Concept in Definition ABC

Man has a dimension moral. Each individual has their own criteria for what is morally good or bad. These criteria can be based on a religious ethic, a secular ethic or simply a set of cultural traditions. Anything that an individual or a community considers to be correct is decent. By extension, wrong and sinful is valued as indecent.

Nowadays there is a general consensus regarding what behaviors are indecent. Among them we can highlight the following: corruption politics, nepotism, information manipulation, lack of transparency in the management of the public or the violence in any of its forms.

The idea of ​​indecency has not stopped evolving throughout history

In many moments in history, women have not been able to show their bodies normally or wear some clothes. If they did they were labeled indecent. This assessment has changed significantly in recent decades, at least in the Western world.

In the sexual question it is, probably, where the most appreciated

evolution of what is decent or indecent. At present, some countries severely punish homosexuality as indecent behavior, but fortunately this conception is a minority in the whole planet.

Certain traditions that in the past were totally normal, today they are considered indecencies. This is what happens with slavery, discrimination racial or the abuse of power. Along these lines, it must be remembered that the division of society into social classes (for example, the castes that existed until recently in India) is a tradition that is now rejected by the vast most.

The binomial decency / indecency and relativism

Regardless of the historical question, we must not forget that what is very decent in one place is indecent in another. The great diversity in moral questions, it is the fundamental test for those who defend a relativistic ethic. If we accept that everything moral is relative, this implies accepting any type of approach as valid. For this reason, some philosophers consider ethical relativism to be a misconception.

Certain behaviors are indecent, regardless of the cultural context in which they are manifested. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a document that tries to define what things are unacceptable and indecent in any human being and in any cultural tradition.

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Topics in Indecency