgenthau continues, is founded on its “capacity to influence the will of the person it addresses” in the direction desired on the norm. But what enables the norm to have this effect? What will generally induce the person addressed by the norm to follow its prescription? Morgenthau argues that it is the fact that violation of the norm will have adverse consequences for the addressee: a penance, for instance, or a punishment, or simply remorse. …

   The sanction constitutes not only the conditio sine qua non for a norm’s psychic reality but also determines its character. In other words, the distinction between law, mores, and morality as normative spheres lies, not in the content of a given rule, but in the modality of the sanction following upon the violation of that rule. “Thou shalt not steal” can be a command of ethics, mores, or the law. It is the sanction that differentiates these three types of rules of conduct.

   From Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography, by Christoph Frei.

      0 votes
6. saydur
   July 5th, 2008 at 2:37 am

   Most definitions would disapprove of violence as a reaction to this question, yet a significant number of people considered “moral” or “ethical” either by their own standards or by consensus either cultural or global, would find a firm smack to the back of the head to be an appropriate if not necessary response.

      0 votes

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