Living the Confucian Role: Respect, Duty and Filial Piety - Essay Sample

Introduction

Confucian is a situation where the role of a family is lived to the maximum effect. In Confucian role ethics, the moral of an individual depends on their fulfilments like that of a child or a parent. Usually, this theory is centered around the respect of family members. The Confucian text is also centred around the Classic of Filial Piety where if a son must serve his parents, he needs to make them happy by nourishing them, taking care of them when they are sick and by showing great sorrow over the death of their closest members (Rosemont, 2015 p. 58). In this theory, the Filial duty needs to not only act as the piety but also determine the moral worth of the person in a community because it works like a form of social capital.

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One of the strengths in this theory is that it demands the career of a child and a parent to be irrelevant if the relationship between the two fails (Rosemont, 2015 p. 64). In short, the same failure experienced by the son should make the father to organise his child until he succeeds. The consistency in this theory is that it builds up the morale of the person that feels like giving up. However, Confucian Ethics has a few weaknesses because of its flaws. This is because the sources of the theory come from a traditional philosophy practised in the west. The primary weakness of this theory, there is inconsistency due to the distinctions made between the parent and the child.Absolutism and Relativism

The focus of absolutism is on an action either being right or wrong as determined by the set standards regardless of the prevailing circumstances. Relativism, on the other hand, views work as being either right or wrong depending on the environment in which the action was done (Leone, Giacomantonio and Lauriola, 2017 p. 200). An illustration of a health care scenario is best for understanding relativism and absolutism. In this example, an individual from a particular community believes that abortion is wrong, and regardless of the context, it should not be performed. Another individual believes that abortion is illegal, but if the life of the mother is in danger, then it should be shown.

In absolutism, a mother would rather die than do an abortion while in ethical relativism, a mother would instead do an abortion and live. The problem with relativism is that people can lie over issues to get away with the breaking of rules. The only way of solving the challenges presented by both theories is to have a system of inclusivity and exclusivity for issues of contention. For instance, instead of insisting that abortion is wrong, let the one carrying the baby be given the moral authority to decide.

Biological Theory of Determinism

Biological determinism focuses on the fact that human behavior depends on the morphological characteristics of an individual. These may include genetics and size of the brain. Natural attributes will, therefore, determine the moral choices made by individuals. For example, most young people tend to make decisions which many times are not considered morally upright by society. Though still a highly controversial issue, some researches done have shown that there is a positive relationship between intelligence and increased size of the brain (Benson-Amram et al., 2016 p. 2534). Older individuals, on the other hand, have been found to make wise decisions and moral choices.

Genetic factors of an individual have a role in personality development, thus affecting the moral choice an individual make. Genetics determines characteristics such as nervousness and this may hinder an individual from making the right choice because of fear. The role of biology in determining the choice made contrasts the fact that men have the free will to make moral choices. Free will means that an individual has available options to choose from and is not condemned to damnation for failure to make a specific decision. The theory, however, depicts human beings as robots acting on internal drives determined by biological attributes.

References

Benson-Amram, S., Dantzer, B., Stricker, G., Swanson, E.M., and Holekamp, K.E. (2016). Brain size predicts problem-solving ability in mammalian carnivores. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(9), pp.2532-2537.0 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2532.full

Leone, L., Giacomantonio, M., and Lauriola, M. (2017). Moral foundations, worldviews, moral absolutism, and belief in conspiracy theories. International Journal of Psychology, 54(2), pp.197-204. http://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12459

Rosemont, Henry Jr. (2015), Against Individualism: A Confucian Rethinking of the Foundations of Morality, Politics, Family, and Religion (Lanham: Lexington Books).