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Is there a universal morality?  In class on Thursday we discussed whether there is a universal morality, and if so, if universal morality means the “end of the story” of morality.  I do not think there is a universal sense of what is moral, solely because there is not a universal culture.  Every culture, which is divided up into one’s household, community, state or country, has its set of morals.  Therefore, it would be impossible to have a universal morality that everyone could live by.  Each of these subgroups’ moral standings can counteract each other or work together to make a well moraled person, but since there is variation within each subgroup, the morals of the person made from the variation would be infinite.

In addition, cultures can oppose each other.  On the big scale, one culture can disagree about what is moral with another culture.  For example, some cultures feel that suicide bombers are moral since they are dying for an important cause for many people, while other cultures think that suicide bombers are completely immoral, unrightfully taking the lives of innocent people to prove a point.  On the small scale, two people, of different households can argue about what they believe to be moral.  With such turmoil going on in the world, at all levels of culture, there is absolutely no evidence supporting a universal morality theory.

Andrea Zambetti