Monday 12 January 2009

The moral and the right

Objectivism changes the way you think and see the world around you. My customized google home page displays quotes. I hadn't realized the degree of change in my thinking when this quote came up the other day:

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."

-- Isaac Asimov



Such a simple quote with an embedded philosophy; an embedded way of defining right and wrong. The embedded philosophy of this quote is that what is moral isn't what is right; the moral isn't what is good.

There's just one little problem with this one-sentence philosophy: That which is "moral" is defined by that which is "right" or "good"; you cannot separate them.

To imply otherwise is to undermine the definitions of both terms, to destroy what is actually good, and tarnish the course of action which is moral.

rootie

1 comment:

Burgess Laughlin said...

There is another possible interpretation. One's "sense of morals" may refer to ideas absorbed from the cultural around us, but "what's right" might refer to a particular individual's own (mostly subconscious) conclusions. The two are at war.

With either interpretation, his view of morality--how to develop it and what to do about it--is a train wreck.