that in the case of the first person no problem exists; if I want or need something, then I have a reason to try to get
it, and so, rationally I ought to. The altruist, by contrast, does seem to have a problem. How could it follow from
the fact that you want or need something that I ought to try and get it for you? How can the needs of others
provide a compelling reason for me to act?
‘On what could the demands of morality be based?’ and this question raises just the same issue. Kantians
and utilitarians both assemble evidence and argument to show that impartial reason and/or the general good
point towards an individual’s taking a certain course of action. But what reason is there for that individual to
follow their prescription, especially if it implies some measure of self-sacrifice?
Ethics, Religion and the Meaning of Life
A general summary of the argument that has brought us to this point may be useful. One way of
approaching some central questions of ethics is to ask:‘ What is the best sort of life a human being can live?’ The
first answer considered was that given by the egoist: the best life is one in which you get what you want. There
are a variety of objections to this answer, but the most important is this. Egoism supposes that our wants and
desires are in some sense ‘there’ waiting to be satisfied, whereas the truth is that we are often uncertain about
what to want. We can intelligibly ask not merely about what we do want out of life, but about what we ought to
want. This question, however, egoism cannot answer. It follows that egoism is inadequate as a guide to good
living. Though it tells us what to do, given preexistent desires, it cannot help us critically form those desires. The
second was hedonism, the view that the good life is the life of pleasure. Hedonism goes one stage further than
egoism since it recommends not merely the pursuit of desires in general, but a certain specific desire – the desire
for pleasure. Consequently, hedonism cannot be charged with the sort of emptiness that egoism can. Moreover, it
appears to enjoy an advantage in arguments about good and bad, because pleasure is a value with natural appeal,
and hence a promising value upon which to build a philosophy of the good life. But hedonism is not without its
own difficulties.
Morality and Cultures
Peterson and Seligman [22] approached the anthropological view looking across cultures, geo-cultural
areas, and across millennia. They concluded that certain virtues have prevailed in all cultures they examined. The
major virtues they identified include wisdom / knowledge; courage; humanity; justice; temperance; and
transcendence. John Newton, the author of complete conduct principles for the 21st century [23] compared the
Eastern and the Western cultures about morality. As stated in his book, "One of the important objectives of this
book is to blend harmoniously the fine souls regarding conduct in the Eastern and the Western cultures, to take
the result as the source and then to create newer and better conduct principles to suit the human society of the
new century”. It is hoped that this helps solve lots of problems the human society of the 21st century faces.
The Authority of Morality
The problem faced by either the Kantian or the utilitarian conception of the moral life may be termed a
problem about the authority of morality – the claims of morality in the competition between personal desire and
social obligation. It is this problem that contractualism in many of its forms is intended to address. Suppose we
think of moral rules not as personal ideals but as the rules that people agree to live by. This suggestion is
attractive because, by putting agreement at the heart of morality, it bridges the gap between egoism and altruism,
a gap that appears to dog many of the most influential ethical theories. Contractualism aims to make promising or
contracting the foundation of social obligation, but closer examination shows that the most successful version of
this maneuver subsumes morality under politics and thus in effect eliminates it. Hobbes’s argument, if it works,
uncovers the basis of political authority, but it still leaves us with a problem about the authority of morality.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Review of the two most important moral theories leads to the following conclusions:
First; it is probably impossible to unite all of our moral beliefs into a single coherent theory. Utilitarianism
requires us to maximize the total amount of preference satisfaction, even if it means doing an injustice to
individuals. RP morality requires us to respect the rights of individuals, even if it means promoting something less
than the total amount of preference satisfaction.
Second; given this fundamental divergence between the two theories, it is often best to analyze a complex
moral problem from the standpoint of both moral theories. If the two theories converge on the same conclusion,
To cite this paper: Khatibi M and Khormaei F. 2016. Morality and Ethics: A Brief Review. J. Life Sci. Biomed. 6(3): 66-70.
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