Right or Wrong? How do we define moralities? h
What is morality? My definition of morality is: doing the right thing for the right reason. What does it mean though? I would say that it means using your knowledge and concept of what is right and what’s wrong to live in a society. The way and reasons that you act affects people around you. Your principles should define who you are and also build your morality. Having a good or bad behavior comes from your morality, it’s your personal belief of what is right and what is wrong. There’s not a unique answer to define morality however we live in a society so we must decide what moral we are using to keep people in harmony.
Reading about utilitarianism and Kant’s ideas made me think about our society and it’s moralities. I personally agree most with Kant, I found very interesting the point that he made about how humans are selfish even when doing a good action. If you think about it, doing a good action just to get something in return is not doing a good action, because you are not doing for others you are doing for yourself. In my opinion Kant is right and closest to define morals and how humans live. He made some good points trying to explain how we act in some situations, the reasons why we do what we do. Our morals would apply to our actions he divides it in two ways. One way you are guided for good reasons, morals and what you believe is right, the other way relates to you doing something good because you pretend to get something from it, he says if your reasons are guided for the second way you shouldn’t be doing it. So is it moral to help poor people just because you would get a prize in return? Or even help your parents when they ask just because you get the car on the weekend ? I mean of course we have to get things for ourselves but is it moral? I don’t think is moral to say that you made something for people if you were just thinking to benefit yourself. It would be moral if you truly did it to help someone else knowing that you wouldn’t get anything in return. Good actions should come from your heart. That’s why I agree mostly with Kant when we are talking about morals.
Utilitarianism relates to have a justification for an action, I mean you justify a bad behavior saying that it was for the best. They believe that everything that brings happiness can be justified (for some situations I agree but I don’t think is moral). The fact that your bad action resulted in a good action does not justify your first action as moral. However I do agree that we should think about pleasure over pain as they believe but again I don’t think is moral. My point is sometimes we can’t put morality above everything, we should think about the bad and good that an action would cause. Sometimes what’s moral brings more pain than good. That’s why I kinda of like to combine both ideas into one to have a balanced ways to determine morals.
Let’s use the example of killing a murder. You can argue that you are doing something for the good of your society cause the action will bring more happiness than pain. It’s better killing one person than letting this one person killing a thousand. However if the murdered killed his father because he was being beaten his action would be justified. Kant would say that it’s wrong killing him because is not moral it would be wrong. The murder would have to go to jail because is the right thing to do. Killing is against a society’s morals, on killing him we would be being selfish and thinking about our on good and not thinking about someone’s life. Even though I agree with Kant in most of his arguments I think on this case moral won’t justify the cause. Killing a murder would be the best option. It would be the best option to our society and it will also prevent others crimes like this one because people would be scared of getting killed.
So I think both of the arguments are valid, they have good ideas and concepts of morality. I personally agree more with Kant but it doesn’t mean that I don’t believe on the other argument, I think both are important to our society and both are relevant to be discussed.