MORALITY

According to Merriam
Dictionary, MORALITY is the
BELIEF of what is RIGHT
BEHAVIOR and what is
WRONG BEHAVIOR.
“There is the unmistakable intuition of
virtually every human being that he is free
to make the choices he does and that the
deliberation leading to those choices are
also free flowing. The normal feels too,
after he has made decision, that he could
have decided differently. That is why regret
or remorse for a past choices can be so
disturbing.”
One of the fundamental
theories upon which penal laws
are based declares that crimes
are punished because of the
presumption that act
constituting the offense is one
that is voluntary.
“Man is nothing else but
that which he makes of
himself”

- Jean-Paul Sartre
The first effect of existentialism
is that “it puts every man on
possessions of himself as he is,
and places the entire
responsibility for his existence
squarely upon his own
shoulders”.
Any ethical and moral
standard, whether subjective
or objective, is primarily based
on the VOLUNTARINESS OF
HUMAN ACTIONS.
On the existential view, to understand what a
human being is, it is not enough to know all the
truths that natural science including the science
of psychology could tell us.

Existentialism does not deny the validity of the

basic categories of physics, biology, psychology
and other sciences. It claims only that HUMAN
BEINGS cannot be FULLY UNDERSTOOD in
terms of them.
EXISTENTIALISM may be
defined as the philosophical
theory which holds that a further
set of categories, governed by the
NORM OF AUTHENTICITY, is
necessary to grasp HUMAN
EXISTENCE.
We are praised or rewarded for a good
deed, or punished for wicked one,
because we are free beings who are
hence, responsible for the
consequences of our actions.

BUT, ARE WE REALLY FREE?

You were all night, burning the midnight
oil, studying for your final exams. But in
spite of every ounce of effort you have
exerted and every caffeine you have taken.
Lady Luck seems to be frowning upon you
during the exam day. Then in your
moment of sheer agony, you saw one of
your classmate breezing through the test
questions, as he was being aided by his
improvised cheating machine.
WILL YOU REPORT YOUR CLASSMATE TO
YOUR TEACHER?
Or better yet, SHOULD you
inform your professor that your
classmate is cheating his way out
of the exam? Are you duty-
bounded to tell the truth at all
cost? Is lying always wrong?
Do we choose to be good or
bad? Or are we compelled
to be either? Are we really
free to choose who we want
to be, or the kind of person
we will become?
 Let us examine further…
Why are you in school? Is it because of your
passion for learning and the overwhelming desire
for excellence? Or is it due to the pre-constructed
social norm that associates education with social
status, diploma with good life, the façade of
universities with the luxurious hallways of big
companies, school uniforms with striking black
suits and dresses? Maybe because going to school
has already been crept deep in the veins of our
culture, that to break from the status quo would be
enter the gates of the discriminated and outcaste.
Nakasanayan… nakagawian.
Some psychologist believe that certain
people are more predisposed to
become good or wicked because of
their GENETIC MAKEUP.

Some scientist have even claimed that

a PERSON’S SEXUAL ORIENTATION
is largely determined by GENETICS,
rather than CHOICE.
It seems that we are not totally in
control- that there are exist some
compelling and irresistible forces that
drive us from doing things that are
contrary to what we actually want.

We are but puppets bound in the

strings of the unknown and uncertain.
Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to
outline upon the surface of the Earth, without his ever
being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is
born without his consent; his organization does in
nowise depend upon himself; his ideas come to him
involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who
cause him to contract them; his unceasingly modified
by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he
has no control, which necessarily regulate his mode of
existence, give the hue his way of thinking, and
determine his manner of acting. He is good or bad,
happy or miserable, wise or foolish, reasonable or
irrational, without his counting for anything in these
various states.
“No doubt you have heard the
argument that criminals who come
from poor or dysfunctional families,
or neighborhoods in which the main
role were drug dealers, are not
responsible for their crimes.”

This is the dilemma being posed by

the CONCEPT OF DETERMINISM.
DETERMINISM

Is the theory that everything

in the universe is governed
by causal laws.
“Human actions are NOT
UNDETERMINED, are NOT FREE in a
radical sense but are also PRODUCT
OF A CAUSAL PROCESS. Hence, while
we may self-importantly imagine that
we are autonomous and possess free
will, in reality, we are TOTALLY
CONDITIONED by heredity and
environment”
“Human freedom is merely an illusion, and
all our behavior is controlled by a network of
environmental, psychological and
sociological stimuli”

-B.F. Skinner
“The actions of man are never free; they are
always the NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE
of his temperament, of the received ideas,
and of the notions, either true or false,
which he has formed to himself of
happiness”

-Baron Henri d’Holbach

“Morality is concerned with what men
ought and ought not to do. But if a man
has no freedom to choose what he will
do, if whatever he does is done under
compulsion, then it does not make
sense to tell him that he ougth not to
have done what he did and that he
ought to do something different. All
moral precept would in such case be
meaningless.”
Determinism is correct in saying that we are
not totally in control – that there are certain
inevitable realities that are beyond our
hegemony.

There is no denying to the fact that humans

are rational conscious beings. We are aware
of our existence, and that of other beings.
“ If we are all absolutely determined, then
we all must deluded at the very heart of our
primary experience, for it seems that
almost all normal experience some degree
of freedom in choosing or being able to say
something about their own actions. In fact,
it would be difficult to conceive how men
could operate at all in this world without at
least the ‘feeling’ of being free”

- John Kavanaugh
It must be noted that the existence of
freedom does not mean that it has to be
absolute for there is no such thing as
absolute freedom.
“It is not a matter whether we
are free; it is a matter of how
we are to exercise our
freedom”
 Our BODY is the first limitation to our
freedom
“ My body is not only an object among all
other objects. A nexus of sensible qualities
among others, but an object which is
sensitive to all the rest which reverberates
to all sounds, vibrates to all colors and
provides words with their primordial
significance through the way in which it
receives them.”