Variations in Moral Codes and Strategies Used - Essay Example

While Kant worked towards laying a foundation for ethics and morality that would enable many of the tenets that people believe in to have a firm grounding, Hume explored the variations in the cultural codes that in turn, were in many ways responsible for variations in moral codes.

One of the most important strategies that are used by moral philosophers is to look at the universal principles that seem to drive the activities of people. This can be done through a systematic analysis of cross-sections of people who would then provide frameworks that are followed on a general basis. This would then be accepted as the norm which would then be accepted as the bedrock of the society’s morality.

Another strategy that is used is to provide the basis of morality and ethics in reason and the abilities of the individual to ascertain the suitability of a certain action. This was also to a great extent the result of the thought of Kant and other enlightenment philosophers who held reason to be the greatest defining feature of man and thought of it as being able to solve the greatest problems that mankind has when it comes to moral dilemmas.

Another way in which the problem can be dealt with is to understand the relativity of morality when it comes to different communities and people. There are people who believe that there is no possibility of understanding any form of ultimate truths that may enable the laying of a framework that would be able to define acts that are committed in a moral way. This approach is termed ethical skepticism. This approach made it possible for other approaches that did not argue for a monolithic view of morality, to flourish. Ethical relativism may be considered to be one of these approaches. It favors no particular code of morality over the other and recognizes the importance of the uniqueness of each culture and in some cases, each individual.

Extremes of this approach may lead to problematic situations in society. However, it is better placed than the other approaches that have been referred to in this essay to assess the moral codes of a society that is multicultural and multilinguistic in its composition. A globalized world is unable to take positions on morality that a philosopher like Kant or Hume may have sought to establish because of the lack of organicity in the society of which it is a phenomenon. This may thus, be the best approach for a world that is not organic in the way that earlier societies were. This is thus, what needs to be seen as the best strategy to understand morality in a world that is globalized and multicultural.