Personal journal entries: The Foundations and Philosophy of Ethics.

Observation

Philosophy has been one of the most interesting subjects to me since it helps stretch the imagination as well as the creativity of the reader to see the various perspectives to a subject. I set out to understand the arguments made in this article and it came out that Lawrence Kohlberg emphasizes on the importance of moral reasoning in decision making process. He bases his argument of moral reasoning on an earlier philosopher called Piaget who was a pioneer of moral reasoning. Lawrence indicates that there are three levels of moral reasoning; the pre-conventional morality which is common among children and bases the morality of an action on the consequences. The other is conventional Morality which is based on the social rules and norms. The last is the Post-conventional morality which bases morality on the intrinsic values of an individual.

Interpretation

The material caught my attention in the manner in which it presents the various approaches that a daily common challenge can be approached and solved. It also opened up my eyes to the fact that what could be moral in the societal judgment may not necessarily be legal sand at the same time what may be legal may not be moral as was the case with slave trade. I also realized that moral reasoning is all about how people ought to conduct themselves and not how they are used to conducting themselves. In the past and even present, immoral actions have been justified on the grounds that they are legal.

Application

The lessons in this unit highly applies to my life as a student since this is the time that I come to learn of the legal aspects of our constitution. It is also the time that I come to meet a lot of different approaches to issues with the morality and ethics being the key concerns. It is also the time that I make decisions that will affect my present and my far future life. Here, I need to know how to use the moral reasoning to guide my daily decisions.