The entire world changes their moral view over time. It's no surprise that individuals do it. Basically, for your views to be set in stone, you need something more physical and unchangeable than your own opinions.

Because those terms are completely a point of discussion.

-Dovydas

Because people change, and therefore their values change as well.

You are all wrong.

The answer is because the Vahi took over them.

Well our world views are based on our general knowledge of the world. As we accumulate more knowledge, either by going life experiences, taking the time to walk in another person's shoes, or even just taking the time to reevaluate what why we have the opinions we do, we'll see that certain assumptions we previously made were incorrect, while confirming others more certainly.

Case in point, today you get to learn that the word "wrong" doesn't have an "I" in it.

They think that because i'm right and your wrong.

My belief for the moral 'change' (or decline, depending on who you talk to) is simple; it is because almost every generation tries to distance itself from it's parents, creating a different moral and ethical code than their parents in the process.

We change our morals not based on fact, but on rebellion.

-TN05

My belief for the moral 'change' (or decline, depending on who you talk to) is simple; it is because almost every generation tries to distance itself from it's parents, creating a different moral and ethical code than their parents in the process.

 

We change our morals not based on fact, but on rebellion.

 

-TN05

Ah, Hegel's dialectic theory. Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. The specter of history. The great conversation of the world. While there is a lot could be said on his belief in the reason, phenomenology of the spirit, historicism, metaphysics, and reality, and indeed there is a lot to talk about, I think I'll skip right to the chase here and go straight to his theories on ethics.

According to Hegel, as rationality in nature becomes fully explicit and self-aware through the realization in spirit, the human community crafts a second world of its own that consists of ethical, political, legal institutions, and all the other trappings of society. In these institutions, reason, which precedes ethics, becomes actual and externalizes himself. Consider the world around you. You behold trees. Mountains. Lakes. Animals. Computers. Cars. However, also look around you. What do you see? Courts of law. Laboratories. Banks. Stores. Art. Nature has become highlighted by the development of the cultural and intellectual creations of the human community. However, culture can't exist without social values that bind them together into unity. Hence, Hegel deals with the way in which ethical consciousness develops in history.

To understand ethics, we must trace it back to its source. Hegel complains about his peers and claims that they act as though ethical values can arise in a vacuum. They say that each autonomous individual, in the privacy of his or her study, could generate ethical norms on the basis of their own, rational convictions. Hegel claims that such a notion is poppy cock. He says we are born into a community and become fully mature persons by entering into society. From the very beginning we define our self-identity and form our concept of the overall scheme of things in terms of our communal life. In both his ethical and political theory, Hegel consistently applies his devout conviction that the particular can only be understood in terms of the whole.

In a way, Hegel agrees with you TN05. Our ethics and morals are shaped by those around us. However, it's not shaped by rebellion. It's shaped by agreement. The German term Hegel uses when he refers to ethics is Sittlickeit, which could be translated as "community ethical life." For Hegel, ethics is tied to the community. You can't separate the two. Ethics is not moral commandments, but the whole fabric of human society. It's not only commands, by attitudes, values, and forms of life. Ethics, for Hegel, is very broad and very concrete. It might seem as if ethics is anthropology, but Hegel believes we cannot lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps to escape our concrete moral traditions. He says that a rational ideal unfolding in them is moving toward a universal ethics.

I could speak here of Kant, of whom Hegel was a reaction to, but I don't think its necessary at this point and time. Instead, I'd like to take our focus back to the dialectic. It would seem as if we're trapped by the past. Hegel's system seems as if it leaves no room for moral change, but such a perception is false. Morals and ethics can not be changed by individuals, but rather history is the only force strong enough to overturn existing moral values. If you look at history, any major shift in thinking has taken time. When you get into the nitty-gritty, moral changes are hard to track. It's only when you look at years in terms of hundreds and even thousands of years that you can see the tiny shifts in ethics.

And yes, I did say tiny shifts. Morals change very, very little over time and generally those changes are minute. Look at the moral fiber of any society, whether technology advanced or still lighting fire with sticks, and you will find that at the core the ethics are the same. Do not steal. Do not lie. To not kill. These are ideals that everyone can cling to and that everyone does cling to. Everything else is cosmetic, and the changes are for the most part skin deep.