Absolute moral rules mean the rules that everyone must follow in order to act morally. They are the rules that hold under any circumstances universally. I think the best candidates of absolute moral rules are a) We should never lie and b) We should never kill innocent people.
There are strong arguments for candidate a) We should never lie. Kant is a philosopher who thought there are absolute moral rules in the world. He thought that never lying is one of the absolute moral rules, and he offered arguments for it:
1. You should only do things that you are willing to adopted to be universalized.
2. If you lie, that means you follow the maxim: it is acceptable to lie.
3. Yet, this rule cannot be universal. If everyone lies, there will be no reason to believe what others say is true, and there will be no good for lying. Hence, the rule is self-defeating.
4. Therefore, you should never lie.
However, in the above argument, premise 2 might not be true. We lying may not mean ‘it is acceptable to lie under any circumstances.' We might only accept lying when it will lead to a good result. For example, the maxim might be ‘it is acceptable to lie when it saves one's life. This rule seems possible to be universalized. Therefore, it would be wrong to say that ‘we should never lie as an absolute moral rule. Kant offered …show more content…
There is an argument against the absolute moral rules. When there are two or more absolute moral rules exist, there would be moment that the moral rules conflict to each other. For example, suppose ‘we should never lie' and ‘we should never accept killing innocent people' are absolute moral rules. If we face the situation that we must lie to save an innocent life from a killer, there will be a conflict between these two absolute moral rules. Because of the existence of this kind of moral dilemmas, we could not always follow all absolute moral rules all the time. Hence, no moral rules are certainly
There are strong arguments for candidate a) We should never lie. Kant is a philosopher who thought there are absolute moral rules in the world. He thought that never lying is one of the absolute moral rules, and he offered arguments for it:
1. You should only do things that you are willing to adopted to be universalized.
2. If you lie, that means you follow the maxim: it is acceptable to lie.
3. Yet, this rule cannot be universal. If everyone lies, there will be no reason to believe what others say is true, and there will be no good for lying. Hence, the rule is self-defeating.
4. Therefore, you should never lie.
However, in the above argument, premise 2 might not be true. We lying may not mean ‘it is acceptable to lie under any circumstances.' We might only accept lying when it will lead to a good result. For example, the maxim might be ‘it is acceptable to lie when it saves one's life. This rule seems possible to be universalized. Therefore, it would be wrong to say that ‘we should never lie as an absolute moral rule. Kant offered …show more content…
There is an argument against the absolute moral rules. When there are two or more absolute moral rules exist, there would be moment that the moral rules conflict to each other. For example, suppose ‘we should never lie' and ‘we should never accept killing innocent people' are absolute moral rules. If we face the situation that we must lie to save an innocent life from a killer, there will be a conflict between these two absolute moral rules. Because of the existence of this kind of moral dilemmas, we could not always follow all absolute moral rules all the time. Hence, no moral rules are certainly