Typically, the words morality and ethics are used interchangeably; they are often used as synonyms. But what is meant by the concept of morality? The term “morality” is the identification of free will, that is, the internal attitude of the individual, the foundation for which is a number of norms, ideas and principles. She is able to determine how a person will behave in a given situation.
The fact is that moral qualities are formed every day and every minute and from the moment of making a direct decision. We can safely say that the level of morality directly depends on what country a person came from and what his attitude towards himself and people is. Society highlights its own ideals and invites people to live up to them. But after all, every person is, first of all, an individual, and he has not recently left the incubator, so he must necessarily have his own opinion.
What is morality and who is a moral person?
Morality is a set of values, principles and stereotypes of thinking that are incentives for actions. This phenomenon is social in nature, as it is determined primarily by the influence of society on a person.
Moral norms can be universal in nature, or they can be specific, characteristic only of a given social system or society. For example, the ban on killing and eating one’s own kind is universal. Cannibalism in all highly developed animals, and especially in humans, is an exception to the rule. In all mammals it is in the nature of a program failure, temporary insanity. In humans, cannibalism occurs due to chronic hunger or is of a ritual-magical nature.
However, even in humans, the prohibition against killing one’s own kind contains many exceptions. You can't kill your own, but you can kill strangers. This exception is especially evident during war, when people receive the moral and legal right to kill their own kind. At the same time, the criteria for dividing people into friends and strangers can be very different.
The attitude towards women can serve as specific moral norms. Polygamy can simultaneously be considered as an infringement of women's rights or as a regional feature of the family structure. Condemnation or approval of moral norms depends on the conditions under which a given person formed his value system.
The meaning of morality is that it performs the following functions:
- reproduction of individuals who stabilize the state of a given society (spontaneous morality, formed by the mechanism of following the example of behavior that is normal for a given community);
- protecting people from immoral, that is, dangerous and destructive acts (moral behavior as a guarantee of the security of individuals);
- reproduction of the state of society through the continuity of ethical standards.
Thus, a moral person is a member of society who lives according to the norms accepted in this society. However, this definition needs clarification. The fact is that a person who lives according to his own moral laws, which are not recognized by society, can be considered moral. This person can be guided by the norms, for example, of universal humanism.
An example is the position of people protesting against the extermination of rare species of animals. From the point of view of this community, such a position may be considered immoral, since environmental measures deprive many people of their income. However, species protection is carried out in order to maintain the ecological environment in a state favorable for people through the conservation of biodiversity.
Ways to develop moral qualities
The development of any positive characteristic is based on the development of appropriate habits. The easiest way to start is with one good deed a day, even a small one. After some time, this will become a habit; helping people will begin automatically.
You can reward yourself for strong-willed victories. For example, if you managed not to show a negative quality, you can praise yourself and do good.
So, moral and ethical qualities are characteristics of a person that can be described through the concepts of good and evil. The same qualities may manifest themselves differently in different situations, but there is a certain set of characteristics that people consider predominantly positive or negative.
Golden Rule of Morality
This rule was formed a long time ago among peoples of different cultures. It consists of 2 versions of wording. They, despite the semantic opposite of sound, describe the same phenomenon.
- Don't do to people what you wouldn't want for yourself. This is a negative ethical rule. It denies an action if it causes harm to a person.
- Treat people the way you would like them to treat you. This is a positive norm that encourages action.
The moral principle of this rule is that each person in this case creates a semblance of a perpetual motion machine. Wishing the best for himself, he automatically wishes the same for all other people. This is a boomerang that will definitely return to the one who threw it.
The golden rule of morality is aimed at reproducing the moral norms of a given society. However, if we are talking about the universal values of human society, this rule unites all the people of the planet into a single whole.
It can operate at the following levels:
- individual (person-to-person relationship);
- social (relationships between communities of people);
- interstate (relationships between countries and their blocs).
Moral life in the general philosophical sense consists of fulfilling the golden rule at all levels of the hierarchical organization of human society.
About increasing complexity
It's nice to feel good and moral. Don't steal, don't lie, eat healthy food... (oh, no, that's different), don't kill - these are obvious truths!
Today, however, life constantly forces us to make increasingly difficult choices: neither the biblical sages, nor Aristotle, nor Kant had to think about genetic experiments, feminist scandals or the ethically questionable production of Chinese sneakers.
The world is becoming too fast and complex, and it is no longer possible to use the Ten Commandments, unambiguous virtues or an imperative formulated once and for all as a universal tool and guide to action. Representatives of different eras, nationalities and even social groups evaluate many phenomena far from the same. It is enough to remember how attitudes towards euthanasia, abortion, contraception, religious intolerance, gender scripts or hierarchy change, and the seemingly indestructible monolith of moral principles shatters into small fragments.
Research shows that our moral paradigms are not static. Thus, Australian scientists analyzed the frequency and context of the use of “moral” terms in literature from 1900 to 2007. It turned out that some concepts become extremely popular in one era, and in another, humanity seems to forget about them. For example, ideas related to holiness and piety, as well as sin and pollution, almost disappeared from discourse by 1980, only to suddenly re-emerge closer to the 21st century.
Principles and norms of moral behavior
Moral behavior is that which is aimed at stabilizing society. There are no exceptions to this rule, although they are believed to occur occasionally.
For example, criminal communities live by rules that are detrimental to the society in which people who do not break the law live. The paradoxical phrase “honest thief” means that this person lives according to the laws of his criminal community. Every community has its own ethics. People who do not recognize the ethical rules of the criminal community are called “scumbags.” This means that they are not people, but something similar to zombies.
Even among people who oppose themselves to society, there are unshakable values that are not associated, for example, with the craft of thieves. This is a family that gives a person a feeling of a strong rear and bright hope. All nations have a cult of the mother, that is, a person who will never betray and will always love.
All peoples have a cult of ancestors. In modern society it is poorly expressed. This is due to the weakening role of old people in maintaining the stability of the family and society. The emphasized respect for the elderly is due to the fact that they have always been the keepers of knowledge. Nowadays knowledge is stored in other sources, but the need for respect for the elderly remains.
This is due to caring for the weaker members of society. People in modern society have the luxury of caring for those who do not provide any material benefit. A person has an instinct to care for children, but there is no instinct to care for the elderly, weak and sick people. This concern must be shaped and supported by morality.
Rituals are of great importance in the formation of a morally educated person. People should develop the habit of behaving in such a way that life in society for each member is peaceful and calm. Such rituals include:
- greetings (“hello” as a wish for good health upon meeting, “goodbye” as a wish to meet in the future);
- actions in relation to special categories of people (provide comfortable conditions for the elderly, sick people);
- ban on words of an offensive nature (obscene language, epithets degrading human dignity).
These are examples of what constitutes ethical human behavior. Such rituals are of great importance. Caring for the weak creates a stock of genetic and intellectual diversity in society. A person in a wheelchair can contribute much more to society than a strong and healthy bodybuilding enthusiast.
Parents who teach their children to give up their seats to elders on public transport are taking care of themselves and their children. Such a ritual becomes a habit for most members of society. As a result, in a few decades, descendants who were once taught to give up their seats on the bus will take care of aging people.
The ban on uttering obscene words in a public place, and especially in the presence of children and women, has ancient origins. All obscene words convey a negative and derogatory attitude towards the reproductive organs and functions. This is a curse aimed at destroying positive attitudes not only towards childbearing, but also towards mothers and children. Parents who swear in front of their children destroy the lives of their children and, accordingly, society.
Does a primary school teacher have the moral right to earn extra money in the evenings at a strip club?
If you don’t like thinking about it, then you have high demands on teachers on the fifth point (cleanliness). Do native Muscovites have any preferences over visitors? This is about group membership and fairness. Should all residents of the area be required to help victims of domestic violence? A matter of care.
Everyone can evaluate their system of moral attitudes according to the five listed parameters and note whether changes occur over time and what factors influence this.
Science knows that the views of an entire society change from era to era. Thus, psychologists from the University of Melbourne have found that care, compassion and safety are more important to us now than forty years ago, and, for example, the value of respect for authority has noticeably decreased since the beginning of the 20th century.
So, moral imperatives should be considered intermediate results of cultural evolution. How can you develop the necessary qualities in yourself without waiting for the next social paradigm to change?
Moral Issues
Morality in modern society has significant differences from what it was in other times. The evolution of social systems is aimed at complicating their structure and strengthening the formal component of morality, that is, laws, the implementation of which is controlled by the state. Against this background, moral norms of a spontaneous nature are weakening. This is the main problem of the moral climate of modern society.
The problem of youth morality
It is believed that young people are a category of the population that especially needs education and training. However, the point is not only that young people lack knowledge and principles gained through life experience.
The problem also lies in the fact that people in the age range from 12 to 30 years (the conventional age of youth) are prone to rebellious behavior. This is due not only to the special energy of age. Adults perceive early adolescence as a period of preparation for entering society. This gender inequality causes rejection among young people, which can manifest itself in aggressive acts of a hooligan nature.
This problem is solved by involving young people in the life of society. In the USSR, a system of children's and youth organizations was built for this purpose: from October students to Komsomol members. If we discard the costs of such involvement in the form of too strict ideological control, then we can conclude that such a system well reproduced the moral standard of a person in a given society.
In our time, the functions of educating young people have been transferred to state educational institutions. In this case, the main problem should be considered the influence of television and the Internet. Such influence does not always create the image of a creative person. For young people, the image of a sadist cultivated on the Internet, asserting himself by humiliating another, may be attractive. This invasion of spontaneous stimuli is a big problem in the modern education of youth.
Affect exit
Kohlberg, as a supporter of the rational approach, connected moral development with logical development: the higher our cognitive level and the more complex our inferences, the closer we are to the top of that same ladder of six steps.
Today, a number of researchers who study morality take a different position and believe that our reasoning is based not on rational arguments, but on emotions. Sometimes we even use logic to rationally and shamelessly justify an action committed intuitively. Such cases of “moral confusion” have been shown in experiments where participants solved an ethical dilemma straight away, and then spent a long, long time trying to explain how the hell they did it.
In fact, both factors matter—feelings and reasoning. The difference is in the approaches: rationalist scientists focus on cognitions (this or that behavior is primarily a “product” of thinking), while “intuitionists” believe that the main thing is a feeling, an erupted emotion.
It is clear that the second approach will not gain popularity in pedagogy and education. Forming an emotional reaction is more difficult than teaching someone to cheerfully talk about rays of light in a dark kingdom.
Morals and ethics
Morality must be distinguished from morality. If morality is understood as a phenomenon characteristic of any human (scientists argue that not only human) society, then morality is rather of a private nature. Everyone has their own morals. It manifests itself in a set of rules imposed by a given society. A person who perceives the moral norms of society as his own becomes a natural part of this community.
If we use figurative comparisons, then morality is like the house in which a given society lives. This house is filled with morality, that is, a set of principles, rules, traditions and prohibitions.
Morality is divided into 2 parts: primary and secondary. The primary morality is formed by the people. It is consolidated only in the mechanisms of society’s approval or disapproval of people’s actions. Moral rules enshrined in religious canons can also be included in this category.
Secondary morality is manifested in laws adopted at the state level. Laws consolidate and develop those norms that have been the principles and rules for the functioning of various communities for thousands of years.
What are moral qualities
Moral qualities are closely related to the concepts of good and evil. Certain actions in a particular society are considered positive, others - negative. Any person should be able to take responsibility for his actions, and moral qualities are guidelines pointing to the direction in which to move and what should not be done.
Definition in psychology
Many definitions have been given to the concept of “moral qualities”. The most common of them sounds like this. Moral qualities are the totality of all characteristics that speak of a person as a conscious person. They are expressed in a person's actions and manners. By his behavior, outsiders can judge the presence or absence of specific character traits.
All these moral and ethical qualities are divided into three categories:
- Can. These are individual rights that do not conflict with either social norms or the values of a particular person. They don't harm other people, but they don't have to. For example, everyone has the right to manage their money as they wish.
- It is forbidden. These are actions that can cause negative emotions in strangers or even cause harm to them. Some of them are spelled out in the criminal code. An example of a rule from the “no” category - it is prohibited to manage other people’s money if the owner has not lent it or has not authorized it.
- Need to. These are rules that have social value, but are not important for the person himself.
Important ! Moral qualities can conflict with each other. For example, a doctor does not want to treat a murderer and rapist, but wants to do his job responsibly.
The moral qualities of a person are based on intellect, will and emotions. A person has to constantly solve ethical problems. The answer to how best to act is not always on the surface.
If a person does something unacceptable, he feels guilty, his conscience awakens when he does something wrong. This mechanism shows that these actions should not be performed in the future. Conscience is the emotional component of moral qualities.
Kind child loves a cat
Will is realized when a socially significant action has no value for the person himself.
Morality in culture
The term "culture" has a double meaning. If we talk about culture of behavior, then this is the standard of norms accepted in society. In this case, culture becomes synonymous with ethics. However, most often culture is associated with art, including folk art.
The culture of the people is embodied in songs, dances, special clothing styles, folklore, painting and other artistic products. The importance of such a culture for the education of a moral person cannot be overestimated. It fosters a sense of pride in one’s people, a desire to belong to this community, to be its faithful defender.
Modern morality and religion
Any religion is a set of moral rules, once formed by a people living in specific natural conditions. Islam is the ideology of the nomads of the arid zone. Christianity reflects the mentality of settled farmers in the Middle East and Europe. Buddhism is generated by the cultural characteristics of the peoples of South Asia. All these religions are similar in one thing - they cultivate moral qualities.
In modern society, scientific knowledge predominates. However, religions do not die out. This phenomenon can be explained simply: religions unite and educate people. They give a person a feeling of belonging to a community of like-minded people. This affiliation requires a return from a person: in his behavior he must comply with the moral standards of a given religious culture.
Is there a connection between morality and human spirituality?
Spirituality is usually associated with religiosity, because in religion the main value is the soul. However, now spirituality is considered in science as a source of creativity and self-actualization, that is, the desire to maximize one’s capabilities.
Spirituality is opposed to the material world and mercantile aspirations. In a primitive version of the definition, spirituality can be considered as the predominance of the needs of the soul over the needs of the body.
A spiritualized person is obviously moral. This statement is based on the fact that immorality is based on the predominance of bodily needs over spiritual ones. Like every categorical judgment, this rule is conditional. However, any moral education contributes, first of all, to the development of the spiritual principle in a person. So morality and spirituality are phenomena that are closely related to each other. Spirituality is a high morality that promotes the predominance of self-restraint over external restrictions.
Moral: coordinate axes
Morality, in addition to holiness and piety, affects other important categories. In a broad sense, it represents norms regarding behavior in society. But what exactly does this mean? How to describe morality?
One of the pioneers in the field of moral studies, American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, believed that the foundation on which we build the edifice of rules and prohibitions is a matter of justice. Kohlberg's colleague, feminist and psychologist Carol Gilligan, criticized this approach.
In her opinion, there are two ways to be moral: one is male, with an emphasis on justice, and the second is female, which is based on concern for people, when the marker of a person’s moral qualities becomes his attitude towards others.
After reviewing a number of anthropological works, Craig Joseph from Northwestern University and psychologist Jonathan Heid, in addition to the two named, identified three more moral foundations. The final list looks like this:
1) justice - the desire for equality and the desire to avoid bias are important;
2) caring or protecting the weak - what leads to suffering is wrong;
3) loyalty or group affiliation - the priority is loyalty to family, community or even nation;
4) hierarchy or respect for authority - those who are not respectful or disrupt order are ostracized;
5) purity or holiness - violators of the code of piety are considered wicked, tainted.
Today, any discussion on an ethical topic can be reduced to one of these lines.
Education of morality
Any person living in society is constantly under the influence of moral education. He sees before himself an example of the behavior of other people. His actions are approved or condemned by other people. And this is also education.
During the war, when children became street children and gathered in isolated groups, a big problem arose in the fight against banditry of juvenile delinquents. Children's gangs were worse than adults. They were particularly cruel and insolent. The reason was that children did not go through a period of being raised by adults.
Systematic and organized moral education is always necessary. People of any age, education and status need the corrective influence of society. Only under this condition is the social evolution of people possible.
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