Immorality

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Not to be confused with amorality or immortality.

Immorality is the violation of moral laws, norms or standards. It refers to an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be wrong.[1][2] Immorality is normally applied to people or actions, or in a broader sense, it can be applied to groups or corporate bodies, and works of art.

Aristotle[edit]

Aristotle saw many vices as excesses or deficits in relation to some virtue, as cowardice and rashness relate to courage. Some attitudes and actions – such as envy, murder, and theft – he saw as wrong in themselves, with no question of a deficit/excess in relation to the mean.[3]

Religion[edit]

In a Christian Biblically based worldview, Immorality does not begin with "sin" it begins with the origin of morality. The origin of morality is essential set what can be called a baseline standard. No base line, no bases of understanding what is or is not moral. Critical also is to understand is who first said a thing was moral and there by identifying the antitheist of moral/morality being immoral. That originator is the Almighty God (Jehovah/YHWH) supreme "Elohim" or "the one who exist to exist" also known as "the becoming" one who becomes what is needed" ultimately that would be the one who became salvation (Joshua/Jesus the One Anointed from Nazareth). Whatever is voiced from God is the mind and heart of God setting groundwork for morality. This Voice is His Word to mankind of His expectations whether received or rejected. Expectations of morality without a superior authority to designate accountability to a standard of morality, means immorality is irrelevant. Immorality is the defiance of established morality to which there is a consequence to disregard the moral standard (Isaiah 5:20 "calling evil good" / "hopelessly confused" Ephesians 4:17 NLT).


In Christianity, sin is 'a' central concept in understanding immorality, but not 'THE' central Concept. That belongs to foundation of morality established by God. Without God there is only subjective determined immorality because who is to say a thing is wrong without authority to say what is right...since we live in a world where each person can have their own truth...that will lead to at best confusion and at worst, catastrophic chaos. (Genesis 2:16-17)

Freud's dour conclusion was that "In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has".[4]

Sexual immorality[edit]

See also: Sexual ethics

Coding of sexual behavior has historically been a feature of all human societies, as too; has been the policing of breaches of its mores – sexual immorality – by means of formal and informal social control.[5] Interdictions and taboos among primitive societies[6] were arguably no less severe than in traditional agrarian societies.[7] In the latter, the degree of control might vary from time to time and region to region, being least in urban settlements;[8] however, only the last three centuries of intense urbanisation, commercialisation and modernisation have broken with the restrictions of the pre-modern world,[9] in favor of a successor society of fractured and competing sexual codes and subcultures, where sexual expression is integrated into the workings of the commercial world.[10]

Nevertheless, while the meaning of sexual immorality has been drastically redefined in recent times, arguably the boundaries of what is acceptable remain publicly policed and as highly charged as ever, as the decades-long debates in the US over reproductive rights after Roe v. Wade, or 21st-century controversy over child images on Wikipedia and Amazon would tend to suggest.[11]

Modernity[edit]

Michel Foucault considered that the modern world was unable to put forward a coherent morality[12] – an inability underpinned philosophically by emotivism. Nevertheless, modernism has often been accompanied by a cult of immorality,[13] as for example when John Ciardi acclaimed Naked Lunch as "a monumentally moral descent into the hell of narcotic addiction".[14]

Immoral psychoanalysis[edit]

Psychoanalysis received much early criticism for being the unsavory product of an immoral town – Vienna; psychoanalysts for being both unscrupulous and dirty-minded.[15]

Freud himself however was of the opinion that "anyone who has succeeded in educating himself to truth about himself is permanently defended against the danger of immorality, even though his standard of morality may differ".[16]

Literary references[edit]

  • When questioned by a proof-reader whether his description of Meleager as the immoral poet should be immortal poet, T. E. Lawrence replied: "Immorality I know. Immortality I cannot judge. As you please: Meleager will not sue us for libel".[17]
  • De Quincey set out an (inverted) hierarchy of immorality in his study On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts: "if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to procrastination and incivility...this downward path".[18]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ New School Dictionary. Collins. 1999. p. 24. ISBN 0 00 472238-8.
  2. ^ "amoral vs. immoral on Vocabulary.com". www.vocabulary.com. Retrieved 2020-10-14.
  3. ^ Aristotle, Ethics (1976) p. 102
  4. ^ S. Freud, Civilization, Society and Religion (PFL 12) p. 220
  5. ^ F. Dabhoiwala, 'The first sexual revolution', The Oxford Historian X (2012) p. 426
  6. ^ Durkheim, p. 410
  7. ^ S. Freud, On Sexuality (PFL 7) p. 271
  8. ^ E. Ladurie, Montaillou (1980) p. 149 and p. 169
  9. ^ Dabhoiwala, p. 41–3
  10. ^ Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (2002) p. 78
  11. ^ A. Lih, The Wikipedia Revolution (2010) p. 204–9
  12. ^ G, Gutting ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (2003) p. 87
  13. ^ Eric Berne, Games People Play (1966) p. 70
  14. ^ Quoted in J. Campbell, This is the Beat Generation (1999) p. 265
  15. ^ Peter Gay, Freud (1989) p. 194-6
  16. ^ S. Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (PFL 1) p. 485-6
  17. ^ T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1936) p. 25
  18. ^ Thomas De Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts (2004) p. 28

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

  • The dictionary definition of immorality at Wiktionary
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