Morality
Morality is the concept of doing the right thing. Morals are basic guidelines for living. It is about conventions or rules, that help peole iin a society. It tries to classify actions and intentions into two groups. When they are followed
- Some of them are good / true
- Others are wrong / false
Cicero introduced the term, he wrote philosphia moralis. He used it to translate Ancient Greek Ethike (which is ethics, in English)
At the start, morality was used to describe how poeople act in practice. Sometimes it was also used to decribe the actions that are expected in certain situations.
Morality in other fields of science
changeMorality is part of several fields of science:
- Ethics, as a part of philosophy. It describes principles, values and virtues
- Moral theology describes morality in the context of religion.
- Moral psychology looks at the emotions and incentives people have when they act in moral (or immotal) ways.
- Political science and economics can also be looked at from a point of view of morality.
- Philosophy of law also looks at the relationship between law and morality.
Objrective and subjective omralizy
changeMany people have written about ways of choosing what the right thing is. Some believe that there is an objective (true even if you do not agree with it) morality, often thinking it was set by God or another similar being; others think that morality is subjective (that what is good or bad is a community choice).
People can learn morals from religion, parents, friends, school, books, or from ethical traditions. People that teach or follow morals are called moralists.
It can also be a lesson that someone learns in a book or story. It is usually one line at the end of the story ("The moral of this story is....."). Fables are stories with a moral.
The opposite of "moral" is "immoral", meaning the wrong thing to do. "Amoral" means something that is not related to morality, or has no morally good or bad aspect to it. It is the same as "morally neutral". Morality means that you can tell between a right and a wrong thing.
Examples
changeSome morally correct things to do are
•Eat healthily
•Sleep well
•be polite
•use your brain
•use common sense
Behavior may also be framed as what not to do:
•Don't smoke
•Don't drink alcohol
•Don't murder
Related pages
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