Personal Theory of Good and Term Paper

Total Length: 809 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

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It is right to save a person from drowning, and even if that person turns out to be a murderer, one could not know that the person would become a murderer at the time the person was saved. Thus, there is excuse to refuse to save a drowning man or woman.

On a 'gut' level, one might say, over-rationalizing one's ethnical decisions is incorrect -- but this works against Kant in some areas, as one might rationalize the idea that 'obeying the law is a good thing' to use this as an excuse to not lie, cheat, and conceal the truth to save a Jewish person in Nazi Germany. The ultimate judgment of a decision should be -- does this help or harm human life, given what I know at present and my social context? Even moral laws can be wrong in some contexts, and one cannot predict the consequences of the life someone saves. Still, one must temper moral action with one's guess as to what the future might be, as a result of one's actions.


This suggests that the ideal moral person is someone capable of compassion, of seeing his or her own humanity in the eyes of others, but who is also rational enough not to act purely out of emotion. Rational empathy is the ideal ethical aspiration.

To some extent, this is the moral system most of us operate under. We guess the likely consequences of our We keep a rough moral guide or system in general terms to help guide us, when the future is unclear. It is a good, but not systematic theory. The strengths of this rough, rational yet empathetic moral system of ethics lie in its situational nature, and the fact it is hard to misuse. It has use for both the rational and emotional sides of the human brain. Its weaknesses lie in its lack of systemization and the contextual nature of every person's ethical judgment. It is only as perfectly reliable as the compassion of the individual and his or her ability to make good decisions, based upon imperfect knowledge.

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