I know it's really late but...please someone, help me out!!!Thanks in advance...
I used to find Moral Studies to be the least interesting subject (out of 10 subjects) at school last time while most of my classmates hated it. Rather than inspiring us to think, we, the students, were instead forced to memorize a set of definitions for 36 moral values or virtues to pass the Moral Studies exam. I remembered questioning why Moral Studies was even made a compulsory subject. Could a person really be taught to be morally good? Could a person be morally good by just memorizing 36 sets of definitions? What's the point of memorizing the definitions for the sake of passing the subject and not practicing the 36 virtues? It all seemed absurd!
So, my old school friends were astonished when I told them that I actually enjoyed my Moral Studies classes at my new school. On the very first lesson, my lecturer began by introducing ethics, the definition of ethics, the purpose of studying ethics and I was also given a short excerpt from Aristotle's The Nicomacean Ethics to read. All of these were highly intriguing to me; I have never studied any of them during school before. I had a hard time deciphering The Nicomacean Ethics' excerpt but I was lucky because the lecturer, Mr. Ilyas took his time to explain to us some of the key points of Aristotle's concept of being "good" in The Nicomacean Ethics.
But what struck me most was that this branch of philosophy was so interesting and appealing that I started to look forward to each lesson. I was exposed to the Enlightenment and various philosophical concepts (utilitarianism, ethical egoism, existentialism, deontological ethics, the Virtue Ethics, just to name a few) as well as great philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Sɵren Kierkegaard, Jeremy Bentham, Ibn Khaldun, Mo Tzu and Confucius. I also learned how each philosophy differed and what kinds of impact would be evident on different individuals.
Throughout the lessons, I was especially enthralled by Nietzsche's critiques that there's no need to study ethics if ethics serve no purpose in our lives and that morality was all about power play (whereby people are trying to impose their opinions on others). His critiques were definitely insightful and I could not agree more as I reflected on my own. But somehow, I could not help wondering what the world would be like if ethics and moral systems were absolute absence.
As the study went on, however, I started to get confused. By utilizing the philosophies that I have learned, I found that it was difficult to discern the "traditionally right" and the "traditionally wrong". If I were to use different philosophies on a similar case study, I would have a set of very different opinions about the case study. I consulted my lecturer, to which he said, "The judgment of what's right or wrong depends on how you see it. There's no absolute good or bad."
Maybe Mr. Ilyas was right. Maybe what's right or wrong wasn't always the same for everyone. Maybe I should follow what my conscience was telling me. But whatever it was, it has propelled me to search and gain a deeper understanding in the field of ethics.
I used to find Moral Studies to be the least interesting subject (out of 10 subjects) at school last time while most of my classmates hated it. Rather than inspiring us to think, we, the students, were instead forced to memorize a set of definitions for 36 moral values or virtues to pass the Moral Studies exam. I remembered questioning why Moral Studies was even made a compulsory subject. Could a person really be taught to be morally good? Could a person be morally good by just memorizing 36 sets of definitions? What's the point of memorizing the definitions for the sake of passing the subject and not practicing the 36 virtues? It all seemed absurd!
So, my old school friends were astonished when I told them that I actually enjoyed my Moral Studies classes at my new school. On the very first lesson, my lecturer began by introducing ethics, the definition of ethics, the purpose of studying ethics and I was also given a short excerpt from Aristotle's The Nicomacean Ethics to read. All of these were highly intriguing to me; I have never studied any of them during school before. I had a hard time deciphering The Nicomacean Ethics' excerpt but I was lucky because the lecturer, Mr. Ilyas took his time to explain to us some of the key points of Aristotle's concept of being "good" in The Nicomacean Ethics.
But what struck me most was that this branch of philosophy was so interesting and appealing that I started to look forward to each lesson. I was exposed to the Enlightenment and various philosophical concepts (utilitarianism, ethical egoism, existentialism, deontological ethics, the Virtue Ethics, just to name a few) as well as great philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, Sɵren Kierkegaard, Jeremy Bentham, Ibn Khaldun, Mo Tzu and Confucius. I also learned how each philosophy differed and what kinds of impact would be evident on different individuals.
Throughout the lessons, I was especially enthralled by Nietzsche's critiques that there's no need to study ethics if ethics serve no purpose in our lives and that morality was all about power play (whereby people are trying to impose their opinions on others). His critiques were definitely insightful and I could not agree more as I reflected on my own. But somehow, I could not help wondering what the world would be like if ethics and moral systems were absolute absence.
As the study went on, however, I started to get confused. By utilizing the philosophies that I have learned, I found that it was difficult to discern the "traditionally right" and the "traditionally wrong". If I were to use different philosophies on a similar case study, I would have a set of very different opinions about the case study. I consulted my lecturer, to which he said, "The judgment of what's right or wrong depends on how you see it. There's no absolute good or bad."
Maybe Mr. Ilyas was right. Maybe what's right or wrong wasn't always the same for everyone. Maybe I should follow what my conscience was telling me. But whatever it was, it has propelled me to search and gain a deeper understanding in the field of ethics.
