Moral differences

Immigrants helped to fuel the growth of the United States; they brought with them their beliefs shaped by former government and religious associations. In their new homeland, some beliefs would prevail while others would fade as cultures became integrated. The Age of Enlightenment was a cultural movement that began in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and spread to the American colonies.

Support Aeon Donate now When Halloween rolled around last year, my wife and I were prepared to be greeted by scores of eager trick-or-treaters.

An encyclopedia of philosophy articles written by professional philosophers.

Guided by the thought that too much candy was better than too little, we bought entirely too much, and simply poured the excess on to a platter in our living room. I have a sweet-tooth. When I returned from work that evening, I noticed the platter was empty.

Just like that, my cycle of transgression and guilt was broken. The first is that I did not overcome my vice so much as manage it.

While Plato and Aristotle were concerned with character-centred virtue ethics, the Aztec approach is perhaps better described as socially-centred virtue ethics. Instead, according to the Aztecs, we should look around to our family and friends, as well as our ordinary rituals or routines, if we hope to lead a better, more worthwhile existence.

This distinction bears on an important question: Must good people be moral saints, or can ordinary folk be good if we have the right kind of support? This matters for fallible creatures, like me, who try to be good but often run into problems. Yet it also matters for questions of inclusivity. If being good requires exceptional traits, such as practical intelligence, then many people would be excluded — such as those with cognitive disabilities.

That does not seem right. One of the advantages of the Aztec view, then, is that it avoids this outcome by casting virtue as a cooperative, rather than an individual, endeavour. At its core, Aztec virtue ethics has three main elements. Second is the idea of right action as the mean or middle way.

When I speak about the Aztecs — the people dominant in large parts of central America prior to the 16th-century Spanish conquest — even professional philosophers are often surprised to learn that the Aztecs were a philosophical culture. While a few of the pre-colonial hieroglyphic-type books survived the Spanish bonfires, our main sources of knowledge derive from records made by Catholic priests, up to the early 17th century.

Using the Latin alphabet, these texts record the statements of tlamatinime, the indigenous philosophers, on matters as diverse as bird-flight patterns, moral virtue, and the structure of the cosmos.

This particular section records the speeches following the appointment of a new king, when the noblemen appear to compete for the most eloquent articulation of what an ideal monarch should be and do.

He tries to articulate the character of excellent men and women, the standard he expects from his subjects. Of men, he says: And he is revered; in truth [nelli], he is taken to be a defender and sustainer.

He becomes like the silk cotton tree, like the cypress tree, by which everywhere people take refuge … [Yet] this same [virtuous] one weeps and sorrows.

Is there anyone who does not wish for happiness? Elsewhere, the meaning is clarified: A better goal, then, is to try to lead a rooted life, which they called neltiliztli: In this kind of life, one is able to manage the mistakes and slip-ups well, rather than avoid them altogether.

The history of Western ethics

The reward is not happiness necessarily, but the promise of a worthwhile life. For the Aztecs, a rooted life is one that is lived well, with excellence. Our word finds its origin in the Latin virtu, a metonymic expression that aims to capture what is best about a man vir — manliness, in brief.

The Aztecs also used a poetic expression for virtue: For example, in the confessional rite, which is also recorded as an edifying discourse in the sixth volume of the Florentine Codex, the confessor tells the penitent that before committing wrongs: You were excellent [ca ti-qualli, ca ti-yectli] when you were sent here … You were cast, perforated like a precious green stone, a bracelet, a precious turquoise.

The idea itself is clear: Afterwards, the confessor tells the penitent, one is unbalanced, filthy. For nobles, the penalty for public drunkenness was death.Notes on In a Different Voice by Carol Gilligan How do people make decisions about morality?

Gilligan has found that men and women use fundamentally different approaches. And since men have dominated the discussion of moral theory, women's perspective is often not taken seriously, and is considered to be less developed and sophisticated.

Thinks that once you see the differences, and once you see how seriously everybody takes their own morality, you end up as a, a moral relativist. You think that there's no way in which one moral system is better than another.

Act and Rule Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is one of the best known and most influential moral theories. Like other forms of consequentialism, its core idea is that whether actions are morally right or wrong depends on their timberdesignmag.com specifically, the only effects of actions that are relevant are the good and bad results that they produce.

1. Aims and Methods of Moral Philosophy. The most basic aim of moral philosophy, and so also of the Groundwork, is, in Kant’s view, to “seek out” the foundational principle of a “metaphysics of morals,” which Kant understands as a system of a priori moral principles that apply the CI to human persons in all times and cultures.

Kant pursues this project . To display the difference between fact and theory, a good example is when a report will state that a certain hurricane killed thousands in a particular state in America yesterday because of the reckless mass evacuation spearheaded by the local officials.

In this aspect, the fact is that many were killed by the hurricane while the theory is the reason . Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis [Jimmy Carter] on timberdesignmag.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. President Jimmy Carter offers a passionate defense of separation of church and state.

He warns that fundamentalists are deliberately blurring the lines between politics and religion. As a believing Christian.