The essence of morality. Identifying ethics as a science in the history of philosophy. /last part/

godflesh (73)in #godflesh • 6 years ago (edited)

All-human values usually concentrate around three problematic circles: man, life, freedom. These three nuclei of universal human values are the most important and most characteristic, showing how far the human creative power, the limits of the meaning of human life, the direction of human freedom can extend. One of the peculiarities of these universal values consists in the fact that they are addressed to every person, they are valid for any time and can be expressed through feelings, will, and reason. This simultaneous abstraction and accessibility of values allows them to be the "last ground" of morality, to be the universal criterion and the determinant authority of moral processes and moral relations between people.

Dov Talpaz, "The So Called Morality" image source

Most commonly, the universal values are presented in the form of religious moral codes that guarantee not only the faith of the religious man, but also the main direction of behavior, the ways of the believer's coming. Of course, we should not overestimate the element of religious belief in these universal codes of common values. And the ecclesiastical values have their origins in the distant past, when man has become a common criterion and a fundamental purpose of relationships in the clan and the tribe. This distant time seems to have been the end of the generic system when the idea and the notion of personality began to form, and the latter has already gained the right to oppose the genus and the community, and it is therefore necessary to come to life guarantees and the freedom of the individual person. Thus human values emerge, emphasizing on the natural rights of the individual - the right to life, personal indulgence, respect for the honor and dignity of the individual, protection of children, mothers and elders. All human values are therefore the concentrated expression of human love showing not only the rights of the individual, but also the obligations of the community and the individual members of that community. These universal values are usually expressed by universal commandments. The latter seem to show the rights and obligations of mankind in the individual, and the rights and obligations of the individual person to humanity and the community.

This code may in general be expressed by the following commands, possessing universal force guaranteeing the human dwelling and the theory of personality activity. However, all human values can not be a valid criterion of morality, valid for all times, circumstances and people. This finding was also known to Aristotle, who finds that ethics can not reach an adequate truth, addressed to all and credible to all. Because moral experience is incomplete, the circumstances and situations for the realization of the moral process can not be "calculated" and foreseeable, the moral necessity is not limited to physical causality and mechanical conditioning. This relative variability of the universal values must lead to one conclusion: these values are a criterion (model) that serves as an incentive for the activity and the motivational sphere. All-human values for this are the ideal standard to which collective consciousness seeks, and the individual's individual conviction of the moral person. That is why the universal values can not be qualified as the whole morality, the only moral paradigm. It seems that the functions of these values are mainly three: first, a goal to be pursued by the perpetrator of moral behavior; second, an incentive for the motive and behavior of the perpetrator, a third specific criterion on which one or other actions should be equated. If these functions are absolutized, it can easily be either moralisation or moral hypocrisy, justifying bad intentions with superior intentions.