morality
Pluralmoralities (some meanings)
- 1Recognition of the difference between right and wrong, together with respect for and obedience to the rules of good conduct.
A society depends on the morality of its citizens to function without constant policing.
He questioned whether morality could survive without some shared idea of right and wrong.
Similarethics, integrity, decency, virtue, goodness
Oppositeimmorality, wickedness
Note
This is the inward, uncountable sense, though the word is rooted in Latin mōs, "manner, custom": what began as habit now names a grasp of right and wrong. It is usually framed as something a person has or lacks. Jack London's Theft (1910) has a man with "no morality whatever", Chesterton weighs science and art "without morality", and Time in 1965 repeats the saying that you cannot legislate morality.
- 2A set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices that defines which forms of conduct a community treats as acceptable.
Victorian morality placed great importance on public decency and restraint.
Different societies develop different moralities around marriage and family.
Similarvalues, morals, mores, ethics, standards
Note
Here morality is a shared code, so it takes a plural and a qualifier: Shaw's "middle class morality" in Pygmalion, Victorian morality, the moralities of different societies. In William MacLeod Raine's The Yukon Trail (1917), a character calls it "the average conduct of the average man at a given time and place", based on custom, which brings the word back to its root. Compare one person's private code.
- 3The principles a particular person lives by, or their general sense of how to behave, whether or not others would think it respectable.
The gangster lived by a strange morality that valued loyalty above the law.
Each member of the crew followed a private morality the others rarely understood.
Similarcode, ethic, principles
Note
A morality of this kind need not be good, so it accepts adjectives that would be contradictions elsewhere. Samuel Johnson traces one man's morality to "loose opinions", and a prosecutor quoted in the San Jose Mercury News in 1994 condemned a killer's "atrocious morality". It usually comes with a possessive (his morality, a gangster's morality), whereas morality as a virtue is simply had or lacked.
- 4A medieval allegorical play that dramatizes a moral lesson, with characters personifying virtues and vices such as Mercy, Greed, or Death.
Everyman is the most famous morality still performed today.
Touring players staged moralities in town squares across the country.
Note
A clipped form of morality play that names a dramatic genre. George Borrow's Wild Wales (1862) capitalizes it and sets the Moralities against the Mysteries. In the Moralities, virtues, vices and qualities were personified, and something like a plot could often be found. In ordinary prose the full form, morality play, avoids any confusion with the word's other meanings.
Less common meanings
- 5A theory explaining why things count as right, wrong, good, or evil and what these categories mean.
Utilitarianism is a morality that judges actions by their consequences.
Hume's morality which ‘implies some sentiment common to all mankind’; Kant's morality for all rational beings; Butler's morality with its presupposition of ‘uniformity of conscience’.
1954, Bernard Mayo, “Ethics and Moral Controversy”Similarethic
Note
A rare, countable use found in philosophical writing, usually tied to a thinker's name. Writing in 1954, Bernard Mayo runs through "Hume's morality", "Kant's morality" and "Butler's morality" as rival accounts of where right and wrong come from. Unlike a personal code, the possessor here is a theorist, and the morality is an argument rather than a way of living.
- 6The branch of philosophy that studies the grounds and nature of right and wrong, good and evil; moral philosophy.
Aristotle's work laid early foundations for morality as a field of study.
The course in morality examined how thinkers justify their claims about right and wrong.
Similarethics
Note
The discipline rather than its subject matter, and a rare use. J. Kemp, reviewing N. H. G. Robinson's The Claim of Morality in 1953, speaks of "the field of morality" and of the moralist's task within it. Because the word slips so easily back into its everyday meaning, moral philosophy is the safer label when the field of study is meant.
- 7A lesson or pronouncement that offers advice about proper behavior.
The preacher closed his sermon with a stern morality on the dangers of pride.
What mean these stale moralities, / Sir Preacher, from your desk you mumble?
1882, William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanitas Vanitatum”Note
An archaic name for a sermonizing remark, and it usually appears in the plural with a note of weariness. Sir Walter Scott's good dame in St. Ronan's Well (1824) consoles herself with pious "moralities", and Thackeray's "Vanitas Vanitatum" mocks the "stale moralities" a preacher mumbles from his desk. Outside period pastiche, the word will read as old-fashioned.
Practice
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Origin
It comes from Anglo-Norman and Middle French moralité, from Late Latin mōrālitās meaning 'manner, character', which comes from Latin mōrālis ('relating to morals') and ultimately mōs ('manner, custom'). It is equivalent to moral plus -ity.