Question

Summary on Ethics and the Examined Life by Lewis Vaughn

Answer 1

ethics and the examined life the larger point is that doing ethics using critical reasoning to examine

the moral life can be a useful and “If you accept and never question the moral beliefs handed to you by your culture, then those beliefs are not really yours and they, not you, control the path you take in life. Only if you critically examine these beliefs yourself and decide for yourself whether they have merit will they be truly yours. Only then will you be in charge of your own choices and actions".

Any fruitful discussions about morality undertaken between people from different religious traditions or between believers and nonbelievers will require a common set of ethical concepts and a shared procedure for deciding issues and making judgments. For many people, the most interesting query about the relationship between religion and morality.Those who answer yes are endorsing a theory of morality known as the divine command theory. It says that the right actions are those that are willed by God, that God literally defines right and wrong. Something is right or good only because God makes it so. In the simplest version of the theory, God can determine right and wrong because he is omnipotent. He is all powerful powerful enough even to create moral norms. In this view, God is a divine lawgiver, and his laws constitute morality. In general, believers are divided on whether the divine command theory gives an accurate account of the source of morality. Critics say that if an action is right only because God wills it (that is if right and wrong are dependent on God), then many heinous crimes and evil actions would be right if God willed them. If the rightness of an action depended on God’s will alone, he could not have reasons for willing what he wills. No reasons would be available and none required. Therefore, if God commanded an action, the command would be without reason, completely arbitrary. Neither the believer nor the nonbeliever would think this state of affairs plausible. On the other hand, if God wills an action because it is morally right), then the divine command theory must be false. God does not create rightness; he simply knows what is right and wrong and is subject to the moral law just as humans are. For some theists, this charge of arbitrariness is especially worrisome. Leibniz, for example, rejects the divine command theory, declaring that it implies that God is unworthy of worship. In any case, it seems that through critical reasoning we can indeed learn much about morality and moral life. After all, there are complete moral systems (some of which are examined in this book) that are not based on religion, that contain genuine moral norms indistinguishable from those embraced by religion, and that are justified not by reference to religious precepts but by careful thinking and moral arguments. As the philosopher, Jonathan Berg says, “Those who would refuse to recognize as adequately justified any moral beliefs not derived from knowledge of or about God, would have to refute the whole vast range of arguments put by Kant and all others whoever proposed a rational basis for ethics!” Moreover, if we can do ethics if we can use critical reasoning to discern moral norms certified by the best reasons and evidence then critical reasoning is sufficient to guide us to moral standards and values. Since we obviously can do ethics . morality is both accessible and meaningful to us whether we are religious or not.