Last week, I was interviewing a man who works for Pro-Life Action League. Something he said in the course of the interview really struck me. I wrote it down as a side note to think about later, but being the scatter-brained child I am, I just now found that little side-note. Reading it over I’m still not sure what I think. He said, “Morality is all about intention.” Is that true? Is morality simply about intention? I can’t even remember how his statement related to what we were discussing. I just remember sitting there, and when I heard that, it struck a chord.
Morality is all about intention. Morality is all about intention?
What does that even mean. Looking back, I should have asked him. Well, I’d like other people’s thoughts on that phrase. I’d like to know: what you think it means, if you think it is true, and why or why not.
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6 comments:
sound byte moralizing!!! yay!
if morality is all about intentions, then all good intentions would bring about good outcomes. most folks who are pro-choice are all about good intentions, as a matter of fact, that is one of the largest driving forces behind their decision to be pro-choice. they want to alieviate the mother's regret for choices she's made or the rape victims pain by eliminating the reminder of what happened, but the result is the killing of a baby. so good intentions, bad outcome.
to take it further, anyone that gets warm fuzzies from doing something, say murder for example, can say the warm fuzzies are good. thus the desire to attain to those warm fuzzies is good. therefore the intent to gain warm fuzzies via murder makes murder morally kosher.
ok. i've got to get back to studying. i'm sure a lot of folks are going to get upset that i said abortion was killing babies, if you are, go to medical school and find out all about the process, you might change your mind. others might say the murder is kosher bit is a touch shaky, it probably is, but i'm trying to write this in 5 minutes and it has be seven.
They do say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I don't think that this negates entirely the idea that morality is about intentionality. If I were to un-pack his statement I would guess that all moral actions must in order to be moral, be intentional. That one should make life decisions with intention and consideration rather than simply as they come.
Morality is all about how you choose to live your life, and therefore it must be intentioned.
So I think that for this definition we must think of morality as a group of thought out intentioned actions, rather than "good" or "evil"...
Hey, Daniel, speaking of abortion, Trey read a quote from Ronald Regan in one of his books:
"I notice all the people supporting abortion have already been born."
Nuff said there, I say.
As for the morality issue, I tend to think that people use words without much thinking of the full meaning of said words (maybe because I tend to do this? maybe because I think people say stupid stuff most times?). Anyway, I'm just not as generous as Emily. I think the guy thought it sounded nice.
The idea that morality has anything to do with an individual kind of missed the point. If morality is defined by the individual (and his "intentions") good and bad are relative, essentially meaningless (like Emily was saying). Seems like morality must be defined by something outside ourselves. Sure, we can behave morally, which has to do with our individual actions, but the intent there is to conform to something outside ourselves. Since I'm speaking about "intent" in another way now (forgive the disorganization of thought), if we intend to behave morally, yet fail (necessitating an outside standard that we haven't reached), have we been moral? Can we claim morality by intention alone? I don't think so.
According to my convoluted analysis of his statement, he said that the intent justifies the end. The End.
I think the guy thought it sounded nice too Hilary! However, it was more fun to think about what he said as if he had given it some deep thought.
i agree with the embly!!!
hmmm... intentions/morality. I'm a little suspicious about morality. It tends to be about morals and the word moral comes from the latin word meaning custom. So that morality is usually defined by the customs if a society. Every society has its set of morals. Look at twenty first century western civilization and you identify the great moral issues of our day, even in a pleuralistic society.
If intention means the reasoning behind an action then his statement begin to make sense. Action is preceeded by intention and there is the rub. Whenever I read the sermon of the mount I'm struck by the importance that Jesus puts on the connection between intention and action. In fact the rightness of an action is judged in relationship to its intention. Even more astounding is that judgement of rightness is rendered on intention alone in the sermon on the mount. That is one reason why we are admonished to be careful in judging because as finite creatures it is very difficult to discern the true intention behind an action and it is equally important to know this to judge an action rightly.
Some actions are clearly heinous in nature and the intentions for pursuing that action can be discerned. Yet other actions that are more ambiguous and knowing the intentions are all the more important for judgment. I've frequently quoted T. S. Eliot in this area, "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason."
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