Can society be moral or immoral, or is it impossible to aggregate morality?

Question

In other words, can you 'sum up' everyone's morality to assign some sort of grade of 'morality' to the society as a whole?

Answer 1

Aggregate morality is called a culture. While the cultural morality is a result of the contribution of each individual, it does little to predict an individuals moral position. How the individual is accepted within their culture, however, does depend on the aggregate morality.

I liken it to a crowd gathered to watch a large sporting event. The general inclination of the culture is to root for the home team, but nothing says a given individual conforms to that thought. But individuals who fail to conform to the group culture are aware of it, and will conduct themselves differently than they would if they were within a sympathetic culture. Their reactions differ, possibly choosing passifism (quietly eating their nachos, considering the game irrelevent to them), exhibitionism (wearing the opposing teams colors just to remind the group that other options exist), or activitism (attempting to convice others that their team is better, regardless the uphill battle to do so).

Answer 2

I think that a society can be moral/immoral, but that's something different from the aggregate of the people in it. For ex., the US could be moral by helping some developing country even though the people are against it; or the Cambodian people of the 1970's were not evil, they were victims of their society.
The morality of a society is partially a function of the people, and partially a function of the political, economic, and social infrastructure that it operates in.

Answer 3

Morality is highly subjective and relates to local communities, a society and global concerns. We could argue that murder is wrong across all human populations, but in action this is not true. Each culture has a viewpoint of what killings are legal and justified. It is the attempt to create universal moral values that leads to conflicts and paradoxes.

The need itself to judge someone or a society as moral or immoral is in and of itself and odd thing to do if we get down to it.

The most immoral societies have provided us with some of the greatest advancements. The Greeks and Romans as an example. brothels were legal as was slavery and child prostitution. But, we still hold to their political views and social structures.

The need for morality is more to the point. If you need a god, religion, a moral code to stop you from doing that which you want to do then, the problem resides with you who wants those things.

All human societies engage in harming others. All human societies engage in the killing of others. By this standard alone, all societies are then immoral.

Answer 4

"it impossible to aggregate morality". Too many factors to make society aggregate. And the first part of your question is too cut and dry. Society does not think as one to be labeled moral or immoral. One can draw up a poll question and from there, depending how much you leave for opinions, you might get some picture of society as a whole. But not cut and dry. Its never 100% concessive.

Answer 5

You are asking to univesalise Morality, or moral concepts. Many Western Philosophers had tried at this, but no Indian Philosopher had committed this mistake of trying to Universalise morality. Immanuel Kant had reached a near perfect definition of universalising morality, through his notion of "duty for the sake of duty", which he tries to make 'categorical' and 'imperative' , so he calls it as "categorical imperative". Unfortunately for Kant, the Philosophy of Bhagavd Gita speaks it better through the Concept of "nishkama karma".
Morality is relative, temporal and spacial. There is no universality and necessity with moral concepts. Moral concepts are always within the stipulated contexts, stage settings, and can not be brought out from their backgrounds. What is right there may not be right here, what is right then, many not be right now.
It is also wrong to assign Morality to societies. Societies as such can neither be moral nor be immoral, they are non-moral. Only individuals can be either moral or immoral.

Answer 6

Many have tried, Kant being the most prominent modern in this regard. Currently, most are hesitant to appeal to an objective, universal standard by which a society must be ordered, as such an appeal to morality seems to mitigate the modern sense of freedom and the dominance of subjectivity. In the absence of a cohesive morality, we are left with the law and a kind of pragmatism, in which the good is identified with the will of state and its citizens.

Answer 7

in short no morality is based on indviduality the only way it could be aggregated in a society is if we all shared the same conciousness.

Answer 8

Yes, the society that I knew as a child was pious and 'great'. All nations admired it. It has truly gone to Hell.

Answer 9

Generalizations are important sometimes - we just have to be careful how we apply them.

Of course you can talk about 'cultural morality' but that doesn't mean that it applies to individuals.

Answer 10

Too many people judge others and compare them to what they believe.
Everyone is different and they should let others live the way they want to until it is inflicted on others.
Though there are limits like murder, rape, violent behavior.