FREEDOM IN THE CONTEXT OF MORALITY

MODULE 5
CHAPTER III
MORALITY AND FREEDOM
LESSON 1
THE REALM OF MORALITY

• ethics and morality play a vital role in our lives.

• the lesson will deal with the nature of the choices we
make, a reflection to our sense of right and wrong, good
or bad in order to know and understand our selves better.
THE CONCEPT OF MORALITY

• ethics- is a branch of philoposhy that dels with the

systematic questioning and critical examination of the
underlying principles of morality.
• ethos which refers to the character of a culture.
• the subject matter being studied in ethics is morality.
• morality- came fromthe root word mores which means
the customary beahvior of a particular group of people.
• both ethics and morality refers to customary behavior.
TWO GENERAL APPROACHES OF ETHICS

• 1. normative ethics- it pertains to certain norms or

standards for goodness and badness, rightness or
wrongness of an act. it trie to give a moral framework that
will be use as the standards of morality.
• 2. meta-ethics- examines the presuppositions,meanings
and justifications of ethical concepts and principles.
• the individual behavior is closely related to a sense of
what is the right thing to do, from the customs or mores of
a particular society.
THE ROLES OF SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL
IN THE EMERGENCE OF MORES.
• folkways- the best known practices that one has to follow
(the notion of right and true)
• mores- come from folkways with the added element of
societal welfare embodied in them. The mores are the
cmpelling resons to do what ought to be done, because
they are the right things to do.
THE REALM OF FREEDOM

• when we are exercising freedom in making choices, we

are taking control and assuming full responsibility for the
choices that we are making. You are free but this freedom
is not absolute. You could not do anything that you please
without taing into consideration the norms of your society.
The mores are there to serve as a form of social control to
limit, govern or regulate your behavior inorderto uphold
and maintain order in your society.
THE REALM OF FREEDOM

• Freedom in making choices entails the process of

reflection and deliberationon the consequences that our
actions might entail.
• it is one’s obligation to oneself to exercise one’s rationality
to the fullest without forgetting one’s humanity and his
capacity for empathy.
VALUE EXPERIENCE AND
MORALITY
LESSON 2
ONLY HUMANS ARE MORAL

• deliberation- an act that requires reflection and an

exercise of one’s rational capacity to the fullest without
sacrificing his ability to empathize with other human
beings.
• conduct- is a result of the process of reflection where the
human person is endowned with the capacity to think
using his rationality and to weigh the consequences of his
actions in order to plan his own life.
ONLY HUMANS ARE MORAL

• instincts- a natural or intuitive way of acting or thinking

• pre-reflective morality- (animals) this is a morality that
occured prior to deliberation and reflection.
VALUE EXPERIENCE

• This valuation process happens when we make choices

and indicate our preferences based on the experience we
had.
• values are the result of the process of value-experience.
VALUES AND MORAL VALUES

• Value can become a moral value if they become unlimited

priorities in their scope of relevance in our life.
• moral value takes precedence and priority over other
values.
• you are willing to give up other values just to promote this
moral value.
MORAL JUDGMENTS AND MORAL DECISIONS

• Moral decision- happens when one is exercising his full

capacity a a free moral agent.
• Moral judgments- this is when we are rendering our moral
judgments on how people should behave or what they
should have done.
INTELLECTUAL CHOICE AND PRACTICAL
CHOICE
• “what one ought to do and what one would be inclined to
do”
• normative answers- are answers about what we ought to
do from a moral system that we uphold and its moral
principles. (what one ought to do )
• (what one would be inclined to do)- has to do with the
practical choice when faced with the acal situation.
• a persn that is engulfed by emotions may sometimes fail
to make the right choices.
APPROACHES TO MORAL
REASONING
LESSON 3
ANALYSIS OF MORAL REASONING

• moral reasoning is a process of examining moral

arguments.
• argument- defined as the search for a statement or a set
of statements that can be made to yield a new statement,
which is its conclusion.
DEONTOLOGICAL ETHICS

• deontological ethics or deontological reasoning is an ethic

based on duty.
• Greek word dein meaning duty
• categorical imperative or the law of morality- moral
principles that we follow which we consider as universally
correct and should be applicable to all humanity.
• this is something that we are unconditionally obliged to
do, without regard to the consequences.
• doing something fom duty or for duty’s sake alone.
IMMANUEL KANT

• a German philosopher from Konigsberg

• as human beings we perceivethe world as phenomena.
• this phenomena is our reality, the knowledge of reality that
our mind is capable of interpreting and understanding.
TWO FACULTIES OF MIND

• 1. FACULTY OF PURE REASON - provides the priori (or

prior to experience) source of knowledge which contains
the structure of our mind as human beings providing form
and order to the data or content or material coming from
experience referred to by Kant
• 2. THE FACULTY OF PURE INTUITION OF SPACE AND
TIME- as pure intuition of space and times, whic is the a
posteriori (from experience) source.