The Nature Of Morality: What Are Right Actions

The nature of morality used to be one of the most controversial issues in philosophy for a long time already.  Some of the researchers and theorists supported the idea that there is objective morality, others did not agree with this assumption and stated that morality could be only subjective phenomenon. Often the terms “morality” and “ethics” are used interchangeably. The approach of treating some acts as moral or immoral seems to be too limited, instead explaining and classifying of moral views could help to understand the nature of morality. Objective morality could be characterized as morality, which exists outside of human beings, a kind of moral law, existing separately from conscious beings. Then it is possible to conclude that morality is not the product of human fabrication, rather it exists independently and should be detected. Subjective morality is on the contrary directly related to human opinions and attitudes and thus it originates from social, psychological and biological spheres. Morality could not exist without human beings. Subjective morality should not be mixed up with moral relativism, according to which moral views are based upon various cultures and contexts. Neither could it be related to moral nihilism, stating that there is no morality at all, at least there is no meaningful morality. “One possible implication of moral relativism, which is quite often wrongly inferred as being contained in the general class of subjective meta-ethics, is the view that moral statements can only be considered applicable in the context in which they are uttered.” (Berggren 1998). The issues of morality are rather controversial and there is nature of morality, which helps to define morally unacceptable actions and behaviors for human beings.

Religion is a part of human culture. At the same time it is often treated closely to morality. Representatives of various religions are raised in the norms of this religion and they are inclined to believe that religion could bring moral objectivity. Still basing morality upon religion is far from creating objective morality. The problem here is that the term “objective” is probably used as something “absolute”. In reality objective should be confronted to subjective. Objectivity is often viewed in the frames of science. Still here’s the risk of limiting morality only to those aspects, which could researched and grasped by psychology and this is also not correct, as psychology is not able to provide complete understanding of morality.

Morality is a specific paradigm, it is made of something that is not dependant upon views or ideas of an individual. A person is able to make his own judgments and develop his own feelings, but they could not be used in order to define moral and immoral deeds and choices in general. The religious people would state that the only being, able to define moral and immoral actions is God. But this is purely a subjective religious view on morality. Generally there are a lot of doubts as for the presence of absolute moral truths, as there is no way to establish them either from reason or from the scientific point of view. “Friends of religion often claim that if there are no absolute moral truths, then there are no moral truths at all, and that morality is simply whatever each person wants to be moral. This nasty alternative is called moral subjectivism. Now, there are no absolute moral truths. But morality is not simply subjective, either.” (Berggren 1998).  

There are certain natural facts, related to morality in real world. A great part of morality is made up of the culturally objective truths. These moral truths are explained by social rules, which are supported by most members of the society, who were raised within this society. Morality is an important constituent part of any culture, because an individual is considered to reveal morally correct behaviors in order to live cultured social life in that social environment. There are moral rules, which could be found in almost all societies; still each separate society knows that specific morality, which is in need for its distinctive culture. From here starts naturalistic interpretation of culture and morality. It is possible to provide examples of the moral rules, which are considered objective by naturalists – “torturing innocent people is violation of moral norms.” People are aware of this one and other moral rules, because they learnt them, the accepted them, they lived in the societies, where these rules are accepted. The validity of these rules is not dependant upon personal behaviors and attitudes, as they remain actual, even if somebody behaves violently or reveals cruelty. Cultural morality is objective, it could not be stated that something is moral or not moral only because concrete culture states this. If to allow any culture dictate the rules of morality, then it means that this culture should be accepted as morally absolute to the same extent that religion could not provide absolute morality. Culture’s morality could be considered objective in case it does not depend upon any separate individual perception about what it moral and what is not moral.

Overall, morality is utterly sophisticated and controversial issue, studied and analyzed by specialists from various fields, including psychology, religion, philosophy. There is no agreement at the moment as for the notion of objective morality, apart of the natural morality. Everybody has his personal views and perceptions of morality, but they are not objective, as objective morality could exist only externally.

Works cited:

Berggren, Niclas. On the Nature of Morality. A Reply to Eugene Khutoryansky’s “Objective Morality Based on Scientific and Rational Reasoning”, 1998

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016.

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

freeessays.club (2016) The terms offer and acceptance [Online].
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[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 28, 2024]
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