Critical Reflection Paper
The articulation of moral ontology can prove difficult and controversial as the subject is debatable and can be argued in different facets. Therefore, whether one has a secular or theistic foundation rarely comes up only in certain unique controversies, for example, on abortion (Taylor, 1989). A gap has remained unexplored regarding the background. This paper seeks to argue on the existence of lack of fit between what people consciously believe and what people were it was officially including their believing and, on the other hand, the need to make sense of their moral reactions. There is a proposal by some naturalists to treat as irrelevant all moral ontologies stories without validity while they continue to argue themselves about fit objects and the appropriate reactions.
This paper argues that the whole question and idea about morality have various ontological accounts and cannot be dissected on just one side. Our deepest moral instincts should be treated in a sense that human life is to be respected as a way of accessing the world in which claims on ontology are discernible and can be argued rationally. The accounts of ontology exhibit the articulations status of our moral instincts since they explain clearly the claims implicit in our reactions(Taylor,1989). Moral understanding growth requires that some of our reactions be neutralized. The contemporary society does not agree with the moral ontology. However, it is apparent that when people are asked to give their accounts of their grounds of respect for life, they rely on theistic account that is they invoke a common status, which puts life as God’s creatures. Others will reject this idea of theistic and rather settles for a purely secular approach, which invokes dignity of rational life (Taylor, 1989). Articulating any particular background has remained a controversy on the premise that an agent is necessarily not the best authority.
In the real world, there is a sense that human beings command respect in every society, unlike previous civilizations. What is more strange with higher civilizations like the modern west is that the principle of human respect has come in terms of rights.it has become the center of our legal systems and has spread around the world. In the seventeenth century, the revolution of natural law theory consisted partly of the use of rights language to express the universal moral norms. The natural rights have life and liberty, and it was against natural law to take innocent life. The law confers certain human benefits that life has to be respected under the law. Talking of natural, universal, or human rights are connecting the integrity and respect for human life with the idea of autonomy. It is to perceive people as the ones who cooperate in establishing and ensuring due respect to them. This is an expression of the central feature of the modern moral outlook. The Lockean trinity of natural rights includes liberty and respecting personality entails important features of respecting the moral autonomy of a person (Taylor, 1989). Additionally, Post –Romantic developments notions of individual difference go beyond to demand that we provide freedom to people to develop their personality in their own way. The stress on human welfare of immediate perspective springs from religious sources, specifically the New Testament, on Christian spirituality as a central theme. Modern utilitarianism is secularized and links with Christian spirituality.
The two critical questions about the texts are:
- What is the underlying modern talk of identity and moral orientation?
- What is a connection between different conditions of one’s life, making sense?
Reference
Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self: The making of the modern identity. Harvard University
Press.