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

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