by Amelia Wagoner

Created on: May 06, 2007   Last Updated: September 05, 2009

The concept of morality, its origins, and what constitutes the definition of a moral itself, are in the end all subjective ideas. It is left to each individual to listen to ideas of others, but to also decide what is true for them. Personally, morality is something that is innate. Morality is something that arises independently in someone.

Some ideas of morality believe it only arises as a way to prevent and avoid guilt, others believe morals arise from a balance of pain and pleasure. Both of these ideas, though, assume that morality is formed as a result of another influence. Morality develops as a response to another and is not its own source and result. These philosophies do have some worth in explaining morality, but they are only a supplemental source in supporting my understanding of morality.

Guilt happens when one feels remorse for their actions. Guilt usually follows immoral actions, but not always. Guilt can be a symptom for what is moral or immoral but it does not determine the morality of an action. A guilt driven morality is based on the idea that one's actions are based on whether or not they will invoke guilt.

It is possible, though, for one to do an immoral action such as murder and feel no guilt at all. Using this thinking the immoral action of murder would then become moral since no there was no guilt. Murder, though, remains an immoral action regardless of one feeling guilty. Guilt-driven morality cannot work as an explanation for morality because guilt is a subjective feeling. The actions that produce guilt could vary from culture to culture. The idea of guilt itself is not a universal concept.

Guilt, though, is related to the feelings of wrongness, and an oversimplified explanation of morality is something just feels right or wrong. Although this reasoning is very simplified it does carry substantial meaning behind it.

Hume states, "The notion of morals implies some sentiment common to all mankind" . By sentiment Hume is referring to feelings, in contrast to using reason as the origin of morals. According to him the fundamental source of morality is this sentiment or feelings from all human beings. This sentiment is specified further to include the sentiment for all people.

The notion of including all people is why it is possible for sentiment to form the foundation for morals. Individual sentiment has no moral worth because the feelings of an individual person vary from one to another. Individual sentiment may lead to actions which may

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next Page >>