Values, Rights, Duties, and Moral Development
Understanding Values
Values are:
- Projects and ideals that human beings want to notice, search for, and desire.
- Personal options that are chosen and acquired through the free exercise of will.
- Beliefs attached to the personality of human beings, an important part of their identity.
- Indicators that guide the life, conduct, and behavior of people.
Types of Values
Guide values or large values include peace, freedom, justice, equality, and solidarity. We also have other values such as:
- Aesthetic values: beauty, elegance.
- Economic values: wealth and vital competitiveness.
- Vital values: health and energy.
- Religious values: faith, holiness.
- Intellectual values: rigor, wisdom.
- Social values: prestige, good image.
- Moral values: justice and peace.
Rights, Duties, and Standards
Basic values are essential for life and coexistence, deriving universal and shared human rights and these duties: These are the responsibilities that we must accept and meet in order for our human rights to be respected.
A clear value generates rights (e.g., Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including freedom of belief and religion) and generates duties (e.g., We respect freedom of thought and conscience and should not discriminate against anyone; we live and talk). Rights belong to duties.
Defining Standards
A standard is a pattern of behavior or criterion of performance that regulates how we behave in any specific situation, keeping in mind values, rights, and duties which have previously been established. Thus, standards:
- Are based on values, respect, and promote the experience of human rights, individual, and shared responsibilities.
- Regulate and promote democratic coexistence.
Two basic values, equality and solidarity, when analyzed dynamically, generate rights, duties, and standards that we must uphold. These standards could emphasize respect and value our dignity.
Ethical Principles
This set of ethical principles and encouragements is the shared heritage of humanity that has been achieved through individual and collective efforts. One of the first significant achievements in this regard was the foundation of the UN. A new global ethics requires institutions and civil society to pursue peace, justice, brotherhood, and truth. We do not mean a new ideology, nor a global religion; we mean the basic consensus about existing binding values, entrenched behaviors, and essential personal attitudes.
Human Attributes
Thought is an attribute that belongs to me, being the only one that cannot be separated from me. That is the human being, a thing that thinks, understands, states, wants, denies, also imagines, and feels.
The human body is an organism that has a defined structure consisting of equipment and systems.
The human skin is the place or the stage where our growth and lives develop, where we feel, experiment, and discover the right, adventure, and joy of life.
- The senses can perceive, explore, and discover.
- The heart holds our feelings and dreams.
- The brain holds intelligence, thought, and reflection.
Conscious and critical thought integrates the perception of the reality that surrounds us.
Stages of Moral Development
Established is a sequence of three levels and six stages (two per level) in the moral evolution of the person from childhood to adulthood.
Preconventional Level
Moral problems are approached from one’s own perspective of interests. Something is good when it suits one. This is clearly the lowest level.
- Stage 1: Punishment and obedience.
- Stage 2: Purpose and exchange.
Conventional Level
The person approaches moral issues from the perspective of the established social order. Something is good when it agrees with the rules of the community. The person wants to be accepted and is willing to accept what the group considers good.
- Stage 3: Interpersonal conformity.
- Stage 4: Social system. It happens to look at social order as good. This stage emerges in adolescence and is where most adults are found, with all the problems it implies. The most important thing is conformism and intolerance.
Postconventional Level and Principles
The person who reaches this level distinguishes between the rules of their society and a set of universal moral principles.
- Stage 5: Prior rights and utility.
- Stage 6: Ethical and universal principles.
Moral Autonomy and Heteronomy
Moral autonomy: Acting with personal conviction based on self-given rules, with regard to moral standards and principles.
Moral heteronomy: Acting based on what others say or one’s own impulses.