“morality carries two different sets of associations for most of us.

Sandra Vargas’s Response

According to Rosenstand the word moralizing means the virtues of decency, civility, honesty among others. Rosentand further explains saying that the word “morality carries two different sets of associations for most of us. The positive ones are guidance, goodness, humanitarianism, and so fort. Among the negative associations are repression, bigotry, persecution in a word moralizing.” The word moralizing either expresses a right or wrong opinion.

Sommers’s repudiation of moral and ethical relativism are pretty straight forward. She states that “instead of teaching courses of the big issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment, we should talk about the little everyday, enormously important things, such as honesty, friendship, consideration, respect. Those are virtues that, if not learned at a young age, may never be achieved in our society” (Rosendstand, 2016). These virtues help shape people’s moral reasoning. Morals are values that we identify ourselves with, our own personal beliefs from right and wrong. These are virtues that are vital in our everyday life for everyone to practice. In today’s society I think that I see less and less of these virtues being practiced. Ethical relativism can be interpreted from person to person. What is right for someone might not be right to someone else.

Sommers’s view is convincing enough even though Rosenstand states that “its old fashioned moralizing”. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and decisions they make in life. Parents and educators or anyone that works with children they have to make sure that children are practicing these virtues. That way when they encounter themselves in a situation they will be self conscious in making the best decision. According to Rosen stand “The ultimate meaning of life and the ultimate virtue: to become an authentic human being by finding your own meaning.” In life we will make good and bad decisions. Sometimes we learn from our mistakes the first time, sometimes we have to make that same mistake more than once in order to learn from our mistake.

Even though we live in a diverse nation we can all agree and share common ground when it comes to values. Having common values we learn how to respect and work together in order for us to achieve our goals. Sommers’s view shares common ground with virtue of ethics. Virtue of ethics are virtues that help us describe ourselves as a person. A person that practices these ethics are people who are honest, respectful, kind, responsible and caring. These are the same virtues that Sommers’s explains that we should know about and practice in our society. Virtues should not be seen as rules or expectations. Virtues should be seen as a positive way for us to be able to connect and communicate with other individuals. “For Sommers’s those are basic human virtues that aren’t a matter of historical relativism, fads, or discussion and the better we learn them, the better we’ll like living in our world with one another”. Like Sommers’s states theyre only basic human virtues which is something we all benefit from practicing on our daily lives.

Rosenstand, N. (2018). The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics. New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education