Subjective or Objective Morality on Campus Essay - Cram.com.
For people who think morality is subjective, aspiring to objectivity in ethics is a chimera, to be avoided as a remnant of a bygone era of superstition and nonsense. To some extent, this approach to moral judgements seems unavoidable, given the demise of religious world-views and other superstitious beliefs since the Enlightenment.
Morality is subjective and objective. The two basis of morality is sentiment and reason. That people generally feel the same, given common experience, and that people reason in the same way though the quality of reasoning may differ, creates conditions where moral agreements are possible.
The novella, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad has a strong theme of morality. Conrad’s goal using morality is moral confusion. The main character Charlie Marlow sets out on a journey with the European Ivory Trade to Africa. During this journey he discovers a dark dilemma of moral ethics.
Is it a normative ethical discussion where you argue in favour of collectivism against individualism, or a meta-ethical discussion about objective morality vs. subjective morality? I'm arguing that collectivism, by default, is the definition of morality.
Morality must be objectively derived because (1) the concepts of good and morality exist; (2) cultures differ regarding certain moral actions, thus there is the need to discover which is right but cultures are similar regarding the existence of and need for morality; (3) relativism is not logical and does not work, (4) for moral principles to be legitimate and consistent, they must be derived.
Objective morality, that is to say a morality based on reality (instead of subjective beliefs, desires, whims, etc), is usually claimed to be the province of religion. Atheism, on the other hand, is supposed to have nothing to offer but evolutionary or emotionalist explanations.
The thesis of this essay is that morality is not objective in the same way that statements of empirically verifiable facts are objective, yet morality is objective in the ways that matter: moral judgments are not arbitrary; we can have genuine disagreements about moral issues; people can be mistaken in their moral beliefs; and facts about the world are relevant to and inform our moral judgments.