Quotes About Morality

The problem with this understanding of autonomy is that shared values serve the important function of making social life possible.

For Nietzsche, the very essence of man was neither his desire nor his reason, but his thymos: man was above all a valuing creature, the "beast with red cheeks" who found life in his ability to pronounce the words "good" and "evil.

Eski öjeni, uygun olanlar?n yetiÅŸtirilmesi ve uygun görülmeyenlerin yok edilmesi amac?yla sürekli seçme iÅŸlemi gerektirirdi. Yeni öjeni ise uygun olmayanlar?n her birinin olas? en yüksek genetik düzeye ç?kart?lmalar?na ilkece olanak verecektir.

Philip Rieff, who argued that the decline of a shared moral horizon defined by religion had left a huge void that was being filled by psychologists preaching a new religion of psychotherapy.

the concept of "amoral familism," whose code he describes as "Maximize the material, short-run advantage of the nuclear family; assume that all others will do likewise." Cooperation

Whether or not true free will exists, virtually all human beings act as if it does, and evaluate each other on the basis of their ability to make what they believe to be genuine moral choices.

The substantive conservative critique of liberalism—that liberal societies provide no strong common moral horizon around which community can be built—is true enough. This is indeed a feature and not a bug of liberalism. The question for conservatives is whether there is a realistic way to roll back the secularism of contemporary liberal societies and reimpose a thicker moral order.

To deceive the state, strangers, or even associates is accepted, and often applauded as evidence of cleverness.

Many modern democratic constitutions thus enshrine the principle of equal dignity. They are drawing on the Christian tradition that sees dignity rooted in human moral agency. But that agency is no longer seen in a religious sense, as the ability to accept God; rather, it is the ability to share in the exercise of power as a member of a democratic political community.

an autonomous self that has been detached from all prior loyalties and commitments "is not to conceive of an ideally free and rational agent, but to imagine a person wholly without character, without moral depth":

To truly esteem oneself means that one must be capable of feeling shame or self-disgust when one does not live up to a certain standard

There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness.

When morality is reduced to personal tastes, people exchange the moral question, What is good? for the pleasure question, What feels good?

If morality is reducible to culture, then there can be no real moral progress. For the only way one can say that a culture is getting better , or progressing, is if there are objective moral norms that are not dependent on culture to which a society may draw closer.

PC advocates deny the existence of objective knowledge and morality, and thus see no point in employing moral suasion and logical argument to convince their fellow citizens that their viewpoint is correct. Their only means available is therefore using the instruments of political power, such as coercion, intimidation, marginalization, and name-calling. To put it philosophically: Ideas are not the power by which to change the world, but rather, the world's ideas are changed by power.

For abortion opponents believe that a class of persons are being killed by such methods as dismemberment, suffocation, and burning, and thus are more than perplexed to be told that they don't have to participate in the killings if they don't want to. Saying 'If you don't like abortion, don't have one.' to those opposed to abortion is similar to telling abolitionists not to own slaves if they don't like slavery.

There are two kinds of oughts, and there are two ways to be wrong about something. We can be wrong by being irrational, or we can be wrong by being unethical. Morality deals with the second.

We don't invent morality; we discover it like we discover multiplication tables.

Does a 'greased palm' offer a 'slippery shake'?

It is the awareness of right and wrong, along with the development of language, awareness of self, and the ability to imagine the future, to which scientists generally refer when trying to enumerate the special qualities of Homo sapiens

When we proclaim that someone is subhuman, we not only remove for them the possibility of change and repentance, we also remove from them moral responsibility.

an essay in the Human Rights Reader, Rorty suggested that the basis for human rights is not rationality or moral law but "what Baier calls 'a progress of sentiments.'…It is the result of what I have been calling 'sentimental education.'"17 So the basis for morality, in Rorty's view, is "sentiment." We are back to preferences and tastes. But whose sentiments? Rorty's? A Nazi's? Or someone else's?