This is exactly why the phrase "moral absolutes" was invented: To distinguish the idea that there *are* any moral absolutes from the observation that in practice, different communities live by different - sometimes *radically* different - sets of mores, and that when you step back and look at them all, it's actually very hard to decide what makes any one set more valid than another. There may in fact be an absolute morality, to which all human moral frameworks are at best merely the best approximations we could achieved at the time, and at worst grotesque distortions... (That absolute framework may turn out in fact to be defined by "God's will", I am obliged, as a theist, to point out. =:o} ) But that's jolly hard to prove.
Moral people are those people who make the effort to act in accordance with the mores (or, colloquially, "morals") that they hold and profess; immoral people are those who act (for whatever reason) against or outside of the mores/morals they hold and profess. And amoral people are those who neither hold nor profess any mores/morals at al. And the morals we, as individuals, hold are shaped by the culture we grow up in, only starting to deviate significantly from the local cultural norm as we grow in self awareness and sense of responsibility (that is, those of us that ever do! =:o\ ), and reflect on what our morality is and what perhaps it should be.
I'm not personally aware of anyone who's made a moral case *in favour* of slavery, and I've only ever heard the feeblest of arguments as to how the keeping of slaves *as it was practiced in Europe and America a couple of centuries ago* could be considered even neutrally compatible with the dominant moral framework of the nations and communities concerned, even at that time. (N.B. Slavery as understood and practiced in the ancient world is a whole different ballgame, as is slavery as practiced in modern S&M circles...) What I *do* know is that in a world where slavery was being practiced by those with the power and opportunity and incentive to do so, and the benefits were being enjoyed by millions of other people who had at best a passing awareness of what was going on, it took time for people to (1) recognise that there was moral case against slavery, (2) spread the awareness of that moral case; (3) push for a change of law to force those who were involved to stop doing it. And it's worth noting that for many, the crunch point was not a philosophical notion about the rightness or wrongness of "owning" a human being, but the growing awareness of what exactly was happening to those human beings in the process of being taken into ownership and transferred from their original location, that made them reject the slave *trade*, and consequently resolve to give up slave ownership as a necessary means of stopping the trade and its practices.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2011-06-29 11:28 pm (UTC)Moral people are those people who make the effort to act in accordance with the mores (or, colloquially, "morals") that they hold and profess; immoral people are those who act (for whatever reason) against or outside of the mores/morals they hold and profess. And amoral people are those who neither hold nor profess any mores/morals at al. And the morals we, as individuals, hold are shaped by the culture we grow up in, only starting to deviate significantly from the local cultural norm as we grow in self awareness and sense of responsibility (that is, those of us that ever do! =:o\ ), and reflect on what our morality is and what perhaps it should be.
I'm not personally aware of anyone who's made a moral case *in favour* of slavery, and I've only ever heard the feeblest of arguments as to how the keeping of slaves *as it was practiced in Europe and America a couple of centuries ago* could be considered even neutrally compatible with the dominant moral framework of the nations and communities concerned, even at that time. (N.B. Slavery as understood and practiced in the ancient world is a whole different ballgame, as is slavery as practiced in modern S&M circles...) What I *do* know is that in a world where slavery was being practiced by those with the power and opportunity and incentive to do so, and the benefits were being enjoyed by millions of other people who had at best a passing awareness of what was going on, it took time for people to (1) recognise that there was moral case against slavery, (2) spread the awareness of that moral case; (3) push for a change of law to force those who were involved to stop doing it. And it's worth noting that for many, the crunch point was not a philosophical notion about the rightness or wrongness of "owning" a human being, but the growing awareness of what exactly was happening to those human beings in the process of being taken into ownership and transferred from their original location, that made them reject the slave *trade*, and consequently resolve to give up slave ownership as a necessary means of stopping the trade and its practices.