Word Finder - morality

definition

Recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental disposition or characteristic of behaving in a manner intended to produce morally good results.

definition

A set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct.

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A set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether respectable or not.

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A lesson or pronouncement which contains advice about proper behavior.

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A morality play.

definition

Moral philosophy, the branch of philosophy which studies the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.

definition

A particular theory concerning the grounds and nature of rightness, wrongness, good, and evil.

He wasn't known for his morality or virtues.

Julia had her own ideas about morality, obviously.

Philip was by nature dull and phlegmatic. He had learnt morality from Fenelon's teaching, and showed himself throughout his life strongly adverse to the moral laxity of his grandfather and of most of the princes of his time.

Crime is infrequent, and morality, always above the Polynesian average, has improved.

Agrippina was a woman of the highest character and exemplary morality.

This spirit was exhibited on the philosophical side by Kant who in his Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (1793) set forth his doctrine of rational morality (Vernunftglauben) as the only true religion.

But apart from the doubtful morality of his transactions he must still be regarded as one of the great Scottish writers.

But, above all, it is antecedently certain that defection from the ordinary standard of morality would have precluded the success which the sophists unquestionably sought and won.

The distinction between religion on the one hand and law and morality on the other is not indeed clearly conceived by Grotius, but he wrestles with it in such a way as to make it easy for those who followed him to seize it.

Even Gautier, while he contends that chivalry did much to refine morality, is compelled to admit the prevailing immorality to which medieval romances testify, and the extraordinary free behaviour of the unmarried ladies.

Urban was serious and humble, opposed to all nepotism, simony, and secular pomp. He was himself of blameless morality and reformed many abuses in the curia.

Of his many works the most important are his chronicles of the four kings of Castile during whose reigns he lived; they give a generally accurate account of scenes and events, most of which he had witnessed; he also wrote a long satirical and didactic poem, interesting as a picture of his personal experiences and of contemporary morality.

Morality has no connexion with religion.

Simony was universally practised and the morality of the clergy was very low.

The pettiest princeling had his army, his palaces, his multitudes of household officers; and most of them pampered every vulgar appetite without respect either to morality or to decency.

In 1876 Eismarck proposed to introduce into the Criminal Code a clause making it an offence punishable with two years imprisonment to attack in print the family, property, universal military service, or other foundation of public order, in a manner which undermined morality, feeling for law, or the love of the Fatherland.

In a speed at Konigsberg in November 1894, he summoned the nobles ci Prussia to support him in the struggle for religion, for morality for order, against the parties of Umsturz, or Revolution, and shortly afterwards an amendment of the Criminal Code, commonly called the Umsturz- Vorlage, was introduced, Vmsturz.

The discussion of this measure occupied most of the session of 1895; the bill was amended by the Centre so as to make it even more strongly a measure for the defence of religion; and clauses were introduced to defend public morality, by forbidding the public exhibition of pictures or statues, or the sale of writings, which, without being actually obscene, might rudely offend the feeling of modesty.

The LancelotGuenevere romance took form and shape in the artificial atmosphere encouraged by such patronesses of literature as Eleanor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie, Comtesse de Champagne (for whom Chretien de Troyes wrote his Chevalier de la Charrette), and reflects the low social morality of a time when love between husband and wife was declared impossible.

The first mentioned of these was severely criticised by Pascal in the fifth and sixth of his Provincial Letters, as tending to inculcate a loose system of morality.

They were also ridiculed in witty verses by Moliere, Boileau and La Fontaine, and gradually the name Escobar came to be used in France as a synonym for a person who is adroit in making the rules of morality harmonize with his own interests.

The diffusion of the Greek race far from the former centres of its life, the mingling of citizens of many cities, the close contact between Greek and barbarian in the conquered lands - all this had made the old sanctions of civic religion and civic morality of less account than ever.

Besides the lectures noted he published Studies in Genesis (1880), The Foundations of Morality (1882) and some volumes of sermons.

Hans Sthen, a lyrical poet, wrote a morality entitled Kortvending (" Change of Fortune "), which is really a collection of monologues to be delivered by students.

Christian's finances were certainly readjusted thereby, but the ultimate gainers by the confiscation were the nobles, and both education and morality suffered grievously in consequence.

The descendants of one of these, Henry, known only for his translation of an Italian morality play Freewyl (Tragedio del Libero Arbitrio) by Nigri de Bassano, settled at Pyrgo in Essex.

Church and state, law and morality, commerce and art are reduced to factors in the totality of human life, from which the specialists had isolated them.

It is the age of unconscious morality, when the individual's life is lost in the society of which he is an organic member.

There is a marked growth of refinement and of ideas of morality, and a condemnation of the shameless vice and oppression which went on amid a punctilious and splendid worship. It is extremely significant that between the teaching of the prophetical writings and the spirit of the Mosaic legislation there is an unmistakable bond.

It is plain that Prodicus was an affected pedant; yet his simple conventional morality found favour, and Plato (Rep. 600 C) couples him with Protagoras in his testimony to the popularity of the sophists and their teaching.

It may have been that the sophists' preference of seeming to reality, of success to truth, had a mischievous effect upon the morality of the time; but it is clear that they had no common theory of ethics, and there is no warrant for the assumption that a sophist, as such, specially interested himself in ethical questions.

Prodicus in his platitudes reflected the customary morality of the time.

If Hippias, Polus and Thrasymachus defied conventional morality, they did so independently of one another, and in this, as in other matters, they were disputants maintaining paradoxical theses, rather than thinkers announcing heretical convictions.

Again, it is certain that the theoretical and practical morality of the sophists, regarded as a class, was " neither above nor below the standard of the age."

In a word, the present writer agrees with Grote that the sophists were not a sect or school with common doctrine or method; that their theoretical and practical morality was neither above nor below that of their age, being, in fact, determined by it; and that Plato and his followers are not to be regarded as the authorized teachers of the Greek nation, nor the sophists as the dissenters, but vice versa.

Officers were appointed to watch over domestic life and public morality, and to promote instruction among the women as well as the youth.

The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical, and exhibits a high idealistic type of morality.

While he owed to Reid all his theory of morality, he repaid the debt by giving to Reid's views the advantage of his admirable style and academic eloquence.

He was much fascinated by the Stoic morality, and it has been noticed that the Tusculan Disputations and de Officiis are largely Stoic in tone.

As psychology recognizes a distinction of pleasure and pain, and metaphysics of good and evil, so morality assumes the difference between right and wrong in action, good and bad in character; but the distinction in psychology and metaphysics applies to what is, the difference in morality is based on a judgment of what is by what ought to be.

The materialism of Hobbes, the pantheism of Spinoza, the empiricism of Locke, the determinism of Leibnitz, Collins' necessitarianism, Dodwell's denial of the natural immortality of the soul, rationalistic attacks on Christianity, and the morality of the sensationalists - all these he opposed with a thorough conviction of the truth of the principles which he advocated.

Confucian ethics are the basis of morality and social order.

Morality, important though it be as preparatory to the "higher life," does not alone lend itself to that awakening of the spiritual faculties without which progress along the Path is not possible.

In good citizenship morality is practised out of regard to certain preconceived notions of the needs, the health and happiness of ourselves, our fellows and the community at large.

This prohibition of a custom which had undoubtedly given rise to grave abuses seems to have been inspired by a genuine desire to improve public morality, and received the support of the official aristocracy and a section of the clergy.

One of the first acts of her reign was a proclamation against vice, and Lord Chesterfield regretted the strict morality of her court.

Now the second presupposition depends, according to Paley, on the credibility of the Christian religion (which he treats almost exclusively as the revelation of these "new sanctions" of morality).

As there is no law in Homer, so there is no morality.

The first name is that of Theagenes of Rhegium, contemporary of Cambyses (525 B.C.), who is said to have founded the " new grammar " (the older " grammar " being the art of reading and writing), and to have been the inventor of the allegorical interpretations by which it was sought to reconcile the Homeric mythology with the morality and speculative ideas of the 6th century B.C. The same attitude in the " ancient quarrel of poetry and philosophy " was soon afterwards taken by Anaxagoras; and after him by his pupil Metrodorus of Lampsacus, who explained away all the gods, and even the heroes, as elementary substances and forces (Agamemnon as the upper air, &c.).

And this conduct is the result, not only of his fierce and inexorable character, but also (as the silence of Homer shows) of the want of any general rules or principles, any code of morality or of honour, which would have required him to act in a different way.