So outside of all the other branches, we inherently know that philosophy is about right or wrong.
First off, I’m not about to waste time picking apart the differences of morality and ethics. Either way we’re analyzing what it means for a behavior to be good or bad. So I may use them interchangeably.
There’s two approaches to this. Moral absolutism and relativism.
Absolutists are absolute. “You did wrong no matter what and you must be punished for it. What I can respect most is they want to avoid double standards.
Relativists approach it with a “Well it’s only bad if you see it as bad. Try to look at it this way”. They’re trying to be compassionate and empathetic which I also get.
Neither are that ideal. Those examples are the extreme versions of them. Absolutists don’t know how to adapt and consider context. Relativists like to move the goal posts and change things to fit what they want it to mean.
I don’t respect relativists because they never apply it to themselves. It’s always if someone else gets hurt we’re supposed to step back and try to be understanding. When it’s them who gets the short end of the stick now there’s no question the offender should be punished.
Absolutists can do this too, but in my experience it’s relativists who like to switch up when it benefits them. Either way very few people are that black & white with their values.
I know I seem biased towards relativism, I’m just concerned that if we all have our own meanings of what is right and what is wrong, and we live our lives and make decisions that affect other people based on those meanings, then we all just live in our own personal dictatorships. It’s one giant war of ‘my feelings are more valid than yours’. I gotta say this is probably the main reason we have the law, but even that’s not exempt from it.
Every culture, religion, and individuals have their own concept of morality, but overall, they always fall under one of the two. Even if they claim to be in the middle, they’re at least leaning to one side.
The TV show The Good Place attempts to quantify it with a point system. You gain points for doing good and lose points for doing bad. Even with that, the show acknowledges that has some flaws.
The main factor was intention. Some seem to think as long as they mean well, it excuses the end result of what they did.
And this gets into the famous phrase ‘the ends justify the means’. I generally agree with that, but if the means caused further damage, you didn’t solve the problem, you just exchanged it for another one. You’re setting your house on fire to kill a spider.
So you see there’s a whole ping pong with this subject. And it’s frustrating because it rarely leads to an answer. Even now I still don’t have one. I’m not about to waste my youth pondering about it unless I’m trying to make a decision.
And that’s it for now. I’m not getting back into this until I pick up a subject I can apply this to. That’ll likely be law or A.I. Outside of those, I already have a copy of Nietszche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra which I only picked up because I want to understand what the Ubermensch is supposed to mean. So I may get into that soon.
This is the most burnt-out branch of philosophy so don’t spend too much time thinking about it. Go outside and touch grass.
Grant Abraham 