The relationship between a theistic God (considering there is one) and morality cannot be explained in simply a few sentences. One may immediately come to the conclusion that God decides what is moral and immoral. This is known as Divine Command Theory which says that morality is dependent on God’s commands. However, this gives rise to the other side that says an action is moral because God approves of it. This is known as the Autonomy thesis which says that morality is not dependent on God’s commands.
#80: Compare and contrast Enlightenment and Romantic views of the relationship between God and the Individual. The Enlightenment saw God as rational and tried to explain events with reason; in contrast the Romantic Era explained events with their inner feelings and that God was as human views. Both sides saw God as an evident force that created earth. The difference is that the Romantic Era disagreed with deist views, which stated that the belief in God is based on reason rather than revelation and involving the view that God has set the universe in motion but does not interfere with how it runs. On one hand, the Enlightenment views saw God as a far away figure that did not interfere with the lives of humans.
He said morality was innate; a part of us (a priori), and it was our moral duty to carry it out for good, which must lead to God. Accordingly Kant says good actions should be universalisable and free, so basically when making our ethical decisions we should ask ourselves a simple question "What if everybody did that?" if the answer is no, then the categorical imperative tells us that the action is wrong. So if I cheated on my AS-level exam to pass and be successful in the future, this would be my maxim, however I would not want others to do the same and therefore this action would be wrong according to Kant’s Categorical Imperative. My cheating pre-supposes that most people do not cheat even though they have the same reasons to cheat as I have.
Situation ethics is a Christian approach in dealing with ethical problems and moral choices. Joseph Fletcher, who published his theory in his book ‘Situation Ethics’ in 1966, primarily developed the theory. The theory is teleological due to its belief that actions have no intrinsic value. Instead, the theory focuses on one intrinsic good, agape, the Greek word for self-sacrificial, impersonal love. Agape is believed to love as God loves and Fletcher described it as ‘an attitude not a feeling’, therefore separating it from all other forms of love.
Those characteristics cannot be simply chosen to be incorporated they are integrated into the authors personality and profession in the real world. Nature is an essay that describes the foundation of transcendentalism, showing the value behind a person using nature to get closer to God. Transcendentalism disagrees with life in a man-made society and Ralph Waldo Emerson explains what the disadvantages are. In the essay Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson, focuses on reputation/expertise and trustworthiness to uphold transcendentalism and illustrate the advantages of the belief. Reputation and expertise demonstrate what one knows about the topic, they are assisted by recognition.
It is therefore known through reason that we should follow these natural riles from God, because the opposite is equivalent to ‘condemning the command of God’. By following God’s will and getting closer to achieving our destiny with God, we should act morally. Someone who has an error with their morality also has an error with their rationality as they are not avoiding evil like they should be in order to fulfil their
Meta ethics tries to make sense of the terms and concepts used in ethical theories such as Utilitarianism and Natural Law. Some people believe that ethical language is extremely meaningful as they argue it is essential to be able to define terms such as “good” and “bad” before we can even begin to discuss ethical theories. However others disagree with this and argue that moral statements are subjective so are meaningless, as they cannot be described as either true or false. Those who hold cognitive theories about ethical language would argue that ethical statements are not meaningless as they are about facts, and can therefore be proved true or false. Ethical Naturalism is a cognitive theory of meta ethics which holds the belief that
If humans obey God’s moral commands simply because they fear punishment, they are acting in a moral fashion purely to serve God rather than morally. If obedience to dive commands is to be rewards in the afterlife, there seems to be a
Moral Relativism&Plato’s Euthyphro The idea that the truth is relative is that what is true for me is true for me and what is true for you is true for you. For instance person one believes in the existence of god. Person two believes there is no god at all. If the truth were relative that would mean Person one’s reality is that god exisitses and person two’s reality is that god does not exist. Both of them would be right because the truth is relative to what they believe.
Kant’s theory of ethics was deontological which looks at actions rather than the consequences of the action. The theory looks at motive of an action which makes it good rather than if the actual outcome is going to be good. Kant believed that humans are all aware of an innate moral law. According to ‘Critique of practical reason 1788’, ‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and moral law within me’ and following this Kant concluded that humans have access to two worlds, these being the noumenal (which we know through reason) and the phenoumenal worlds (which we know through senses). In the noumenal world moral law exists, and this moral law is objective and unchanging.