Ethical relativism in personal decision-making and morality

¶ … Morality

The Relative Nature of Morality

Morality appears to us as a concrete term which is underscored by certain rational assumptions about the universe. And yet, our own experience tells us that that which one considers to be vice may, to another, be seen as virtue. The reverse may also apply. Thus, it is rather difficult to reconcile that which does in fact define our cause for moral behavior, though all figures of importance to the historical discourse on philosophy have ventured a framework. The 18th century in particular would witness a flurry of activity, with the latter generation of the Enlightenment Era providing a spirited exchange across decades of literature on that which inspires moral behavior. In our investigation here of the various possible lenses through which to understand morality, consideration of German theologian Immanuel Kant's 1785 Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals provides basic understanding for the discussion of morality from the normative perspective. Such is to say that Kant's will be the most rigid, socially constrained and dangerous of understandings.

At the center of Kant's argument is the premise that the same reason which applies to the empirical nature of scientific discourse must rationally apply in the same way to ethical discourse. Accordingly, Kant contends that "physics will have its empirical part, but it will also have a rational one; and likewise ethics - although here the empirical part might be called specifically practical anthropology, while the rational part might properly be called morals." (Kant, 20) This is a viewpoint which will be met with objection throughout this discussion based on its primary assumption that all human imperatives are rational in some demonstrable way but that many of these may depart from immediate moral 'rightness.'

This separates such a work from the terms offered by Aristotle. Yet it cannot be said that Kant has not written with Aristotle in mind. The common ground manifests in a convincing argument in favor of the concept of happiness as something which must ultimately, while occupying innumerable incarnations, be at the crux of any thought or action. Aristotle recognizes the variances which appear to define our establishment of the means to pursuing happiness, musing that "the characteristics that are looked for in happiness seem also, all of them, to belong to what we have defined happiness as being. For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity." (Aristotle, I: 8) Aristotle uses this as a divining rod for dissecting the various relationships which are perpetuated amongst men. Here, Aristotle's practicality is of particular relevance, with his semantic explication of terms for the relationship between virtue and happiness offering a rather thorough template for human morality. This denotes that while we do not fully accept the idea offered by Kant that that which is right for one is right for all, we do accept some balance where perceptions of right and wrong may differ but where a clear relationship between happiness and goodness permeates motives and creates something of a universal standard.