Category Archives: Ethics
The theory of evolution is not responsible for Nazi bloodshed. Continue reading
David Hume said humans, in observing pain, experience that pain, too. Therefore, we want to alleviate the pain of other people, to ameliorate the suffering it causes within us. This empathy for our fellow humans constitutes the basis for treating them decently. Hume’s best friend Adam Smith, in his 1759 work The Theory of Moral Sentiments, agreed that instinctual empathy helped birth human morality. He wrote: How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his … Continue reading
Many religious believers claim God gives life meaning; without God, life would be meaningless. But I argue the contrary: We all make our own meaning. And, since there’s nothing but our actions and choices, that makes them all the more important. Continue reading
“Killing to Acquire and Secure Power, for Dummies” would be an apt subtitle for Niccolo Machiavelli’s book The Prince. Within this work, Machiavelli advocates the unrestrained pursuit of power as its own end, without allowing such paltry things as ethics to interfere. If massacring a slew of people will help one get power, one should by all means do it, according to Machiavelli. These advocacies of violence for one’s own selfish ends are not Machiavelli’s only breaks with the teachings … Continue reading
The most common definition of morality is knowledge of right and wrong. People use morality to justify their actions and decisions. Some individuals also try to impress their own morality upon other people in the belief that standards of right and wrong are the same for everyone. In her essay “On Morality,” Joan Didion objects to such thinking, saying that each person can have a different conception of morality. To illustrate her point, Didion first uses the examples of Klaus … Continue reading
Whenever an idiot teen with anger control problems decides that shooting people in the proper way to express rage, politicians of all political stripes say violence in the media is the cause. After the March 22 school shooting in El Cajon, California, Attorney General John Ashcroft proclaimed that movies and video games foster an “ethic of violence” that results in juvenile killing. People always need convenient scapegoats to blame for society’s problems. The practice of deflecting responsibility is certainly nothing … Continue reading
