Anthropologists today find and record, in most every culture, examples of compassion, fairness, generosity. and actions that implement the Golden Rule.
Cooperation, normally the ethical way to proceed, is not ethical if it is accompanied by some exploiting of outgroups seen as threats. In the recent past outgroups considered as not worthy of full moral consideration have been homosexuals and those called “strangers.”
Moral Psychologists of late, along with Evolutionary Biologists and Brain Neurologists, speak of we humans as possessing a Moral Sense. This is closely akin to what those Philosophers known as Intuitionists were arguing for back as the early 1600s and forward up to the present day. A particular set of emotions are triggered by our moral sense: compassion, gratitude, loyalty, disgust, shame, and guilt.
I agree with the Socratic view that evil is most always performed out of ignorance, but I would also add, as a source of evil behavior, madness due to brain damage.
Aristotle did describe a condition in which a person may recognize that something is morally right, and may even want to do what is right, but nonetheless is lured away from such by a stronger temptation. He called it “weakness of the will.” Here we get into questions of motivation. R. S. Hartman taught that there are three basic kinds of norms: (S) formal norms: …Some x R y.
(E) facultative norms: …Some people live morally.
(II) obligatory norms. …I will live morally.
Thus an example of an Obligatory Norm might be: “I want to live morally, and I intend to do so!!! I mean it. I mean it intensely. I’ll strive for this; I’m making it my goal.”
Choosing such an Obligatory Norm is a motivating procedure which prepares one for the time when s/he judges something as ‘morally wrong’; it then will trigger a pre-built-in motivational force to avoid that action or situation, keeping one from indulging in it or associating with it.
Your views on this approach to Ethics theory?
Comments? Questions?