Human Morals Evaluation - Essay Example

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Morals are the values that are concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong. Morals are concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human character and action. This implies that virtuous deeds are those that conform to standards of what is right or just in behavior. Moral behavior is defined as the action of a person who sympathetically takes into account the impact of his action on others (Ayala, 2010). Moral beliefs are the beliefs that one has about how to live life when one takes a sympathetic view of how the person’s life and decisions impact others. However, moral beliefs and values, the moral standards or morality have changed with time. It also depends upon the individual environment, individual experience, religion, and cultural environment that one grows up in. Morals are natural and morality is the expression of man’s innermost character (Johnston, 1916). Morals are spontaneous, honest, and straightforward; they are traditional and universal.

Human conduct involves not just consciousness but self-consciousness. Humans are the only moral beings endowed with the mind and reason, endowed with consciousness and self-consciousness, with personality, free will, and conscience (Stankov, n.d.). This implies that all humans possess moral strength – they are thinkers, workers, and creators, responsible for the harmony of the world. Stankov states that since the formation of the homo sapiens in prehistoric times, man’s nature acquired a moral sense. No other creature is responsible for all its deeds and humans are held responsible because they have been endowed with a moral sense.

Marxism treats consciousness as a derivative of the material process. However, attributes such as hatred, selfishness, and violence on the one hand and loving, caring, and fellow-feeling on the other, constitute the moral sphere and these are independent of the material process (Patnaik, 1995). The material sphere is also important for human existence but it has no connection with spiritual reality. Marx believes that the moral history of humankind has no parameters but is a derivative of material history. The human species possesses moral as well as physical structures both of which are essential to satisfy its needs. The psychic structure is the starting point of moral evolution.

Nietzsche believes that are no absolute morals and there are no moral systems that humans need to abide by. This implies that he does not believe in any moral system and the strong can overpower the weak by any system. He states in the Genealogy of Morals that there are no moral codes of conduct; there are no values or actions that are moral (Nietzsche, 2009). People interpret them as good or bad, moral or immoral. This view implies that human morals are not internal and that they do not drive or guide an individual from performing or not performing any act. It also suggests that there is no supreme power that guides us toward the right path. He is of the firm opinion that morals are created by humans, and interpreted by humans. According to him the “good people”, the noble, powerful, higher-ranking, and higher-thinking people, classify their actions as “good” and all other actions as low, low-minded, common, and vulgar. They thus create the pathos of distance and assume they have the right to create values. They then create their value system from their instincts and judgments.

Macbeath (1953) discusses Hobhouse’s Morals in Evolution and states that while tracing the growth of morals or the history of moral consciousness there was no evidence from anthropology or history when man was amoral or pre-moral. There is neither any record that the innate basis of character or intellect has changed either way. Therefore, contradicting Nietzsches’s contention, it can be argued that if there has been any development, it has been due to growth in the social traditions which has been handed down and modified from generation to generation. It becomes the tradition to take over the results of experience and the wisdom of others. Macbeth emphasizes that to trace moral progress we have to look into the moral ideas of different people, into the ideals entertained by the best men in their best moments. Moreover, if there has been any moral development, people would be at different stages of development. It is very difficult to trace moral progress because all have not passed through the same stages of growth and development. ...Download file to see next pages Read More