Yes

by Happy Happerson

Created on: September 02, 2009   Last Updated: September 03, 2009

Are we obligated to be moral? I think that we generally take pride in our morality. It tends to be something we want to feel has a higher source or purpose. I think this is because being good makes us feel good. On the face, this seems impractical and counter-intuitive. I think we see that it is quite practical in examining this very question.

Are we obligated to be moral?

The term 'obligated' can mean a few different things. It can mean a thing is required by law, conscience or necessity. I will address each of these in order of rising complexity.

We are obliged to obey the law by command. This is obvious and true. Does this mean that we are being obliged to be moral? Well, no. Laws are not necessarily moral. In fact, one's morals can come into direct conflict with laws, resulting in the imprisonment of highly ethical, conscientious individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. So, while we are obliged to obey the law, that does not imply that we are obliged to be moral.

This leads us to the next question, are we obliged by our conscience to be moral? We must ask ourselves the same question we asked about our legal obligation. Is conscience a good moral guide? I guess many would intuitively respond that it is, but I would have to disagree. Conscience is nebulous and, at times, indistinguishable from emotion and nostalgia.

If you see a starving dog and have the impulse to feed it, is it your conscience, your love of dogs, or your memory of your family pet compelling you to this action? You could test this to see if you had the same impulse with other species. If you didn't, you would know your conscience was not the author of your impulse. If you did, you would still be uninformed as to the origin of your impulse. You would need to determine if feeding the dog were, indeed moral. To do this, you would investigate using logic and reason. These are the true tools for determining morality.

Also, as with law, conscience and morality can come into direct conflict with one another. There are many who fought for the Allies in World War 2 who believed with every fiber of their being that fighting in that war was the right thing to do. They know that the morality of their involvement in that conflict was unquestionable. At the same time, the lives they took weighed on their conscience for the rest of their lives.

So, this leaves us with the last factor. Are we obliged by necessity to be moral? You can define morality in terms of necessity. Kant did this with his categorical imperative. There are certain actions which, if adopted by the whole of mankind, would destroy society. If every single person indulged any whim to steal, commit an act of violence, or even murder, then most human interaction would just be a bad idea.

This is the basis of humanist morality. It is social contract. In order to survive in a large society of human beings you must be able to trust that others will treat you in a certain way. For the vast majority of people, the first, most important thing to do to ensure this, is to treat others this way.

In fact, it has been suggested that this basic necessity for morality is the exact reason we evolved the sense of a 'conscience' in the first place. It aided in our very survival. While laws are not always moral, most morals are represented in laws. When that happens, it is generally because those particular morals are necessary for the survival of the country.

Morality and necessity can seem come into direct conflict with one another, this is true. However, in those situations the immorality of that act is under question. One hears this rhetoric often, Is it wrong for a starving man to steal in order to feed his children? In fact, this tends to be the only time one hears the immorality of theft questioned. Most would not query your ethics if you were to take the life of a person attacking you physically.

Though it may mar our vision of ourselves as higher beings, I believe that morality is clearly an agent of necessity. It is an obligation.

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