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THE ART OF BEING
HUMAN
9TH EDITION
Chapter 11:
Morality
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DEFINITION
Morality – the study of moral systems by
which significant choices are made.
Moral – an adjective indicating a choice
between significant options, based on
principles derived from reason, family
teachings, education, religion or law.
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MORALITY IN THE ARTS
Moral themes can be found in all the
arts.
 Literature - The Scarlet Letter
 Cinema – The Godfather
 Music – Saint Matthew’s Passion
 Art - Guernica
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THE MORALITY OF SELFINTEREST
Works that consider the question:
• Plato – Republic
• Sartre – The Respectful Prostitute
• Bolt – A Man for All Seasons
• O’ Connor – “The Idealist”
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THE MORALITY OF SELFINTEREST
Enlightened Self-Interest
• Machiavelli – The Prince
• Hobbs - Leviathan
Politically enlightened self-interest was the
only possible means to a stable and
harmonious society.
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THE MORALITY OF SELFINTEREST
Economics and Self-Interest
• Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations
In a perfect society, people are free to
pursue economic self-interest as long as
they do not break the law. Greed itself is
not immoral but a natural condition of
humanity.
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THE MORALITY OF SELFINTEREST
Transcending Self-Interest: Altruism
Altruism – the quality of acting out of
concern for the welfare of others rather
than one’s own.
• Dickens's – A Tale of Two Cities
• Hemingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls
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MORAL AUTHORITIES
Jeremy Bentham – Moral Mathematics
• the greatest good for the greatest numbers
• Swift – “ A Modest Proposal”
John Stuart Mill – Liberalism
• the majority can be wrong, and the
government must balance the irresponsibility
of the general population.
• Mill – The Tyranny of the Majority
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MORAL AUTHORITIES
Immanuel Kant - The Moral Imperative
The moral imperative – the inborn capacity to
understand what is right and wrong , “the sense
of ought.”
Choices and actions are morally acceptable and
unacceptable.
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MORAL AUTHORITIES
Religion and Morality
The major religions of the world –
Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam –all provide “moral orientation” for
most of the world’s population.
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MORAL AUTHORITIES
Work and Morality
The workplace is for many the means to the
good life where there is world of friendship,
trust and security – qualities of altruism – but it
can be an adversarial world of others working
for self-interest.
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MORAL AUTHORITIES
Moral Relativism
• the belief that right and wrong have no
definite universal meaning but must be
defined within a given context.
• the opposite of moral absolutism, in
which actions are right or wrong,
regardless of the context.
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MORAL AUTHORITIES
Feminist Morality
• Many cultural and religious traditions have
been dominated by the male-point of view.
• Feminist ethics maintain that universal and
impartial standards are difficult to apply when
gender differences are ignored.
• Women’s ways of feelings and needs may
alter the moral nature of situations.
Pearson Longman © 2009