Reflection

                                                                                       

 WHY SHOULD I BE MORAL?

                        By: Nwabuisi JohnPaul

INTRODUCTION

Man, by nature is a social being as portrayed by Aristotle. This simply means that humans have the capacity to relate, and interact with one another. In the course of this interaction with other humans, decisions are made of which consequences are products of these decisions. These decisions could be good or bad such that other humans could be affected positively or negatively. Some persons do not even have reasons for the decisions they make, more like it seems mechanical, which should not be the case, people should know the reason why they should make decisions that are good and not those that are bad, since it aids their understanding and moral rectitude in dire and dicey moral problems to do that which is right. Thus, the discipline of ethics provides touchstones for moral agents on how to behave and take decisions that promotes the peace and well-being of all.

The goal of this paper is an attempt to answer the question, why should I be moral? And a Critical examination of the reason why I should be moral.

WHAT IS MORALITY?

Morality as described by David Ganther, “is a system of principles such that it is advantageous for everyone if everyone accepts it, yet acting on the system of principles requires that some persons perform disadvantageous acts.” Morality also keeps us from falling apart, from sinking into a state of anarchy, chaos, where everyone is the enemy of everyone else, where fear, insecurity dominate the mind and prevent peace and happiness. From, the foregoing, we can see that morality helps us keep peace with one another and for us to accept morality sometimes we need to discomfort ourselves for the good of others.

WHY SHOULD I BE MORAL?

The ethical question above simply means reasons for being moral. There have been different theories propounded to help justify why one should be moral and they are discussed in the subsequent paragraphs below.

The divine command theory posits that man should behave morally because God has commanded it. This implies that all moral laws are given by God; God remains the paradigm to determine if a moral action is good or bad. This theory is peculiar to religious people as they believe that whenever they disobey the precepts of their God they could be punished for it, if not in this life, but in the life to come. Thus, their God will reward the virtuous and punish the immoral ones.

Furthermore, there is the appeal to Kant’s idea of morality as the right reason. For Kant, man as a rational being becomes subject to a moral law, hence man should be moral for that is the right reason. This implies that our rationality makes us know what actions are good or bad, if one does an immoral act the person is dubbed ‘irrational,’ and is not acting according to the right reason. For, Kant we are to be moral because we know that its is the right thing to do; id est having the right attitude and acting for the right reason. He also posits that a good will is that which is good in itself, reason has a function of producing a will which is good, this capability of reasoning freely, Kant calls duty. Duty which is a necessity to act out of reverence for the law, of which the law must be absolutely good, regardless of what is expected from it.

There is the argument of morality being beneficial to moral agents. This argument propounds that benefits accrue to us by being moral, if we behave good, the good comes back to us and if we behave bad, the bad comes back to. This can be seen for Christians that you sow what you reap, or in the law of karma, that if you are good, bad things will never come your way.

Moreover, the argument from enlightened self-interest also posits that it is better to be good than to be bad such before one acts, he considers what such actions might result so the effort of everyone striving to be good keeps the world at peace and is in the interest of all.

The argument from Traditions and Laws poses that our established laws and traditions have made efforts to keep the society from being immoral, thus these laws and traditions need to be adhered to in order to keep us moral.

A CRITICAL EXAMINATION ON THE REASON WHY I SHOULD BE MORAL

If I appeal to the Divine command theory as a basis for me being moral, it surely would help my faith as a christian as it is theocentric in nature which is good. But if God where to command me to do things that are morally bad, will I do them? As in the case of the Israelites who were told to kill their enemies. Thus, this theory does not hold water. Moral actions are inherently good and not dependent on a being.

Also, appealing to Kant’s idea of morality as right reason, it makes me come to the consciousness that I am a rational being and by so doing I know that which is right and wrong. It also makes me recognize the worth of people as I am no supposed to use them as a means to an end. But we have many rational beings who do immoral acts, does it mean that they are irrational and do not know the right thing to do? Kant also fails to tell us how to develop this good will and also fails to distinguish good that we must do from good that we are counselled to do.

Appealing to the benefits of morality to the moral agents, helps me realize that someday the good acts I perform will sure come back to me, but in case where I do not get them back how does this reason aid me to be moral. We have instances where someone is good, but keeps getting unfortunate things and sometimes his life is cut short, this reason thus becomes discouraging.

If I resolve to appeal to argument from enlightened self-interest it would mean that everyone would comply to doing what is good and help in the building of a high sense of moral rectitude amongst people. This is a good stand but juxtaposing it with the world in which we live we can see that not everyone would agree towards doing that which is good, that is why morality in this contemporary eon is facing so many challenges, of relativism, individualism and so on. How possible can we convince people to all act morally?

There is no doubt that argument from law and tradition has helped to shape the world and protected us in some way from hurting one another. It is also true that some traditions and laws were bad as we can see in the cases of slave trade, killing of twins, to mention but a few, these laws and traditions out of human ignorance did not shape us but rather destroyed us and made us lose our respect for human life and dignity.

CONCLUSION

In this work, we have seen that morality is indeed a necessity in our human life as it protects moral agents from harming one another due to our different ideologies and background. Thus, ethics helps us answer questions that bothers on morality though sampling the opinions of philosophers, and philosophers’ thoughts on why I should be moral. A clarification of the concept of morality was also done as we see that morality helps keep us at peace with one another. After which we had a critical examination of why I should be moral and we looked keenly at the reasons posited taking into consideration their strengths and limitations.

The question why should I be moral is one that is very apt especially to our contemporary times where the world has become morally bankrupt, each person needs to ask this question and think critically of the reasons behind their moral action. This would be good as it would help bring a moral consciousness and sanity to our world.

Nonetheless, the reasons posited are not without limitations and none is holistically good. Regardless of your reason to be moral, morality remains very important to our life as it helps us to live in peace and harmony with one another.