Excerpt

This article explores moral exemplars and their ideas about morality. A wide range of authors is selected for your exposure to different perspectives. Also, links are provided to historical, moral stands, such as the “10 Commandments”, “The Declaration of Independence,” and the “US Constitution.” We invite you to spend some time reading and contemplating what you learn and determine how these ideas could affect your own thinking, practicing, and believing.

Morality – Delving into the Morass of Ideas

When we aspirants consider how to make choices based upon morality, we need to have foundational beliefs in place first that will serve us well. This sounds very good but is this simple and easy to do?

We say “Yes,” and it will help you understand the Moral Exemplars we selected, and their stands. We have done research for you, but before going too far down the road of this morality discussion, take a few minutes up front here to gain the basics.

We believe that stands are equivalent to beliefs: just another name for them. We also believe that opinion, preferences, ideas, concepts, you name it, are all beliefs: there exists in this world a preponderance of beliefs – some easily acknowledged, others not at all.

We tend to come from the school of experiences and conditioning. However, we realize a complexity exists (e.g., literally new industries and domains are being created) from and with the scientific mapping in Genome research and DNA timeline with their frequent releases and publications. There are all kinds of discoveries about who we are, why we do things, etc. which proliferates at high speed: it seems never-ending.

Current Ideas About Moral Exemplars

We strongly suggest reading some of this material to gain an awareness of the thinking, theory, and exploration of this fascinating topic about moral exemplars:

1. Moral Exemplars in theory and practice – scholar ideas,

2. Moral Examples – Wikipedia historical viewpoint

3. Who is a Moral Exemplar – Philosophical analysis of human nature

4. Moral Saints - Wolf, Susan. “Moral Saints.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 79, no. 8, 1982, pp. 419–439. JSTOR.

5. The Character of Moral Exemplars – 2002 White House Conference on Moral Character and Community

6. Ethics Virtue - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Out of these few examples, we tend to gravitate to The Character of Moral Exemplars of item number five and Stanford’s Ethics Virtue from item six. We will offer some ideas that might make it easier to comprehend and apply in your life (i.e., developing a few fundamental beliefs as primary stands).

Moral Stands

We believe that many of the moral stands could begin with the Judeo-Christian religious traditions of the 10 Commandments and others like the Declaration of Independence and our US Constitution.  We have published “Universal Principles” taken from many different sources, providing effective moral stands.

In compiling a list of moral exemplars, we will turn to various domains with both past and present people, including selected examples from history, science, entertainment, etc.: a few come to mind right now – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, Jimmy Stewart, Billy Graham, and Pope Francis.

We know about our humanness because moral exemplars have triumph and tragedy, just like you and me (e.g., take Mother Teresa, for instance – she struggled with prayer all the time). The difference for our morals exemplars is that they remain in constant contact with something outside of themselves for guidance, like a higher power, and they strive for doing the next right thing based upon their fundamental beliefs – mostly their stands exists inside the universal principles and the other documents we have already mentioned above.

But, now is your chance to define some of your moral exemplars, what they mean to you, and how do they make a difference in your life today?  Please compile your stands and the examples you use to help guide you daily and then share them with us.

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