The Ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act.
Absolutists are those people who think that moral laws apply equally to all people at all times, and in all places. The goodness or rightness of an action is not dependent upon the outcome or what was intended to happen; only the act itself.
So an Absolutist would say that stealing is always immoral, regardless or whether you are trying to feed your starving family, killing can never be justified and adultery is always forbidden. Even if goodness does come about from your action it is still not justified.
So an Absolutist would say that stealing is always immoral, regardless or whether you are trying to feed your starving family, killing can never be justified and adultery is always forbidden. Even if goodness does come about from your action it is still not justified.
This view is accompanied by a belief that there is an absolute standard by which all ethical actions can be judged; these range from God as lawgiver (Natural Law, Divine Command Theory), logical duty (Kant’s Categorical Imperative) or the Form of an ethical principle such as Justice, Truth or Good (Plato).
At first glance this seems pretty straightforward and a great way to do Ethics - we all know where we stand on an issue, we would know how others were going to act and judgements on morality would be totally clear cut. This allows us to write documents such as the declaration on human rights and to judge evil dictators who cause atrocities to their peoples. Simple...
At first glance this seems pretty straightforward and a great way to do Ethics - we all know where we stand on an issue, we would know how others were going to act and judgements on morality would be totally clear cut. This allows us to write documents such as the declaration on human rights and to judge evil dictators who cause atrocities to their peoples. Simple...
But of course things are never that easy! All absolutist theories are variously criticised because of where they believe their moral absolutes come from - the existence of God cannot be proved beyond doubt; Kant’s logic is flawed; the Forms are illogical. A more general criticism is that absolutism does not respect diversity of cultures and different traditions. Why is my world-view more likely to be correct that another?
For me the most pertinent problem with Absolutism is that life is not that simple. Kant drew attention to this such problem himself in Critique of pure reason; what if a crazed axe-murderer came to your front door and asked you where your father is? You could lie – many would say you should lie – but imagine if everyone in the entire world lied all the time. If everyone lied, there would be no “telling the truth” and, thus, no real lying. As the law is logically contradictory, you have a perfect duty not to lie. You have to tell the axe-murderer the truth, so he can go and kill your father. How can this be right? It’s in situations like this that strict ethical systems with specific decision procedures tend to fall apart. Morality is simply too complex and too full of exceptions for these theories to ever fully work.
For me the most pertinent problem with Absolutism is that life is not that simple. Kant drew attention to this such problem himself in Critique of pure reason; what if a crazed axe-murderer came to your front door and asked you where your father is? You could lie – many would say you should lie – but imagine if everyone in the entire world lied all the time. If everyone lied, there would be no “telling the truth” and, thus, no real lying. As the law is logically contradictory, you have a perfect duty not to lie. You have to tell the axe-murderer the truth, so he can go and kill your father. How can this be right? It’s in situations like this that strict ethical systems with specific decision procedures tend to fall apart. Morality is simply too complex and too full of exceptions for these theories to ever fully work.
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