MODULE 2: THE MORAL AGENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. Define what culture means
2. Determine facets of personal behavior to culture
3. Determine differences in moral behavior of different
MODULE 2: cultures and appreciate your differences
4. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of cultural
THE MORAL relativism
5. Identify universal values and outline why universal
AGENT values are necessary for human survival
6. Analyze crucial qualities of the Filipino moral
identity in your own moral experiences
7. Evaluate elements that need to be changed
8. Recall defining moments in your moral formation
9. Describe each stage of moral development
10.Assess your personal growth, and cases, against
the stages of development
 A. Culture and Moral Behavior

1. Culture and Its Role in Moral Behavior

2. What is Cultural Relativism? Why is it not tenable in
ethics?
3. Why are There Universal Values?
4. The Filipino Way: An Asian and a Filipino Understanding
of Moral Behavior
MODULE 2: 5. Strengths and weaknesses?

TOPICS B. The Moral Agent: Developing Virtue as Habit

1. How is Moral Character Developed: The Circular

Relation of Acts that Build Character and Acts that
Emanate from Character
2. Stages of Moral Development and Conscience: How do
we get to the highest level, conscience-based moral
decisions?
CULTURE and its ROLE
in MORAL BEHAVIOR
 • Culture is a complex phenomenon. It contains
nearly all aspects of shared human
experiences. Culture possess five basic
elements: symbols, language, beliefs, values
and norm (Gallinero, 2018)
What is • Culture is the way of life of a group of people
Culture? that “includes their knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities
and habits acquired by man as a member of
society” (Edward Tylor)
• And many more definitions…
Key points from various definitions of culture

Social way of life and

Related to arts and
personality or cultivated Complex
humanities
behavior

Symbolic communication
Includes all the things we Patterns, behaviors
– values, attitudes,
learn acquired, systems
motives, etc.
 The Role of What do you think is the role of
culture to moral behavior?
Culture in Moral
Behavior
Moral
Standards as through Social
Moral rules, convention
social sense of moral
convention obligation and
accountability through Social
and social conditioning
conditioning
 Social Convention
• Morality is something handed
down through education or
socialization (from parents,
elders, teachers, etc).
• It is that which humans had
made up for themselves (agreed
upon).
Social Conditioning
• Morality is an effect of social
conditioning – a moral
consciousness/feeling that we
are obliged to act morally.
• The demands of conscience is
due to society – people
develops the habit of what is
good or bad.
CULTURAL RELATIVISM
 Consider the following guide questions in
analyzing the following cases:
ACTIVITY:
CASES FOR • Cite the facts (who are involved, where it
happened, what is the dilemma, etc.)
ONLINE • How do you feel about the situation/case?
ANALYSIS • Is the given situation/case a moral issue?
• Should we allow or tolerate this kind of culture
to happen or should we condemn it? Why or
why not?
 • Darius, a king of ancient Persia,
had found that Callatians, who
lived in India, ate the bodies of
CASE 1. The their dead fathers. The Greeks, of
course, did not do that - the Greeks
Greeks and practiced cremation and regarded
the Callatians the funeral pyre as the natural and
fitting way to dispose of the dead.
 • The Eskimos are the native people of
Alaska. The Eskimos lived in small
CASE 2. settlements, separated by great
distances. The Eskimo men often have
Eskimos of more than one wife, and they would
share their wives with guests, lending
the early and them out for the night as a sign of
mid 20th hospitality. Moreover, within a
community, a dominant male might
Century demand and get regular sexual access to
other men’s wives. The women, however,
were free to break these arrangements
simply by leaving their husbands and
taking up with new partners.
 • The Eskimos are the native people of
Alaska. The Eskimos lived in small
CASE 3. settlements, separated by great
distances. Infanticide was common
Eskimos of among them. Knud Rasmussen, an early
explorer, reported that he met one
the early and woman who had borne 20 children but
mid 20th had killed 10 of them at birth. Female
babies were especially likely to be killed,
Century and this was permitted at the parents’
discretion, with no social stigma
attached. Moreover, when elderly family
members became too feeble, they were
left out in the snow to die.
 • In some African and Asian
communities, witch hunting is a
prevalent practice. Women
CASE 4. suspected of being witches are
tortured by the people, tied,
Witch covered in gasoline and burned
Hunting alive. The motivation of the people
of doing the act of witch hunting is
the fear of the suffering that the
witches might inflict on them.
 • In Uganda and India, some
communities practice Sati, a
funeral custom whereby a widow
CASE 5. will throw herself (either willingly,
or due to social pressure) on the
Human pyre or lying place of her dead
Sacrifice husband and burn to death.
According to source, women do it
to show devotion and commitment
for their husbands.