Law
Moral Diversity
Moral diversity refers to the range of ethical beliefs and values held by individuals and communities. It acknowledges that different people and cultures may have varying perspectives on what is morally right or wrong. In the context of law, understanding moral diversity is important for creating a legal framework that respects and accommodates diverse moral viewpoints.
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eBook - PDFPracticing Medicine and Ethics
Integrating Wisdom, Conscience, and Goals of Care
- Lauris Christopher Kaldjian(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
There is also Moral Diversity in our societies that can test the extent and character of this shared commitment – as seen when stren- uous debates arise over contentious questions of public policy and law. The source of this diversity arises from the foundational beliefs and values by which we assess the moral legitimacy of social practices and political arrangements. We can call the sum total of a person’s foundational beliefs and values that person’s moral framework, and it is through such frame- works that people perceive and engage their social environments in a moral way. Because of Moral Diversity, a multiplicity of moral frameworks pervades Western societies, creating the challenging reality of moral (or ethical) pluralism. The existence of this pluralism is a focal point for those who note the contemporary absence of a socially shared moral framework and are concerned about its consequences. Jonathan Lear believes that we are morally at a loss because as a society we lack a coherent and compelling morality. We struggle, he says, to explain why we hold the moral beliefs we do, and we lack confidence in religion’s ability to ground morality, which the Judeo-Christian tradition previously did in the West. 1 Jonathan Glover writes similarly, tracing the source of this loss back to a Nietzschean skepticism about a religious basis for morality (or any other metaphysical 1 Lear, Aristotle: the desire to understand, 152. Moral Pluralism and Religious Belief 153 or scientific basis, for that matter) 2 and suggesting that the prospects for reviving a shared belief in an objective moral law are dim. 3 Though the practice of medicine enjoys a substantial degree of consen- sus about its primary purposes related to health and healing, the challenges of moral pluralism are still very real for the medical profession.
eBook - PDFDiversity Research and Policy
A Multidisciplinary Exploration
- Steven Knotter, Rob de Lobel, Lena Tsipouri, Vanja Stenius, Steven Knotter, Rob de Lobel, Lena Tsipouri, Vanja Stenius(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Amsterdam University Press(Publisher)
196 Diversity Research and Policy – Sociology and anthropology : Various examples of anti-discrimination laws and protection of human rights, even including constitutional law, are reflections of the issues treated in this field. This list of the contextual use of the concept of diversity within the legal realm is not exhaustive. A more general conclusion that could be drawn is that in a legal/socio-political context, diversity becomes linked to concepts of democracy and equality associated with pluralist societies characterised by a level of fragmentation into different racial, ethnic, religious or linguistic groups sharing traits of common identity. This refers to the idea of accep-tance of multiple cultures and identities sharing the same space and their individuality – whether on the macro-level of the society or on various inter-mediary, local levels. Legal systems may then serve the purpose of referring to or applying a differentiation system combined, for example, with the idea of democracy, equality – equal treatment, multiculturalism, difference(s) – and understanding and recognising individual differences and contextually acknowledging unity in diversity as well as individual uniqueness. Special branches of human rights and humanitarian law as well as specific instances of constitutional law and international law reflect this approach. Considering its implicit connotations, the concept of diversity encom-passes acceptance and respect for others – whoever those classified as “oth-ers” are and irrespective of the grounds of differentiation – when likely to lead to (some degree of ) differential treatment which in some cases may become discriminatory on an unacceptable level of arbitrariness. There are historical examples when the reaction to diversity was far from the ideal of mutual understanding.
eBook - ePub- Chuck Huff, Almut Furchert(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
These approaches often oppose individual virtue to situational influence. They take morality to be synonymous with individual virtue, exercised without influence from external sources. They then show the pervasive influence of situational aspects that are often hidden from conscious awareness. Their conclusion is that true morality is either severely limited or not possible. In contrast, a moral ecology approach sees morality as arising out of the combination of numerous interacting influences. In this complex interweaving of processes, the distinction between external and internal influences becomes difficult, as does the distinction between a “pure” moral decision and illicit biases on that decision. Moral action arises out of the interaction of the individual within the moral ecology, and multiple influences both help and hinder that moral action. 3.2 Culture and Moral Diversity Much of the work on culture and morality has been a catalog of differences: this group in this culture thinks cutting one’s hair while in mourning is immoral, that group from another culture is puzzled by the judgment (Shweder et al., 1997, p. 131). The documentation of the diverse ways of being moral is indeed an important first step in understanding how people are moral. It has often been conceptualized in terms of evidence for better or worse morality (Kohlberg, 1963 ; Kohlberg & Mayer, 1972). However, more recent work has taken to simply documenting the diversity in ways of being moral (e.g. in goals, purposes, principles, skills, values, etc.). The catalog of diversity has had the salutary effect of making a plausible case that one need not posit a unitary morality, identical across cultures, and that doing so makes it more difficult to recognize the multitude of different ways of being good. In this section on culture, we will follow long tradition and give an incomplete catalog of these different ways of being good or valuing the good
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