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Purpose Of Morality In Lord Of The Flies

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Arman Singh
Professor Allen
Philosophy-211
September 7 2016

Purpose of Morality
IDEA
“The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable.”
-Pojman 32
Explanation
The key theme in Lord of the Flies is that morality in human nature isn’t inherent in mankind. Morality must further continue for an individual to be ethical for its society and keep society together without letting anything fall apart. If there are no rules and regulations the evil in everyone is more sensitive to be triggered. Therefore every individual forgets their set of ideal values and basics of right and wrong. There are several instances where morality is …show more content…

Thomas Hobbes believes that every human is a savage when stripped away from law or morality, and good men only exist because of society. On the other hand Jean Rousseau’s theory states that humans are naturally born savages. These two diverse ideas these philosophers have about morality raises several different opinions. In Lord of the Flies many characters such as Jack and Roger present these ideas about how morality can be played with. I believe adolescence played a huge role in this movie and greatly affected morality. During childhood kids catch themselves trapped between making logical decisions and impulsively giving into temptations which is also peer pressure. As an example when Ralph is elected leader he believes that he must lead responsibly for the group, however he can’t make decisions off the bat because he has never done anything like it before. Thomas Hobbes stated that in a natural human state, moral principles do not exist and that humans progressively desire to obtain as much power they can because there are no laws preventing them from harming or killing others to attain what they desire. However this theory can be refuted by Piggy’s character because unlike every other boy isolated on the island he understands the lack of adults and reasonable authority. Piggy described the group as a crowd of immature kids and since the start he hooks onto the idea of the conch and the set of rules and regulations it represents. However Piggy and the conch suffer a brutal ending which causes chaos among the society. Finally I think that moral behavior is a natural expression of human individuality instead of something that civilization forces upon the individual as Golding

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