Quote:
Originally Posted by onelifecrisis
Perhaps you're right! But if that ever happens, I might need someone to explain to me where my "change morality now" button is.
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That's kind of exactly how it works. Hence, the point that although certain things may be distasteful, that doesn't make them immoral.
Morality (and more poignantly,
ethics), has always been subject to context. The absolute deontologist will contend that what is wrong will always be wrong. Unfortunately for him, though, the human experience puts a strain on this argument as he will undoubtedly find kill-or-be-killed to be an unresolvable paradox.
Good and evil must be a choice - not the default state. So if one is put into a position with where the only choices are to commit what the absolutist considers to be "evil", it would become the default state. The reason this doesn't work is due to the fact that the words themselves MUST define a specific state, otherwise they'd have no meaning other than "is". As such, let's say Bob has to kill a man to prevent him from killing Bob's wife. If Bob allows his wife to be killed, that could be considered an evil act. If Bob kills the person who threatens his wife, that could also be considered evil. As such, describing Bob's state as evil really describes nothing more than "Bob is".
The only way to resolve this paradox is to define evil by putting it in context. That means, what is evil at one state does not neccessarily make it evil in another.