A more self-important morality tale than Mr. Beane's, it is a slick entry in the sick-soul-of-society genre, concerning the futile search for connection among characters who crave intimacy even as they build cinder-block walls around their damaged hearts.
And if experience of the arts can reveal important moral truths, then it can also be important to the development of morality, the other pole of Plato's doubts.
I knew this wasn't ultimately important — that morality and love and art were the most important things, of course, of course — but, still, I sort of wanted to do all of that PLUS be able to run with the pack, or even slightly ahead of the pack, if it could be arranged.
A recent study of postgraduate directors in Canada on key elements of the professional role identified attitudinal attributes of honesty and integrity as being most important, with morality and codes of behavior being the next selected essential component [ 33].
Beneath this scandal is a more important debate about morality, ethics and the notion of public service.
And still others have maintained that the question presses the single most important challenge to morality's legitimacy, since morality's claim on our allegiance depends on our having reason to comply with its demands, yet explaining why we might have those reasons is extraordinarily difficult.
Self-penned songs about important issues - morality, mortality, motherhood, love - do not a life-changing album make.
But though there were other philosophers more original and more brilliant, Parfit felt that Sidgwick's "Methods," in its precise, dull way, captured more important truths about morality than any other book ever written.
Comparison with earlier work suggests that gender, age, and religious affiliation are important predictors of morality generally.
Other writers, including Kant, have given less dominance to beneficence, but still give it an important place in morality.
Nevertheless, Rawls' mechanism is intended to draw the broad outlines of what many see as the most important part of morality: its public or political aspect.
