My interpretation is that morality is the specific code of rules you live by, where ethics is more intellectualized and can represent principles for deriving morality but not necessarily morality itself.
I think in this case of a husband with an excellent job making his wife pay rent during her maternity leave, it is a question of morality and not ethics. There's a standard set of rules that you'd need to share with your spouse to get along well together.
There are plenty of ethical arguments that the husband is being just fine. Their arrangement is fair in the sense that they share expenses equally, and during this time he's also taken over the rest of the bills.
On the other hand, is it moral to force your wife to pay rent during maternity leave if you can afford not to? For some systems the answer is yes, for other systems the answer might be not only a hard no, would go even further to say she shouldn't have to work at all if he's got a quarter million dollar a year job.
Western civilization is based (even now) on a guilt based morality where it isn't really the other people who will judge you, but God. Therefore, you want to behave morally not because you might be judged by others (as occurs in a shame based morality) but because you will let God down.
The thing is, the moral code is still a moral code whether it's enforced by others or by yourself. In fact, there are situations such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union where you will be encouraged and rewarded for violating your morals. In the case of the Soviet Union in particular, they had many very charismatic texts explaining why violating your personal morals was the ethical thing to do. Yet some people chose to do what they personally thought was moral regardless, often to their personal detriment.
sj_zero /
npub1m3…pnjzz
2024-01-21 02:34:34
in reply to nevent1q…t63f
Author Public Key
npub1m343wwwdmvare434daq4jpjyc4q4nv56pftgh03jej5l42azs44qwpnjzzPublished at
2024-01-21 02:34:34Event JSON
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