Why Should I be Moral?

The question “Why should I be moral?” has many different answers, amoralism is the one that I shall be focusing on. It answers the question by showing how you can gain much more by not being morally guided in the world. There are many reasons why the amoralist can achieve more by ignoring moral considerations, including being able to flourish in a world without regulations or laws. There are three strategies to defeating the amoralist which touch upon the characteristics of consequentialism, deontological theories and virtue ethics. All of these arguments attempt to over the amoralist, although personally I believe that the only theory that truly denies amoralism is the virtue ethic theory that the amoralist cannot lead a fulfilling life without social relationships.

The Amoralist

The Amoralist is the complete opposite to anyone with any moral beliefs. They believe that to enjoy life, each person should act purely for their own selfish desires and has no need to rein in any of these for purely moral reasons. In a world without rules this would not be a problem but, as a lot of these desires often would require breaking the law, they cannot be completely free within their own pursuits; they have to be cunning and hide their nature to act only for themselves. When faced with this picture of a person that outwardly was good in every sense of the word but was actually deceitful and hid his crimes with the utmost skill – they are actually very attractive and what we all would desire to become. For who would not want to have everything that they want, without being caught, and be intelligent enough to hide his crimes? Part of me clearly finds this person to be wrong. I cannot shake the underlying repulsion that their deceit has caused and their lack of consideration for others around. Yet this could be caused merely from my moral background formed by my parents and teachers. The amoralist would say that without these underlying strictures placed upon us from an early age we would not rein in our desire to do everything we wanted. Take young children for an example, they demand to have everything that they want and it is only the influence of parents upon them that restricts their habits. Over time we learn that this seems to be the better way to prosper in this world.

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Morality is a kind of bargain between individuals for common interests. If we think of a world where amoralists did exactly as they wish, no one would abide by laws or regulations set down before them, for seeing others breaking the law would make everyone think they could do it too. This would cause the break down of society into complete chaos and anarchy; there would be no structure to any part of our world if everyone was acting purely for themselves. But in this world surely the amoralist would flourish? They are the ones with the courage, desire ...

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