What is Morality?
What is the Meaning of life?
More specifically, in the first question, we as what makes an action right, what make an action wrong; what is the very reason why certain acts are right and why certain acts are wrong; by what standard or on what basis we discriminate between right and wrong, good and bad, in short we ask in Ethics, what is the norm of morality, the basis, criterion standard, test, measure or rule of right and wrong in human conduct.
Since Ethics is branch of philosophy, the inquiry by human reason to ultimate why’s, cause reasons of all things, then the two above-stated questions in Ethics are also raised in their ultimate and deepest significance.
What is the ultimate norm or ground of distinction between right and wrong?
What is life in its fullest and deepest meaning?
Relation between the Two Questions
The two aforementioned questions of Ethics are intimately related-much as the means necessarily relates with the end. The science of Ethics teaches us that morality, good upright moral living, is the only way, the means by which we can reach and attain our supreme goal and purpose that is called Happiness.
Likewise the two aforestated questions involve the necessary connection between goodness and purpose. We always associate the goodness of anything with the fulfillment of its purpose. Even in our ordinary conscious living, we always associate the goodness of anything with the fulfillment of its purpose. A tool or instrument to be worth itself should serve its own purpose
Ex.
A good pen is one that is use to write in order to create a beautiful letter well, for this is the very purpose of a pen.
A good life, Ethics tells us, is that which leads to the attainment of life’s supreme purpose. Man’s greatest good and perfection is to be found, as the sages of all ages tell us in the fulfillment, the full realization of man’s ultimate purpose and destiny
The Ultimate End of All Man’s Volitional Activities
Every act is directed towards am end. The end of an act is the purpose of which the act is done. No sane man acts without motive or end. You may object and say sometimes you do things for nothing for merely killing the time or for leisure; nevertheless, you still act for an end, the end is this case being to kill time.
End
means we cannot proceed to infinity.
Everybody, no doubt, is looking for happiness.
Ex.
Sinner and saint alike are looking for happiness. The first is looking for it in the wrong place in the wrong way, the other looks for it in the right way. But there is no doubt that it is happiness both are looking for. The saint looks for the gold and finds it, the sinner also looks for it but mistakes the glitter for gold
The Quest for the Perfect
Man naturally seeks the perfect good. He longs for life, for truth, for love and happiness. Take life, for instance. Man seeks for happiness but the thing is these; Titles, joys, wealth, power, ambition and honor. All these we will let go provided we can hold on to that precious, palpitating, vibrating thing called “Life” .The very instinct which impels a man to put out his hand when he walks in the dark shows that he is willing to sacrifice any part of his body as long as he does not lose his life.
Ex.
Even in the sad case of suicide does not argue against the truth that man longs for life. It only means that the one who commits suicide wants to change his bitter life with a better one.
Another object of a fundamental craving of every human being is the “TRUTH”. Man has an insatiable thirst for knowledge. We always want to know the what, the how, and the why of things, and, if possible, the why behind the why, the cause behind the because of all things.
Another fundamental craving of man is his desire for love. We want to love and to be loved with love in its fullness, not only for a while but for always.
We desire for life, truth, and love, but do we find these in their fullness in this life?
Can the world with all its power and grandeur and glory satisfy to the fullest measure our desire for perfect and everlasting happiness?
The world abounds with life but life here is circumscribed by death. We have knowledge and truth but this is often darkened by error.
All the goods of this earth are finite, unstable and transitory;
and
All things here are imperfect and, therefore cannot give us perfect happiness.
Now this perfect happiness can only be found in a perfect being the perfect good, the Summum Bonum, and this we call God.
Man and Beauty
Intimately related with man’s inborn quest for life, truth, love and happiness is man’s love for beauty.
To man, by birth and nature a lover, beauty is a joy forever.
Aquinas defines beauty as a thing that delights not only man’s eyes and ears and his other senses of perceptions but his whole soul. Beauty blends blissfully and beats eternally with Life, truth, and Love – All these being co-transcendental attributes of Being.
Thus beauty taken as a transcendental eternal reality equates with the absolute being, God.
This is the Beauty discovered by St. Augustine after a long futile search for it in a long life of sin and carnal pleasure.
“To late have I know three,” he exclaimed in his confessions, “Beauty so ancient yet so new!”
All beauty we see on earth is imperfect, ephemeral. Its is only such beauty as absolute and eternal which is identified with God, the absolute Beauty, that can fully satisfy our yearnings for infinite everlasting beauty.