Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
An immoral question?	Jon1667	06/29/03
Following on the question about The Ring of Gyges: Is the question, does morality pay off (or as Socrates put it, is justice profitable) an immoral question? Doesn't it suggest that the only reason for acting morally is that it pays off ("Honesty is the best policy.")? With the corollary that if it does not pay off, or, worse, if it is detrimental to the doer, then he is under no obligation to act morally? (By the way, this is one of the questions that professors of philosophy often ask in class.)
Clarification/Follow-up by Jon1667 on 06/30/03 5:15 am: Dark_Crow 06/29/03 An act of immorality is an act of injustice __________________________________ How true! Clarification/Follow-up by Dark_Crow on 06/30/03 2:20 pm: you are supposed to make a case for your view for your view to be taken seriously. Unless you give reasons for your view, you do not take your view seriously, because you don't care whether or not your view is true, and if you don't take your view seriously, then why should anyone else do so? Ken that simply is not true in the case where someone gives a view that is such _common knowledge_ that the author pre-supposes an argument is unnecessary. For example if the air temperature in 90 degrees outside today and normally it is 70 degrees and I said to Sam, it sure is hot today. Clarification/Follow-up by Jon1667 on 06/30/03 4:46 pm: tonyrey 06/30/03 Whether a question is immoral depends on the motive for asking that question. If it is intended to be constructive then it is not immoral. It may be misguided but it is certainly not malicious or deliberately destructive. _________________________ I did not mean the question itself was immoral. I meant that what it suggests could be construed as immoral because it suggests that we have no good reason to be moral (or avoid immorality) but that our motive for doing either is (as Socrates puts it) profitable. "Pay off" is an ambiguous expression which takes us back to the issue of selfishness and self-interest. Is self-sacrifice immoral or ignoble because you experience peace of mind (or even joy) as a result of your decision? __________________________________ No, of course not. But does the self-sacrificer deserve a moral medal if his action is motivated by the promise of the feeling achieved by it? I would say not. It is one thing to do something right, and, as a result have the good feelings you mention; but quite another thing to do something right _in order to_ get such feelings. See the character, Lady Bountiful, in Farquar's play, "The Beaux-Strategem." Of course, I should add, that it may say something about a person if the person gets good feelings from acting rightly, and bad feeling from acting wrongly, even if he does so aiming to achieve those feelings. But, I doubt, very much that many are as calulating as that in real life. And there is also the problem that if the agent knows or even suspects that he is doing right for the sake of the good feeling he expects from doing it, that he will not achieve his goal. To believe that it is presupposes an impossible demand - that an action is moral only if it does not benefit the agent in any way whatsoever. It reminds me of the Puritan doctrine that being virtuous is necessarily painful! If being a good person is immoral then morality is immoral... :) __________________________________________ Kant has been accused of holding that you can be moral only if it is painful for you to be so, but that is a calumny. What Kant held was that morality is often a mask for self-interest, and that it is impossible to tell for sure whether or not you are acting morally for the sake of being moral, or have some other motive; but that a good (but not decisive test) of whether you are acting morally for morality's sake is whether you are acting morally, and doing so is contrary to your self-interest. Being good is never immoral, but being good for the wrong reason is not moral either. As Eliot wrote, the greatest treason is doing right for the wrong reason. ("Murder in the Cathedral")
Answered By		Answered On
Dark_Crow		06/29/03
An act of immorality is an act of injustice

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