Assessing Moral Values- Moral Relativism
| In your assignment this week, you will compare your view (absolutism, relativism or conceptualism) to one of the theories (Values, Deontology or Utilitarianism). A word essay, compare and contrast the view that you discussed in the discussion to one of the 3 major theories. In your examination, discuss the main views of each and explore how they are similar and dissimilar. |
Moral theories in society are set to direct the actions of people in order to maintain order and sanity by differentiating between what is right and wrong. However, this becomes a challenge when putting the theory of utilitarianism and absolutism into consideration. Absolutism is the belief in the moral standards to consider an action as wrong or right regardless of the situation, while in utilitarianism is the goodness of an action is based on the achievement of its desired outcomes. This paper compares and contrasts the absolutism and the theory of utilitarianism.
There exist various similarities between the theory of utilitarianism and absolutism as well as the differences. One major difference is that while the abolitionists embrace the moral conducts, customs, orders, taboos, and traditions provided by the society leaders as well as the supernatural beings, the utilitarians reject them and make judgments based on the circumstances at hand. In utilitarianism, the focus is majorly on the end results of action regardless of why it was taken while in absolutism, the actual actions and rules of what a person is doing are a major concern (Royzman, Landy & Leeman, 2015). In absolutism, people strive to reduce human suffering as they maximize happiness. In this regard, people tend to avoid killing the weak or innocent people in an attempt to achieve this goal. Abolitionists avoid the moral idea of killing the civilians in the effort to summon the enemy to capitulate, in case of a significant war (Leone, Giacomantonio & Lauriola, 2019). They reject this idea as morally permissible since the civilians are marginal targets and are deliberated as a means to terminate the war. However, in utilitarianism, such measures are considered necessary as long as they aid in achieving the set goal which is to increase happiness and end human suffering. According to Ehlers (2017), at times it becomes difficult to take the necessary actions without violating the moral standards of the others.
The absolute approach provides justification for any action taken which means that morality demands responsibility. In other words, it has some kind of fixed moral code of ethics and hence provides straightforward guidelines which mean that the rules are clear to follow (Ehlers, 2017). However, this poses as a weakness of this approach because it fails to provide a chance to take actions based on the circumstances, unlike utilitarianism which considers the situation. For instance, if a certain action would lead to the death of five people and another lead to the death of one person, utilitarianism would consider saving the five people and let the death of that one person. In this case, the theory of utilitarianism considers five people as a great loss compared to one person. In contrary, absolutism would consider all the people equally important and hence take the actions that would either save all the six individuals or kill them instead of saving the five people at the expense of the single individual.
