# Can morality be objective? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ethics\ **Created:** [September 29, 2026, 5:52am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/can-morality-be-objective/3317 "2026-09-29T05:52:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 323
**Author:** ![Banno](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/banno/32/55_2.png) [@Banno](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Banno)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2026, 3:36am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/can-morality-be-objective/3317/323 "2026-10-23T03:36:37Z")
When you work out that I am not advocating relativism, we might talk. Here’s some recent background: > [@Foot: Morality As A System Of Hypothetical Imperatives](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/foot-morality-as-a-system-of-hypothetical-imperatives/1401): > > Philippa Foot is the launch pad (or, perhaps, diving board) for the thread [Furthering Philippa Foot](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/furthering-philippa-foot/1367) , where we are looking at how her ideas fit into more recent ruminations. This is one of Foot’s more interesting articles. Her topic, the hypothetical imperative, is the notion Kant juxtaposes with the categorical imperative in order that he might hang the whole of morality on the latter. Hypothetical imperatives have the rough form “If you want X, do Y”, while categorical imperatives have the fo… > [@Furthering Philippa Foot](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/furthering-philippa-foot/1367): > > Philippa Foot was one of the four women who brought ethics back to life in the middle of the last century. She was renowned for how her views on Ethics grew over time, as she worked through issues involved. To my eye this is one of the main reasons to appreciate her efforts. She is known for the Tram problem, in which she shows that there is a difference between our intuition towards pulling a lever in order to save five people, killing one, and pushing one person off an overpass to do the same… > [@On taking a shit](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/on-taking-a-shit/1492): > > Some thoughts that occurred to me as I read @ink’s thread on values, and which, on revisiting, relate well to the recent threads concerning Philippa Foot. So I have decided to start a new thread on the topic. Consider the desire to take a shit. It’s not a topic that comes to mind immediately in considering ethics and philosophy of action, but continence is at times amongst our most pressing concerns, so perhaps it is time to give it due attention. It is philosophically all the more problematic … And I might drop this here, too, in full: > [@I am a Moral Nihilist](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/i-am-a-moral-nihilist/1218/122): > > I’d suggest that we may be able to avoid moral injunctions of the sort that are often found wanting, and yet a need for what we might better call “ethical” considerations would remain. Ethical considerations would be those that involve something more than merely transactional interactions with others. > > So I’m here invoking a differentiation between moral injunctions of the “Thou Shalt…” variety, and ethical considerations, were the wants and desires of others are taken into account in deciding what to do. > > There’s good reasons to think that universal moral statements that bind us regardless of our circumstances quickly become incoherent. There will always be circumstances that outstrip any given Universal moral statement. Kant’s prohibition on lying shows this neatly. > > While we might well be pleasure-seeking machines, we are also deeply embedded in our communal life. And you are right to draw attention to the tense of our utterances. While your considerations so far have been mostly in the first person, as communal beings we might give pause to consider utterances in the second and third person - that is, how our behaviour affects others, and how the behaviour of others affects us. > > _What do I want_ might be a beginning, but being communal actors, we must also ask _what do you want_, and talk about how my behaviour affects you, and yours affects me. > > This leads us to broader considerations, as to how we might expect ourselves and others to behave more generally. This encompass recognising not just my own point of view, but that of the community, and what they might hold as reasonable or acceptable behaviour. While we might spurn universal moral obligations, we nevertheless have what we might at the least call communal expectations. > > And I hope that we might agree that such communal values are more than just transactional. At the least, they involve what we might call character. > > A story might help here. At an event at a Mar-a-Lago club, an elderly man fell from a stage, hitting his head, bleeding profusely. Trump later said > > > _And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away_… _You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed colour. Became very red_… _I was saying, ‘Get that blood cleaned up! It’s disgusting!’ The next day, I forgot to call [the man] to say is he OK._ > > What do we make of the _character_ of such a person? Not just of Trump individually - we might leave that aside - but of someone unwilling to overcome their own aversions in order to help someone in need? > > And I hope that what we might show here is that there is more to our communal interactions than mere transactional reciprocity. That our orientation towards others is important, that a man is of more significance than a marble floor. > > This is not yet an argument, of course, but an indication of a direction we might take. --- _[View the full topic](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/can-morality-be-objective/3317)._