𝗣𝗼𝗲𝘁 𝗠𝗲 𝗔 𝗣𝗼𝗲𝗺

Ethics (In a Nutty Nutshell)

"Live so you die,"
who is in the wrong,
and who is right?
"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

Soren Kierkegaard believed that to live life,
one must go backward,
and that to have faith,
is to have doubt at the same time,
while still going forward.

Yet how may one live wise when young,
and childish when old,
without being sure of anything,
and having faith in nothing?

Deontology craves for obligation,
while consequentialism thirsts for morality over cause and effect.

How may we live,
obligated to morals,
but not care for what may or may not be?

Eudaemonism, as Aristotle argued,
focused that our distinctive function was reasoning,
and life was only worth living,
if we reasoned well.

But animals we are,
and reasoning only goes so far without selfishness,
and hunger for more of everything we may possess.

While virtue ethics teach us aspects of morality,
they do not stand as guidance,
as we all cannot stand by and hope,
everything we do and say is moral.

Immanuel Kant believed that religion and morality were two separate entities,
but as discussed by Kierkegaard,
faith is a mere part of life,
one with morality.

Even so, Kant proposed this:
Moral Law is always binding.

Yet many agree,
following such theory that moral law is all above,
is nearly impossible.

John Stuart Mill believed in his theory,
but argued that morality came with pleasing the majority of a crowd.

Yet Elizabeth Anscombe,
the woman who's credit been taken from shaping ethics as it is now,
believed selflessness leads to an unhappy life,
and that selfishness was moral in certain situations,
even if moral law was binding.

Following each theory,
impossible.
Now following the most convenient,
it is ideal.
But then, that's not moral.

So then one cannot follow Jonathan Dancy's theory:
Moral particularism,
in which one may do immoral things,
with moral reasoning.

Given,
morality and its law is flexible,
maybe the human is as well,
but not flexible enough to remain moral from birth,
as a child has no sense of what is right or wrong.

That is the flaw in living backward.

How may I live wise without knowing,
and how may I live as a child,
knowing all?