''Questioning whether one is moral or not is never as feasible as questioning what morals are those on which he lies.''
There are no universal, absolute, or even true morals – good and evil – they are an illusion. Having a person who is envisioned as good in society eliminated is no different from having the same deed done to a snake. It is the society that labels the first deed as evil and the second one as good or at least significantly fine. It is because the first one doesn’t fit their societal standards, while the other one does.
In fact, for a better world, morals must be conceptualised as an ensemble of norms that objectively serve human beings peculiarly – unexceptionally – and the environment in general. Morals are not to be sacred nor are they to be a result of cultural, ideological, religious and authoritarian premises. This essay is to cement the preceding statement with pieces of evidence.
Is it all about Definition?
Questioning whether one is moral or not is never as feasible as questioning what morals are those on which s/he lies. Morals may be generally defined as standards of behaviour. And, here comes the essence of the discussion—what standards our behaviour should follow? Why are they to be followed? Can we intuitively know those standards?
Initially, those norms and the way they are chosen shape the definition of morality in accordance with the individual’s ideological background. A religious will define morals as what has been mentioned in her/his religious text as good. And, potentially, s/he endorses the fact that they are intuitive. Others may come to define morals in terms of their ideology within a utopian framework. Accordingly, we shall observe that morals depend on how they are envisioned, and thus defined as.
From an intuitive perspective, Kant (1797, 1785) generated a duty-oriented ethical formula. This alludes to the fact that if a certain behaviour is considered a duty, it must be moral. Consequently, moral things are things that must be done for no reason, but for being obligatory within a universal intuitive law.
In other words, Kant claims that morals are intuitive and are intrinsically known. They are behaviours done for no will to be rewarded or have anything in return. Kant provides three maxims which one’s behaviour should meet, so that it may be moral; it must be possible to be universalised, considering others as ends not means, and being within the framework of that given society in which it occurs.
In contrast, utilitarianism, led by J. Stuart Mill, imparts a more comprehensive and tangible approach in his book Utilitarianism (1861). Pointedly, Mill asserts that morals are a mere production of utility. That is to say, something is moral only if it is conducive to as wide as possible variety of people’s happiness. He states that values, virtues, and moral societal principles are to be analysed with utilitarian lenses.
This implies that if any cultural moral norm is contrastive to people’s utility, it must be reconsidered, and thus removed or replaced by an optimal one. Subsequently, laws are equal to morals as both of them are the outcome of the same factor, which is utilitarianism. Similarly, J. Bentham (1789) contends that morality depends on a certain behaviour’s associated result, if it is good, then the behaviour is moral, if otherwise, it is clearly immoral.
How Morals Are to Be Envisioned?
Having two main views in this perspective exposed, it might be righteous – to some extent – to affirm that Mill and Bentham’s approach is way more objective than Kant’s. The latter holds that morals are intuitive and can be assessed by oneself; if found to be righteous and universalisable, they are morally right.
However, if John sees religion or ideology ‘’X’’ under which he was raised as perfectly right, he would, consequently, find it a virtue to universalise it in any way possible. In fact, virtues or morally right behaviours are the product of each person’s glasses that, in turn, constitute a set of instructed assumptions.
Most of the behaviours popularly agreed to be moral are based on ancient utilitarian criteria or on mere cultural myths that served a certain class in a certain epoch. Hegemony, currently and equitably in the past, had its own impact in shaping people’s moral background. Thereafter, that ground shaped by nurture was appealed to as intuitive and natural, and so it was believed publicly.
On the other hand, utilitarianism, as coined by Reseau and his colleagues in " The Social Contract’’ had the lion´s share in shaping people´s claimed intuitive morals. This indicates the growth of human consciousness and the construction of its threshold towards gossiping that one’s utilitarian zone may be widened when collaborating with others.
One is young today, doing what suits her/him even if it hurts others; later on, s/he is an old Man being humiliated by today’s strong young Men and so on. Thus, wasn’t it optimal to spread out virtues that can serve humans today as it will do tomorrow? Actions that may today be done by John to benefit Jacob, and tomorrow by Jacob’s son to benefit John.
Accordingly, no ideologies are needed to determine morals or to make someone moral. Morality is the utilitarian need to spread virtue, which originated from Man’s need to maintain staidness. Ideologies – namely ancient ones – are using their stagnant moral basis to preserve the services they sought to provide to the class they were intended to serve at first; if not, they may be unintentionally freezing time in that old utilitarian epoch’s conditions with which they were proportionally generated.
But, how can we Establish a Strong Objective Utilitarian Moral Ground?
As preceding, we are unable to know by intuition what is morally right, or in other words, what is the common good and what is not; hence, an objective tool must emerge. That is science in its diverse fields. It is the only objective and tangible manner that can reveal the true face of things. To illustrate, if product ‘’X’’ is proposed to be legalised, it must be analysed through all the related fields of natural sciences and then social ones, until it is made sure that it doesn’t breach the common good (which is again determined by the relevant fields of science).
But why did we create a relation between legalisation and morals, laws and virtues? This is because morals are laws; they are just more induced and habitual. As can be objectively deduced, killing is immoral, so it is illegal. If there was ever a contradiction between morals and laws, it must portray a lack of objective verification of one of them; either those morals were not scientifically shaped, or those laws weren’t.
Conclusion & Recommendations
Pointedly, morals are not intuitive, nor are they related to any divine sources. Morals are encrypted laws in Man’s social background and with a smaller degree in her/his nature. It is also worth hinting that morals in their objective form should be adaptive. That’s why, whenever they are being glorified and made permanent, they directly conduce an out-timed utilitarian set of norms.
Some, on the other hand, may claim that without having norms and morals sacred and glorified, they will subsequently become null and void. Verily, Man’s brain has already gossiped about the chaos that would occur with no morals (social standards) governing the environment in which s/he lives. Indeed, it is high time to think of morals rationally, as a means to sustain society, and have their sacred form taken off.
References
Bentham, J. (1843). “The” works of Jeremy Bentham: Memoirs Of Bentham; Including Autobiographical Conversations And Correspondence. Chap. XXIII. - XXVI. ; Appendix To The Memoirs ; An Analytical Index To The Works And To The Memoirs And Correspondence. 11.
Mill, J. S. (1974). Collected works of John Stuart Mill. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA00348026
Nietzsche, F. (1887). On the Genealogy of Morals. Penguin UK.
Rousseau, J. (1762). The social contract. Wordsworth Editions.
Rousseau, J. (1950). The social contract,: And Discourses. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA04614198