Concept

Moral

Overview

A moral (from Latin morālis) is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A moral is a lesson in a story or real life.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

1. They are something set off by themselves. They are so _very_ "moral" that they have no working contact with the average affairs of every-day life. These moral principles need to be brought down to the ground through their statement in social and in psychological terms. We need to see that moral principles are not arbitrary, that they are not "transcendental"; that the term "moral" does not designate a special region…

   John Dewey, Moral Principles in Education

   The chapter “THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT OF MORAL EDUCATION” is titled for Moral; names Moral several times.

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2. To say that I am under a moral obligation to do a certain thing is, I think, clearly to say the same thing as what we commonly express by saying that I ought to do it, or that it is my duty to do it. That is to say, the idea of moral obligation is identical with the idea of the moral "ought" and with the idea of duty. And it also seems at first sight as if we might make yet another identification.

   G. E. Moore, Philosophical Studies

   The chapter “THE NATURE OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY” is titled for Moral; names Moral several times.

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3. It should be noted that the term moral has a wider and a narrower sense. In the wider sense it means action in the moral sphere, as opposed to _non_-moral, and thus includes both good and bad conduct. In the narrower sense it means moral, as opposed to _im_moral.

   John Dewey, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics

   Names Moral several times; states what Moral is.

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Philosophers who discussed Moral

• William Whewell
• Plato
• Alfred North Whitehead
• Hans Jonas
• Seneca the Younger
• John Passmore
• The Philosophy of Freedom
• Moritz Lazarus

Related ideas

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• John Locke
• Latin
• Irony
• Narrative
• Aphorism
• Romeo and Juliet
• Charles Dickens
• Thomas Day (writer)

Place in the tradition

Part of Bioethics.

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