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Does an absolute moral value always have an identical value?
Assuming there is an absolute prohibition against murder, can context mitigate its wrongness?
I am just interested in the question cos I'm thinking about ethics, rather than planning at all to seek out any reference - to read.
Does an absolute moral value always have an identical value?
Given that you have presupposed an absolute moral value, then it remains as it is, a standard or a scale - and immutable; so yes, identical.
Assuming there is an absolute prohibition against murder, can context mitigate its wrongness?
Murder is commonly distinguished from manslaughter - a death of a man by accident; or from a man killed in a justified war; all deaths and causes of deaths are not alike; so yes, context mitigates or amplifies.
Pacifism - which I take in a general way - to mean an absolute injunction against killing - for any reason, has always been a minoritarian, but real position in the world: for example, the Quakers or the Jains.
Though Kant's deontic ethics has been correctly cited, I am not sure that a "categorical" imperative is exactly the same as an "absolute" imperative. And I am not sure that "absolute moral value" makes sense internally.
First, it appears from my Kant dictionary (Blackwell) that Kant is ambivalent about "the absolute," and while discussing it in CPR never actually applies that term to the categorical imperative. The absolute is not, of course, the sort of thing that can be "known" and in that way enter into judgements.
Second, "value" by almost any definition is relative to some value system, ideal, or "general equivalent." (In Kant's terms "hypothetical imperative.") I think most philosophers agree that this is a very problematic area of Kant's philosophy. He seems to depend implicitly on tweaking assumptions of freedom, limits of knowledge, and divine law in ways that have little if any clear practical application.
If we must read his categorical imperative as a kind of guiding ideal or limit test, then is it correct to say that it generates "absolute values"? When he suggests as much for the "good will" or the "person" as an end, things get pretty vague and these ideals seem to stand outside of any real "value" system. Values are relational, and I am not sure that the ground or "axiom" of some value system is itself a "value."
Anyway, I am only suggesting that Kant or other deontic ethicists might not be entirely clear on precisely this point, and that combining the terms "value" and "absolute" may be problematic.I admit I am not deeply familiar with Kant. But I do not see how one can, in the end, successfully combine a structural limit on knowledge with an "absolute" standard for practical judgments, except by appeal to faith.
Does an absolute moral value always have an identical value?
The term "absolute moral value" can be taken in two different meanings:
In the first case, absolute moral values are always the same, they are constant and do not change in time. In the second case, absolute moral values can vary between different societies and can also be replaced by other moral values.
In the field of ethics it is discussed whether absolute moral values in the first sense actually exist. Concerning the second meaning, it is also discussed whether at least one absolute moral value has been established in a given society and holds without conflicting with other moral values. Possibly one can find examples in the field of religious prescriptions, e.g., the first of the Jewish Ten Commands claims unrestricted validity.
Kant would say yes, hence his categorical imperative. In fact that is how he defines moral values, by checking whether or not they are universally applicable. Similarly, anyone whose ethics are based on religious scripture would also say yes, the goodness or badness of an action is defined by a transcendent deity(ies) independent of time, location or circumstance. These fall under the category of deontological ethics, i.e. ethics were the value is determined rules of conduct.
A utilitarian or a pragmatist would say no. More generally, any consequentialist theory of ethics would ultimately measure actions by their outcomes (consequences - hence the name), and - almost by definition - doesn't care about the goodness or badness of any action: The end justifies the means.
