MORAL AND ETHICAL PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY

Moral and Ethical philosophical essay using No Country for Old Men and reflecting The Myth and Decline of American Existentialism

Moral and Ethical philosophical essay using No Country for Old Men and reflecting The Myth and Decline of American Existentialism

Introduction

Moral and ethical relativism are the philosophical positions that morals differ between individuals. This is particularly the case when individuals are separated by both space and time. Morals become sociologically relative in that they depend upon the culture in which an individual is born and raised and the time frame during which their life takes place. Several examples illustrate this. Less than fifty years ago, in most societies it was unheard of for a woman and man to live together before marriage. This would have seen as scandalous and highly immoral. However, in modern Western societies co-habitation prior to marriage is increasingly popular. Inversely, while in the past women seen as objects to be used by men for various means, today sexist behaviour seen as immoral and unacceptable in most Western societies. Other societies, however, governed by patriarchal concepts (Brewton, 2004, 121-43).

Several philosophers have attempted to tackle this problem. One of the most popular moral relativists is the American existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre's position was that human beings are alone in the universe, and must invent their own moral systems and rely entirely on themselves for moral guidance. In American existentialism is Humanism, Sartre maintains that “No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do: no signs vouchsafed in this world.” For Sartre, also Kant before him, individuals create their own moral laws based off the choices they make. Outside of this there are no universal morals. In this way, Sartre did not accept that people made a decision because of their religion, culture, or possible consequences derived from that action. For example, if one attends a political assembly to which one opposed on moral grounds for fear of negative consequences; one is enabling the assembly to take place and is in this way affirming the assembly as moral (Cooper, 2009, 37-59).

No Country for Old Men is a 2005 novel by U.S. author Cormac McCarthy. Set along the United States-Mexico border in 1980, the story concerns an illicit drug deal gone corrupt in a remote desert location. Cormac McCarthy tells a story about a man who is running from an assassin, but realizes that his life already set and all the choices he has made has leaded him and his wife to murdered. Through the intersecting, fates of the story's three main characters - Bell, Moss, and Chigurh - the Coens expand upon the motifs presented in McCarthy's book, developing a narrative of American existential crisis in which questions of life and death posed both to the book's characters and viewers (Boyagoda, 2005, 44-46).

Discussion

In No Country for Old Men, Llewelyn Moss has come across a drug deal gone wrong, and decides to take about two million dollars from the only survivor and then ...