Moral Values

6 Key excerpts on "Moral Values"

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  The Impact of the Law

  On Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values in Late Modern Pluralistic Societies

  • John Witte, Michael Welker, John Witte, Michael Welker(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Evangelische Verlagsanstalt

    (Publisher)

  Part One: Does Law Teach Values and Virtues? Law, Morality, and the Fragility of the Western Legal Tradition Patrick Parkinson Is Law Inherently Moral? It is a defensible proposition in Western societies that law plays a role in character formation, ethical education, and the communication of values in late modern plu-ralistic societies, and that it should continue to do so. Law has played a quite fun-damental role in social ordering, providing a framework for the relationship be-tween government and governed, between husband and wife, parent and child, and employer and employee. More generally, law orders the relationships among citizens who must coexist in the villages, towns, and cities of our shared commu-nal life. Law also establishes a framework for society ’ s mediating institutions such as corporations, schools, universities, and community organizations. At least to some extent, universally accepted moral norms of conduct are em-bedded in the law as forms of legal obligation or prohibition. The law which is written on people ’ s hearts (Romans 2:15) is also to be found in the statute book. Prohibitions found in the Ten Commandments against such wrongs as murder, theft, and perjury are both moral and legal norms in all Western societies. The overlap between religiously inspired moral codes and legal obligations is of course far from complete. To honor one ’ s father and mother is a moral obliga-tion that is given weak effect in terms of legal (and financial) obligation in many Western societies, although at least some jurisdictions give some effect to the no-tion of “ solidarity ” between generations. 1 The moral prohibition against adultery no longer has a place in most Western legal systems. Even so, the average citizen would be likely to affirm that the most basic legal rules of a society have their basis in shared Moral Values that are reflected in the law.

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  The Cage

  Must, Should, and Ought from Is

  • David Weissman(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • SUNY Press

    (Publisher)

  Duty is equivocal. Laws and the duties they create are a rational stopgap—one that supplies order, efficiency, and transparency—when the conflict, size, or complexity (hence, inefficiency) of human societies precludes exclusive reliance on individual discretion (the judgment of automobile drivers or airplane pilots, for example). Or law is the expedi- ent to which governments turn when they need or want tax revenue. Legal duties promise order or income; moral duties implicate the systems and people to which one is joined for critical or merely shared aims. One abstracts from the particularity that distinguishes the other. But there is a middle ground. Laws often need a rationale additional to the efficiencies they promote. Laws pertinent to this moral concern have distributive jus- tice—fairness—as their principal motive. Fairness is a value that origi- nates in the respect for others and oneself. It is learned in core systems, then generalized. Laws that express and promote it are considered below. The foregoing five points of conflict are evidence that moral constraints originate in the material conditions for socialization. Morality begins when members are formed by systems they establish and sustain. Law extends the application of Moral Values without annulling their origin. For morality has neither vitality nor purpose without the systems where people are reciprocally engaged. Laws facilitate action or proscribe it; they create revenue, or distribute benefits and burdens. But laws do not create the Moral Values they sometimes express. The next two sections summarize these results: section 9 considers domains where character and social relations are sufficient to generate shoulds and oughts. Section 10 controverts the accepted view that laws and regulative principles are the only secure basis for duty. 138 THE CAGE 9. From Facts to Norms Morality’s context is established by several layered matters of fact, all of them apparent in the previous section.

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  Legal Thinking

  Its Limits and Tensions

  • William Read(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • University of Pennsylvania Press Anniversary Collection

    (Publisher)

  Value systems are, of course, developed for living, not just for dealing with legal problems, and value judgments about apply-ing legal norms are but a small (but, I believe, identifiable) cor-ner of the universe of value judgments. An item in one's value system important to one's legal thinking is the abstract value, if any, placed on being law abiding and the ranking of this value relative to other values of the value holder. The higher the ranking, the less likely it is that there will be norm-value tension in determining whether to apply an appli-cable legal norm. Some other values, like those placed on keep- Tension Between Norms and Facts 147 ing promises and telling the truth, also do not ordinarily create norm-value tension. But these exemplary Moral Values are out-numbered by a virtual infinity of possible values—possible exer-cises of will—that are likely to be in tension with normative authority (the definition of the word willful includes the idea of being unruly), including, prominently, values derived from ranking self-interests. We tend to want what we think will serve our interests, in rough relationship to the priorities we give these interests, without much attention to the rights, interests, or wants of others; and even our benign altruistic values can be in tension with legal norms, as when we seek to emulate Robin Hood by giving to others what does not belong to us. Values lend themselves to being given priorities by or for the value holder more readily than do consequences or even inter-ests. Values are internally adopted and accorded meaning and relative importance by exercises of one's own will, albeit exercises that are often seductively manipulated from outside.

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  The Faces of Virtue in Law

  • Amalia Amaya, Claudio Michelon, Amalia Amaya, Claudio Michelon(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Can the law help us to be moral?

  Kimberley Brownlee and Richard Child

  ABSTRACT

  The moral value of law can take many forms. It is instrumentally valuable when it coordinates interaction, provides moral advice and leadership, models the virtues, and motivates us to be moral. It is intrinsically valuable when it constitutes the collective moral conscience of citizens, embodies an ideal form of communal life, and expresses the moral integrity of the community. We analyse all of these potential values of law and assess their moral significance. In doing so, we are careful to distinguish between (a) the general concept of law and (b) the actual law of any particular legal system. We argue that, although in principle law does have the potential to help us to be moral in each of the ways noted, many actual legal systems are conducive to great immorality and injustice. Being moral and living well under such regimes is likely to be much harder than it would be otherwise, even in the absence of any legal system.

  A good constitution is not to be expected from morality, but, conversely, a good moral condition of a people is to be expected only under a good constitution.

  Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace1

  1.  Introduction

  There are many interpretations of what it means to be moral and, hence, many ways of interpreting whether the law can help us to be moral. For consequentialists, what matters is whether the law can help us to realise more valuable states of affairs than those we could realise without it. For deontologists, the issue is whether the law can help us to honour our moral duties better than we could do without it. And for virtue ethicists, the question is whether the law can help us to be more virtuous than we could be without it.

  In this essay, we consider our central question from all three of these perspectives. In doing so, we are careful to distinguish between (a) the general concept of law

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  Cultural Psychology of Human Values

  • Jaan Valsiner, Angela Uchoa Branco(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  In this discourse, the moral status of an individual does not depend on the community of which she is a member or on the relationships she enjoys with others. It depends on her having rights before the law: rights that should be available equally to every- Values, Virtues, Citizenship, and Self From a Historical and Cultural Approach  19 one within that political society. It is definitive of justice that everyone should enjoy equality before the law, obtain what is theirs by right, and be treated in accordance with their deserts. (pp. 111–112) MORAL CHARACTER AS EMBODIMENT OF VALUES Character is a central concept for the ethics of virtue. As Blasi (2005) puts it “moral character is typically identified with a person’s set of virtues and vices . . . predispositions to experience certain emotions and to engage in ethically significant kinds of behaviors in response to more or less specific situations” (p. 69). And more specifically, from the perspective of psychology, we can speak of moral character both if there is evidence of relatively general tendency to behave in ways that the agent considers to be moral and if this tendency is related to relatively per- manent characteristics of the agent’s personality, assessed independently of moral actions. (p. 72) This view makes character very much related to two dimensions: feelings (and the derivate moral desires) and willpower. To these dimensions Blasi adds a third one: integrity. It is hardly questionable that when acting, one sometimes feels compet- ing desires, so that one has to decide which one to pursue. When this hap- pens, the person’s will comes into operation, leaving aside some desires and releasing others. But there is also a possibility worthy of examination because of its connection to moral behavior. It may happen that some de- sires are totally rejected as unworthy, bad, or foreign to one’s will, so that they cannot be an option for one’s action under any circumstances.

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  Sociological Jurisprudence

  Juristic Thought and Social Inquiry

  • Roger Cotterrell(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  These two views are traceable back directly to the writings of Durkheim and Weber at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the conflict between them remains significant a century later. I shall suggest that it underlies pervasive dilemmas surrounding the use of law as a regulatory tool by government today. Equally, it explains much about general popular dissatisfactions with law as a means of satisfying individuals’ legitimate expectations and aspirations. And it sets in a new context juristic debates about the significance of moral principles and ultimate values as a basis of legal regulation. Two social visions of law Durkheim wrote that ‘moral ideas are the soul of law [ l’âme du droit ]. What gives authority to a code [of laws] is the moral ideal that it embodies and which it turns into precise prescriptions’ (1970: 150), thus making these moral resources ‘an effective discipline of wills’ (1975: 277). Durkheim’s entire sociological analysis of law is oriented towards showing an intimate connection between law and ultimate values – that is, abstract values accepted by people living in a certain cultural environment, values justified ‘as such’ and not for any utilitarian purposes they might serve for the individuals who accept them. These values are not a universally valid natural law, though those subscribing to them might think of them that way. They are merely the most fundamental, generally shared values of the particular society which the law serves

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