CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

“The widespread assumption that ethical behavior takes the fun out of life is false. In actuality, living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth.” - Bell Hooks

The moral aspects of day-to-day living are directly engaging, persistant, and urgent. Each day, fundamental moral considerations affect our lives in common place ways. We laughed at a joke expressing sexual act. We may have failed to respond to an act of kindness with the gratitude dictated by common decency. Perhaps we abused alcohol, drugs, or food with a compulsiveness that made us wonder whether we respected ourselves anymore. These everyday aspects of our lives provide an immediate stimulus for thinking about morality.

Moral responsibility is an ongoing process of development skills: identifying moral problems and reasons; sensitivity to alternative perspectives; creative vision in discerning solutions; weighing conflicting moral reasons; adeptness in clarifying concepts that otherwise might be vague or ambiguous. It also requires moral concern and responsibles commitment All these capacities nature through studies in the liberal arts, among which ethics is central, that aim at liberating us from parochial prejudices while deeeping our understanding of our own moral traditions and those of others.

It should not be forgotten that one challenge some moral beliefs without challenging others. For example, it is possible to maintain that although it is a delusion that human beings are bound by duty, it is a good thing that people have this delusion. Without it, life would be nasty, british, and short. This view implies that although the belief that human beings have duties is false, the belief that their having this false belief is a good thing is true. There