The Morality Of Lying

There comes a time when a doctor, minister or politicians and an individual will tell a lie. It could be a white lie or big lie; most people almost generally resort to lying in certain situation. Often times a lawyer will lie in order to protect his client, or vice versa, a client will tell a lie in order to avoid being incarnated. There are many situations an individual will be placed in, and at some point in a person’s life they will need to tell a lie. Is it appropriate to lie? This is what Sissela Bok writes about in Lying: Moral choice in Public and Private Life. Bok acknowledges that despite numerous religious and moral statements against lying, people will still lie in certain situations. She will discuss and

I believe that morality is just being obedient to God and his requests. The Bible teaches us to be moral because the obedience to God glorifies him who created us and obedience is accepted by God as worship (Romans 12:1). As humans and as Christians, we must strive to meet God’s standards or mortality in all that we do in our everyday lives to ensure we please him.

Moral Relativism is defined as the belief that conflicting moral beliefs are true. This carries the impression that what you respect as a right behavior may be a right conduct for you, but not for me. Moral Relativism is an attempt to

Pope Benedict once said, “We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.” When discussing the idea of Moral Relativism there are conflicting arguments as to if it is true in society or not. As much as Americans wish to ignore it, and although it has negative as well as positive effects, moral relativism is apparent all over the world. Moral Relativism is true and relevant today through individuals and cultures.

Ethical relativism is not just simply one concept. It can be divided into two categories cultural relativism and ethical subjectivism. Cultural relativism states that what a culture finds correct is what is correct, within its own realm. Ethical subjectivism are what people as individuals find correct, or the values a person stands for and what they support whereas culture relativism is has a certain standard of morality held within a culture or society. These both view people as being in charge of their own morality. However, there are some problems with the view ethical relativism itself. For instance marital rape, machismo in Hispanics culture and premarital sex. In this dissertation I will be discussing problems with ethical relativism, while using the examples above.

Morality in its basic definition, is the knowledge between what is right and what is wrong. In Joan Didion’s essay, “On Morality,” she uses examples to show how morality is used to justify actions and decisions by people. She explains that morality can have a profound effect on the decisions that people chose to make. I think that morality is an idea that is different for every individual based on morals and background.

In philosophy there are many theories that philosophers argue, James Rachels argues the main points of moral relativism, where he describes the differences within cultures. Philosophers attempt to prove their theories to be true, but it can be complicated because if someone proves one premise false of your argument then the entire argument is invalid. There are different types of relativisms that favor moral relativism, such as, personal belief relativism, societal belief relativism, and then there is the cultural beliefs argument. All of these topics of relativism fall into the same category as moral relativism, meaning they all have the same general statement. Which is one cannot declare what is morally right or morally wrong. Moral relativism is the umbrella term and the others are points that can affect it. Moral Relativism claims that there is no objective truth concerning morality, therefore no one can draw a line between what is right or wrong.

Relativism by David Wong address issues attached to moral relativism and common moral values. Wong has a unique perspective when analyzing how we view moral relativism and common moral values that an individual or a society can make a distinction. His arguments begin with him giving us types of moral relativism; Meta ethical relativism and normative relativism. He also talks about common moral values and natural laws, views that counterattack relativism.

Moral relativism explains plenty of cultural differences. It allows different societies to have different standards of rightness and validates them. John Ladd details, “[as a result,] whether or not it is right for individuals to act a certain way depends on the society to which they belong” (31). He concludes that there is no absolute or universal moral standard by which all men abide by. By combining the diversity thesis (each culture is different) and the dependency thesis (people act differently dependent of

Ethical relativism states “there is no universal right and wrong”, and no matter what decision I will come to, will have consequences to my actions (Kottler & Shepard, 2015). We have several students here at our

Before diving into the arguments for and against moral relativism, it is important to define some key terms including morality, cultural diversity, and tolerance. David Fisher, a Teaching Fellow at King’s College, London defines morality in his book, Morality and War: Can War Be Just in the Twenty-first Century?. “Morality is thus neither mysterious nor irrational but furnishes the necessary guidelines for how we can promote human welfare and prevent suffering” (Fisher 134). Cultural diversity is simply the existence of various cultures in society. Tolerance is just the ability to accept something that you would not normally agree with.

Moral Relativism is generally used to describe the differences among various cultures that influence their morality and ethics. According to James Rachels, because of moral relativism there typically is no right and wrong and briefly states : “Different cultures have different moral codes.” (Rachels, 18) Various cultures perceive right and wrong differently. What is considered right in one society could be considered wrong in another, but altogether all cultures have some values in common.

The question of what constitutes morality is often asked by philosophers. One might wonder why morality is so important, or why many of us trouble ourselves over determining which actions are moral actions. Mill has given an account of the driving force behind our questionings of morality. He calls this driving force “Conscience,” and from this “mass of feeling which must be broken through in order to do what violates our standard of right,” we have derived our concept of morality (Mill 496). Some people may practice moral thought more often than others, and some people may give no thought to morality at all. However, morality is nevertheless a possibility of human nature, and a

Morality is defined as a recognition or belief that explains why some behaviors are bad or good. In simple words, morality refers to values relating to the distinction between wrong and right or good and bad. Few morals are easily accepted and are only questioned by some fringes of society who might disagree with such morals. These individuals on the fringes can be bad or good. The ones who reject socially accepted moral does not necessarily mean that they are good persons. Thus, one can say that each individual has morals that are different from each other (Joseph).

There are three types of relativism as described by Richard Brandt in his paper Ethical Relativism. The first is descriptive relativism, which is actually a theory that simply states that there is a disagreement about morality between people (Brandt, 25). An example of descriptive relativism is cultural relativism, which states that cultures disagree on morality (Brandt, 25). This is considered a state of fact and is merely