Immorality is the violation of

moral A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...

norm Norm, the Norm or NORM may refer to: In academic disciplines * Normativity, phenomenon of designating things as good or bad * Norm (geology), an estimate of the idealised mineral content of a rock * Norm (philosophy), a standard in normative e ...

s or standards. It refers to an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be

wrong A wrong or wrength (from Old English – 'crooked') is an act that is illegal or immoral. Legal wrongs are usually quite clearly defined in the law of a state or jurisdiction. They can be divided into civil wrongs and crimes (or ''criminal of ...

. Immorality is normally applied to people or actions, or in a broader sense, it can be applied to groups or corporate bodies, and works of art.

Ancient Greece

Callicles Callicles (; ; c. 484 – late 5th century BC) is thought to have been an ancient Athenian political philosopher. He figures prominently in Plato’s dialogue ''Gorgias'', where he "presents himself as a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckled, clear-hea ...

and

Thrasymachus Thrasymachus (; ''Thrasýmachos''; c. 459 – c. 400 BC) was a sophist of ancient Greece best known as a character in Plato's ''Republic''. Life, date, and career Thrasymachus was a citizen of Chalcedon, on the Bosphorus. His career appears ...

are two characters of

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

's dialogues,

Gorgias Gorgias ( ; ; – ) was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years ...

and

Republic A republic, based on the Latin phrase ''res publica'' ('public affair' or 'people's affair'), is a State (polity), state in which Power (social and political), political power rests with the public (people), typically through their Representat ...

, respectively, who challenge conventional morality.

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

saw many vices as excesses or deficits in relation to some virtue, as cowardice and rashness relate to courage. Some attitudes and actionssuch as

envy Envy is an emotion which occurs when a person lacks another's quality, skill, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it. Envy can also refer to the wish for another person to lack something one already ...

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...

, and

theft Theft (, cognate to ) is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shor ...

he saw as

in themselves, with no question of a deficit/excess in relation to the

mean A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

Religion

In Islam, Judaism and Christianity,

sin In religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law or a law of the deities. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered ...

is a central concept in understanding immorality. Immorality is often closely linked with both

religion and sexuality The views of the various different religions and religious believers regarding human sexuality range widely among and within them, from giving sex and sexuality a rather negative connotation to believing that sex is the highest expression of the ...

Max Weber Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...

saw rational articulated religions as engaged in a long-term struggle with more physical forms of religious experience linked to dance, intoxication and sexual activity. Durkheim pointed out how many primitive rites culminated in abandoning the distinction between licit and immoral behavior.

Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies seen as originating from conflicts in t ...

's dour conclusion was that "In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has".

Sexual immorality

Coding of sexual behavior has historically been a feature of all human societies; as too has been the policing of breaches of its

mores Mores (, sometimes ; , plural form of singular , meaning "manner, custom, usage, or habit") are social norms that are widely observed within a particular society or culture. Mores determine what is considered morally acceptable or unacceptable ...

sexual immoralityby means of formal and

informal social control Informal social control is the reactions of individuals and groups that bring about conformity to norms and laws. It includes peer and community pressure, bystander intervention in a crime, and collective responses such as citizen patrol groups.Con ...

. Interdictions and

taboo A taboo is a social group's ban, prohibition or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, offensive, sacred or allowed only for certain people.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...

s among primitive societies were arguably no less severe than in traditional agrarian societies. In the latter, the degree of control might vary from time to time and region to region, being least in urban settlements; however, only the last three centuries of intense urbanisation, commercialisation and modernisation have broken with the restrictions of the pre-modern world, in favor of a successor society of fractured and competing sexual codes and subcultures, where sexual expression is integrated into the workings of the commercial world. Nevertheless, while the meaning of sexual immorality has been drastically redefined in recent times, arguably the boundaries of what is acceptable remain publicly policed and as highly charged as ever, as the decades-long debates in the US over reproductive rights after ''

Roe v. Wade ''Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973),. was a List of landmark court decisions in the United States, landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protected the right to have an ...

'', or 21st-century controversy over child images on Wikipedia and Amazon would tend to suggest. Defining sexual immorality across history is difficult as many different religions, cultures and societies have held contradictory views about sexuality. But there is an almost universal disdain for two sexual practices throughout history. These two behaviors include

infidelity Infidelity (synonyms include non-consensual non-monogamy, cheating, straying, adultery, being unfaithful, two-timing, or having an affair) is a violation of a couple's emotional or sexual exclusivity that commonly results in feelings of anger, se ...

within a

monogamous Monogamy ( ) is a relationship of two individuals in which they form a mutual and exclusive intimate partnership. Having only one partner at any one time, whether for life or serial monogamy, contrasts with various forms of non-monogamy (e.g. ...

, romantic relationship and

incest Incest ( ) is sexual intercourse, sex between kinship, close relatives, for example a brother, sister, or parent. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by lineag ...

between immediate family members. Other than these two practices, some cultures throughout history have permitted sexual behaviors considered obscene by many cultures today, such as marriage between cousins,

polygyny Polygyny () is a form of polygamy entailing the marriage of a man to several women. The term polygyny is from Neoclassical Greek πολυγυνία (); . Incidence Polygyny is more widespread in Africa than in any other continent. Some scholar ...

underage sex The age of consent is the age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. Consequently, an adult who engages in sexual activity with a person younger than the age of consent is unable to legally claim t ...

rape Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...

during

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

or forced assimilation, and even

zoophilia Zoophilia is a paraphilia in which a person experiences a sexual fixation on non-human animals. Bestiality instead refers to cross-species sexual activity between humans and non-human animals. Due to the lack of research on the subject, it is ...

Modernity

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...

considered that the modern world was unable to put forward a coherent

morality Morality () is the categorization of intentions, Decision-making, decisions and Social actions, actions into those that are ''proper'', or ''right'', and those that are ''improper'', or ''wrong''. Morality can be a body of standards or principle ...

an inability underpinned philosophically by

emotivism Emotivism is a meta-ethics, meta-ethical view that claims that ethical Sentence (linguistics), sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of anal ...

. Nevertheless,

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

has often been accompanied by a cult of immorality, as for example when

John Ciardi John Anthony Ciardi ( ; ; June 24, 1916 – March 30, 1986) was an American poet, translator, and etymologist. While primarily known as a poet and translator of Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', he also wrote several volumes of children's poetry, pursu ...

acclaimed

Naked Lunch ''Naked Lunch'' (first published as ''The Naked Lunch'') is a 1959 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. The novel does not follow a clear linear plot, but is instead structured as a series of non-chronological "routines". Many of thes ...

as "a monumentally moral descent into the hell of narcotic addiction".

Immoral psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

received much early criticism for being the unsavory product of an immoral townVienna; psychoanalysts for being both unscrupulous and dirty-minded. Freud himself however was of the opinion that "anyone who has succeeded in educating himself to truth about himself is permanently defended against the danger of immorality, even though his standard of morality may differ".

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest pro ...

referred to his ethical philosophy as Immoralism.

Literary references

*When questioned by a proof-reader whether his description of

Meleager In Greek mythology, Meleager (, ) was a hero venerated in his '' temenos'' at Calydon in Aetolia. He was already famed as the host of the Calydonian boar hunt in the epic tradition that was reworked by Homer. Meleager is also mentioned as o ...

as the immoral poet should be immortal poet,

T. E. Lawrence Thomas Edward Lawrence (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British Army officer, archaeologist, diplomat and writer known for his role during the Arab Revolt and Sinai and Palestine campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the First W ...

replied: "Immorality I know. Immortality I cannot judge. As you please: Meleager will not sue us for libel". *

De Quincey De Quincy, De Quincey, DeQuincy, or DeQuincey is a name. It can occur as both a masculine given name and as a surname. Geographically, it can be found in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and New Zealand. Notable people with this name ...

set out an (inverted) hierarchy of immorality in his study

On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts "On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts" are a trilogy of essays by Thomas De Quincey begun in 1827. The essays are a satirical account of a gentleman's club that celebrates homicide from an aesthetic perspective. The Ratcliff Highway mur ...

: "if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to procrastination and incivility...this downward path".Thomas De Quincey, ''On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts'' (2004) p. 28

References

External links

* {{Ethics Morality Concepts in ethics