To say that modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age is to say that human morality changes with the passing of time. This statement is unacceptable. Morality is not something of a fad. Morality should not go through trends like the clothes we wear or popular music, morality is the foundation in which our society is embedded in, a foundation from which human values and standards are derived. If we agree that these values and standards are flexible within the boundaries of time, and that they contain within them no ground rooted substructure in society, then there is no way in distinguishing the difference between right and wrong. Morality is what identifies the principles in which man exists, separates good from bad, and right from wrong, and every society should strive to discover and achieve these principles. Morality should not change over time even though cultures and social stratifications do, what was morally right three thousand years ago is morally right today and should be morally right three thousand years from now. Only with universal principles can we, as collective society, discover what is right, what is wrong, and what is best, therefore there exists not modern morality but simply morality.An empirical philosopher, W.T. Stace, argues that if we believe all morals are culturally relative, it is impossible for us to judge what is best. Although admitting he does not know what is best, he concludes that it is the responsibility of man to discover what is. He does not dispute that moral customs and moral ideas differ from country to country and from age to age, but that the fact that one culture thinks something is right does not necessarily make it right just as much as what we believe is wrong in our culture does not necessarily mean it is wrong. Stace quotes, "What pleases one man, people of culture displeases another. Therefore morals are wholly relative" (544). The clash in cultures be...
