有关于道德的英语美文

道德与法律的关系 ,在人类历史上经历了一个由高度融合到相对独立 ,再到重新融合的过程。下面是小编带来的有关于道德的英语美文，欢迎阅读!

有关于道德的英语美文篇一

身处浮躁的社会如何培养品德

Yesterday, in the House of Commons, Charles Kennedy’s parliamentary colleagues gave movingtributes to his life. There is never a rush, of course, to speak ill of the dead, but these tributeshad the clear ring of sincerity. David Cameron said his “character and courage inspired us all”,and Nick Clegg that he always put people before politics. Outside the commons, colleagues andfriends have spoken repeatedly of Kennedy’s compassion, decency, and principled nature aswell as of his ongoing battle with human frailty in the form of alcoholism.

It seems Charles Kennedy displayed what the New York Times Columnist David Brooks wouldcall “eulogy virtues”. In his most recent book “The Road to Character”, Brooks contrastseulogy virtues like kindness, faithfulness and humility with what he calls resume virtues -the kind of things we put on our CV. He’s convinced that both eulogy virtues and resumevirtues take work to develop, and is worried that western society pushes us to put our effortsinto the ones that will help improve our careers, not our characters.

It's the age old question- what makes a good life? How do we go deeper amongst the clamourof a culture that monetises status anxiety and defines us by what earn, own or look like?

David Brook’s call for us to do the hard work of developing character, to cultivate self-restraint and self-suspicion in the age of the selfie stick, isn't really controversial. It'sobvious, when we stop to think about it, that the real legacies of our lives aren’t job titles,twitter followers or cellulite free thighs. But how do we develop the eulogy virtues, when thegravitational pull of the self is so strong?

Christians would be the first to acknowledge that these virtues don't come naturally. Thechurch’s hunch is that change happens through vulnerable, committed relationships. Toovercome the tyrant self we must confess our frailty and darkest tendencies - first to God,and then to others.

Behavioural science is beginning to add evidence to what religions have long understood -virtue develops best in relational communities. Not short term communities of self interestmade up of “people like us”, but awkward, diverse, grace filled communities, established forthe long term. The New Testament encourages Christians to be part of communities like these,to encourage one another, bear with each other and create space for the hard conversations.To keep reminding each other of the virtues that matter and the things that last. These kind ofcommunities aren't of course unique to Christianity, and they are often far from perfect, but ifwe want to be remembered not for our fleeting achievements but our depth of character, theymight be the best hope we have.

昨天，在下议院，查尔斯·肯尼迪的同事为他的一生发表了催人泪下的悼词。当然，死者为大，没有人会在死者尸骨未寒时说别人的不是。但是这些悼词很明显是真诚的。大卫·卡梅伦说他的“品格和勇气鼓舞了我们所有人”，尼克·克莱格说他总是把民众放在政治前面。在下议院外，他的同事和朋友多次提到他的同情心，政治和原则性，并不断与人类酗酒的劣根性做斗争。

查尔斯·肯尼迪似乎体现了《纽约时报》专栏作家David Brooks所说的“悼词美德”。在他最近的书《通往品格的道路》中，Brooks将善良，忠诚等悼词美德与他所说的简历美德做了对比——也就是我们写在简历上的品德。他相信，悼词美德和简历美德都需要发扬。他担心西方世界导致我们努力塑造帮助我们职业发展的品德，而不是帮助性格成长的品德。

我们又要说一个老生常谈的问题——怎样才是好的生活?在宣扬金钱至上，追求社会地位，根据收入，财产和外表来定义我们的浮躁社会，我们怎样才能深入剖析自己的内心世界?

David Brook呼吁我们努力塑造品格，在自我吹嘘的环境中培养自制和自审的品格，这并无争议。很明显，当我们停下来认真思考的时候，我们真正宝贵的财产并不是我们的职位，推特粉丝或没有脂肪的大腿。但是在自我的万有引力如此强大的情况下，我们怎样培养悼词美德?

基督徒们将最先站出来承认这些美德并不是与生俱来的。基督教教义认为，改变是在脆弱忠诚的关系中发生的。要克服残暴的自我，我们必须承认我们的脆弱和最黑暗的本性——首先是对上帝，然后是对自己。

行为科学不断有证据表明各宗教很久以前就已经理解的问题——道德在关系社会中发展得最快。不是由“跟我一样的人”组成的短暂的利益团体，而是长期的，尴尬的，多样化的人组成的团体。<<新约圣经>>鼓励基督徒成为这样的团体的一部分，鼓励大家相互容忍，为艰难的对话打造空间。互相提醒非常重要的道德和永恒持久的事情。当然，这些团体并不是对基督教来说独一无二的，而通常并不完美，但是，如果我们不是想要人们记住卓越的成就，而是希望人们记住我们的品德，这或许是我们最大的希望。

有关于道德的英语美文篇二

Moral philosophy.

道德哲学。

Goodness has nothing to do with it.

无关善恶。

Utilitarians are not nice people.

功利主义者并不是好人。

IN THE grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are normally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came up with the ethical theory known as utilitarianism. The goal of this theory is encapsulated in Bentham's aphorism that "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation."

从历史洪流的角度来看，杰里米·贝萨姆和约翰·斯图阿特·密尔通常都被认为是好人。他们一起合作建立了现在被称为功利主义的道德理论。该理论的核心目的可以被贝萨姆的一句格言很好地概括"道德和立法的基础在于让最多的人最大程度的幸福"

Which all sounds fine and dandy until you start applying it to particular cases. A utilitarian, for example, might approve of the occasional torture of suspected terrorists-for the greater happiness of everyone else, you understand. That type of observation has led Daniel Bartels at Columbia University and David Pizarro at Cornell to ask what sort of people actually do have a utilitarian outlook on life. Their answers, just published in Cognition, are not comfortable.

听上去很不错，但当你开始把这套理论应用在具体事件上时问题就出来了。比方说，功利主义者可能赞成对恐怖主义疑犯用刑。大家都明白，这是为了其它所有人好。哥伦比亚大学的丹尼尔·巴特尔斯和康奈尔大学的大卫·皮扎罗受到类似这样的观察启发，提出了哪一类型的人对生活的看法最接近功利主义这一有趣问题。他们的论文最近在认知科学上发表，其中得到的结论让人不安。

One of the classic techniques used to measure a person's willingness to behave in a utilitarian way is known as trolleyology. The subject of the study is challenged with thought experiments involving a runaway railway trolley or train carriage. All involve choices, each of which leads to people's deaths. For example: there are five railway workmen in the path of a runaway carriage. The men will surely be killed unless the subject of the experiment, a bystander in the story, does something. The subject is told he is on a bridge over the tracks. Next to him is a big, heavy stranger. The subject is informed that his own body would be too light to stop the train, but that if he pushes the stranger onto the tracks, the stranger's large body will stop the train and save the five lives. That, unfortunately, would kill the stranger.

测量一个人有多大的意愿以功利主义方式行事的一个传统方法是电车实验。参加者进行一个想象实验，实验里有一节失控的有轨电车或火车车厢。该实验有很多版本，不管哪一个都要求参加者进行选择，而且不管怎么选都会有人死亡。例如：有五个工人在失控车厢前方的轨道上。如果实验参加者作为故事中的一个旁观者不进行干涉这五个人就死定了。参加者被告知他在铁道上方的一座桥上，身边有一个身材肥胖的陌生人，同时参加者知道自己的体重太轻，无法停止火车，但如果把那个陌生人推下去，他的巨大身躯将会停止火车，让五个工人得救。不幸的是这么做会杀死该陌生人。

Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro knew from previous research that around 90% of people refuse the utilitarian act of killing one individual to save five. What no one had previously inquired about, though, was the nature of the remaining 10%.

巴特尔斯博士和皮扎罗博士从之前的研究中得知大约90%的参加者会拒绝杀死一个陌生人救出五个人的功利主义行为。但是之前的研究没人提出过剩下的10%人的性格这一问题。

To find out, the two researchers gave 208 undergraduates a battery of trolleyological tests and measured, on a four-point scale, how utilitarian their responses were. Participants were also asked to respond to a series of statements intended to get a sense of their individual psychologies. These statements included, "I like to see fist fights", "The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear", and "When you really think about it, life is not worth the effort of getting up in the morning". Each was asked to indicate, for each statement, where his views lay on a continuum that had "strongly agree" at one end and "strongly disagree" at the other. These statements, and others like them, were designed to measure, respectively, psychopathy, Machiavellianism and a person's sense of how meaningful life is.

为了找出结果，这两个研究者对208个大学生进行了一系列电车实验，并以一到四分的机制来给他们的答案中的功利主义成分打分。参加者也要进行一系列分析个人心理的测试。测试包括这些问题，"我喜欢看人打架"，"应付别人最好的办法就是说他们想听的话"，以及"认真想想的话，生活没什么意思，每天起来真不值"。参加者要在一个连续的尺度上标出他们对每一个问题的看法，从"完全同意"到"完全不同意"。这三个问题按次序分别是为了测量一个人的冷血程度，厚黑程度以及他觉得生活是否有意义的程度，其它问题也是围绕着测量这三个方面而设计的。

Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro then correlated the results from the trolleyology with those from the personality tests. They found a strong link between utilitarian answers to moral dilemmas (push the fat guy off the bridge) and personalities that were psychopathic, Machiavellian or tended to view life as meaningless. Utilitarians, this suggests, may add to the sum of human happiness, but they are not very happy people themselves.

巴特尔斯博士和皮扎罗博士然后开始寻找人格测试和电车实验结果的相关性。他们发现在面对道德两难(将胖子推下去)时回答体现功利主义的参加者和冷血变态心理，厚黑主义以及觉得生活没意义的想法有很强的关联。这表示虽然功利主义者能够增加人类整体的幸福值，但他们自己并不是什么快乐的人。

That does not make utilitarianism wrong. Crafting legislation-one of the main things that Bentham and Mill wanted to improve-inevitably involves riding roughshod over someone's interests. Utilitarianism provides a plausible framework for deciding who should get trampled. The results obtained by Dr Bartels and Dr Pizarro do, though, raise questions about the type of people who you want making the laws. Psychopathic, Machiavellian misanthropes? Apparently, yes.

这并不意味着功利主义是错误的。任何法律的制定-当年贝萨姆和密尔希望借其理论能够有所助益的主要行为之一-不可避免的需要牺牲一部分人的利益。功利主义提供了一个比较合理的框架来决定应该牺牲谁的利益。不过巴特尔斯博士和皮扎罗博士的研究提出了应该让哪种人来制定法律的质疑。冷血，厚黑的厌恶人类者?从表面上来看，是的。

有关于道德的英语美文篇三

怎样更好地理解责任感

In one of the oldest examples of political evasion, instead of answering the question that incriminated him Cain countered God with another. How should I know where my brother is? Am I his keeper?

Is it wrong to pay cash to the teenager who mows our lawn? Of course not. Unless I happen to know he isn’t telling the Benefits Office, in which case of course it is. But suppose I merely suspect? Or don’t think to ask? Or consider it none of my business, want to encourage him with a taste for work and would very much prefer not to take the moral high ground with someone else’s conscience?

The morality of responsibility can be far more complex than merely the law.

Friends of mine have started to wonder whether and when they should stop a parent driving. They know it’s vital for seeing people, visiting offspring, staying interested in life. Yet the parent may never even have taken a driving test and certainly wouldn’t pass one now. The state allows it: should the son or daughter prevent it – balancing the safety of strangers against the needs of the loved one?

Or the abstract principle against the immediate family. I was told I shouldn’t work for someone who had made his money in a way some considered unethical: a friend had left his employment and wouldn’t talk to me unless I did too. I scoured the scriptures, finding several passages exhorting me to work hard and support my family, and one or two telling me how to submit to an immoral boss. None suggesting I was responsible for my employer’s conduct, past or present.

Someone I was very fond of at university turned his back on Christianity because he couldn’t accept rich Christians in a world of hunger: he believed they should take responsibility for those on the other side of the world. To his credit, he went on to establish two very well-known movements combating world poverty.

Responsibility can be brutal. Kevin Carter won the world’s attention for famine with his photograph of a toddler being stalked by a vulture, as well as vociferous criticism for being a vulture himself. And indeed the Pulitzer prize. The following year his suicide note read, “I am haunted by... memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain... of starving children.”

Cain knew the answer full well. His brother Abel’s blood cried out to him from the ground. Of course he should have cared for him.

But how do we pit one responsibility against another?

They tried to trap the Rabbi with questions. Should we support an oppressive regime? or refuse to pay taxes and break the law? He didn’t evade the question. He took it further. Show me a coin. Whose image is it made in? Then give the coin to him.

Now look at yourself. Whose image are you made in? Give responsibility where responsibility is due. To Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.

And to God the things that are God’s.

We all have complicated duties to disentangle day by day. We start by knowing where our ultimate responsibility lies.