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Moonshoe
Blue Mantis


Registered: 05/28/04
Posts: 27,202
Loc: Iceland
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What is the opposite position to moral relatavism?
#5441476 - 03/25/06 04:18 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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5 shrooms for the answer to this question:
what is the correct term, in academic philosophy, for the position OPPOSITE moral relatavism, which is the "theory, especially in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but are relative to the persons or groups holding them."
realism? universalism? absoluteism? fundamentalism?
what ism is it please ? writing an essay
many thanks peace
Moonshoe
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Everything I post is fiction.
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dblaney
Human Being

Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 7,894
Loc: Here & Now
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Re: What is the opposite position to moral relatavism? [Re: Moonshoe]
#5441488 - 03/25/06 04:21 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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Moral absolutism is the position that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act.
Moral relativism is a belief that moral truths are relative to social, cultural, historical or personal references, and to situational ethics, which holds that the morality of an act depends on the context of the act.
(courtesy of Wikipedia)
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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Moonshoe
Blue Mantis


Registered: 05/28/04
Posts: 27,202
Loc: Iceland
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was kant a moral absolutist? and Mill? [Re: dblaney]
#5441519 - 03/25/06 04:38 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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thanks dbalney , you win the first prize. Now the question is: is kant a moral absolutist? what about mill?
5 shrooms for answers.
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Everything I post is fiction.
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dblaney
Human Being

Registered: 10/03/04
Posts: 7,894
Loc: Here & Now
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Re: was kant a moral absolutist? and Mill? [Re: Moonshoe]
#5441539 - 03/25/06 04:47 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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I don't think Kant would fit easily into either category, he created his own morality called the Categorical Imperative, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant#Kant.27s_moral_philosophy
Don't know a whole lot about Mill.
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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BlueCoyote
Beyond


Registered: 05/07/04
Posts: 6,697
Loc: Between
Last seen: 3 years, 16 days
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Re: was kant a moral absolutist? and Mill? [Re: Moonshoe]
#5441826 - 03/25/06 06:13 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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I think Kant leaves both sides, as he states his categoral imperative as an absolute into thin air out of his bare ass.
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shroomydan
exshroomerite


Registered: 07/04/04
Posts: 4,126
Loc: In the woods
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Re: What is the opposite position to moral relatavism? [Re: Moonshoe]
#5442004 - 03/25/06 07:30 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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One could easily (and correctly I believe) argue that Kant's morality was absolute, in that a categorical imperative is a must do which applies to all members of a category. The category to which Kant's imperative applies is all rational beings. It is therefore absolute for all rational beings, including humans.
In reality, all morality is relative. The morality, ethics, or aesthetics which is called absolute merely implies there there is one thing to which everything else is relative. Hence "absolute morality" is that which is relative to the absolute. The absolute usually implies God, but for Kant, the absolute was the category of rational being, of which God was the foremost, however, God was but one of many rational beings who were legislators in the Kingdom of ends-in-themselves.
If you haven't read the Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals, the above may not make sense.
Simplified: Kant's morality is absolute in the sense that it applies universally to all rational beings. Because only rational being are capable of moral action, the category of rational beings encompasses the entirety of the moral universe, so the categorical imperative can be rightly called absolute morality.
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EternalCowabunga
Being of Great Significance


Registered: 04/04/05
Posts: 7,152
Loc: Time and Space
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Re: What is the opposite position to moral relatavism? [Re: shroomydan]
#5444025 - 03/26/06 01:25 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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Not only is Kant's morality absolute in the sense that it applies universality to all rational beings, but for another reason too. Kant believed that a bad thing to do was always a bad thing to do - for instance, lying. For Kant, lying was ALWAYS wrong even if it would save a life. So yes, I think you could call Kant an absolutist, definitely.
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