To Be Moral is to Act Moral

Notes

Claim

Can we say that we are moral if we don't act according to our beliefs Living in alignment with your values? After all, having values without expressing them in any shape or form is meaningless. Is there truly a difference between a person who thinks that helping the poor is important compared to a person who's indifferent about them if they both do nothing to support them?

Explanation

In some sense, morality is a Being emerges from action not belief kind of thing. It is only by acting that we gain the title of a moral person, and not the other way around. Flipping assumptions reveals hidden possibilities and better solutions. Therefore we can't just sit on the sidelines and wait for the right opportunity to act; we have to be proactive and take action, to be the moral person we can become.

We need both reasons and actions for morality. To be truly a moral person, it's not enough to believe in the right things; you also have to act accordingly. Personally, I believe that the combination of right reasons with right actions means that you have to cultivate the right virtues within you, but that is a different topic.

Similarly, it is not enough to fill ourselves with knowledge and pretend it makes us better people. If we only focus on reading books, on learning about philosophy and not practicing it, we are no better than those who fail to do both Intelligence is not morality.

Why it matters

Morality is not only about the results of your actions without considering other factors such as your intentions. The desire for knowledge before action can cripple us if we focus only on the intellectual side of morality. What drives us to action is often not the logical deduction that something should be done and we just need to understand how, but rather the internal passion, the emotional urge to express your beliefs Morality is both rational and emotional.

Examples

Take the example of the thief that breaks into a house by opening the window, which by chance saves the elderly lady that lives there from suffocating from a gas leak. We can't praise the thief even if the result of his action is good.

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Overview

🔼Topic:: Moral Psychology ◀Origin:: Aristotle (philosopher) 🔗Link::