David Kriner

UWRT 1102
Mrs. Thomas
11/21/2015

Morality: Science or Environment?

How do we determine our morality? In the Book Thief, the concept of morality was
brought up numerous times. The story is about the life of a young girl named Liesel growing up
during World War II learning the harshness of what the world has to offer. Her birth family has
either left her or died off and she is taken in by a older german couple by the name of the
Hubermanns. Although she starts off very angry and fearful about the world, with the help of the
people around her, she is able to push through and find the courage and the strength to fight
back. She determined her morality by the influences around her. Is this the only way to determine
morality? Some researchers agree that the type of environment and people you are surrounded
with ultimately determine how you behave. However, there are other scientists have claimed that
there are certain physical and mental abilities or pieces that some humans are not born with.
These pieces pertain to emotion, raw emotion. Without the right pieces, people become serial
killers or even worse. Finding the root cause to morality is still a mystery today but hopefully
this can be cleared up.

First let's go back to the beginning, what is morality? According to Websters Dictionary,
Morality is principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad
behavior. In other words, the choices that we make that are either good or bad are based off of
morality. But where does it come originate from? Alan Donagan, early 1900s, was a well-known
philosopher he wrote books and articles about his take on the theory and history of morality. He
compares the morals of society and traditions to faith, in particular, the Christian faith. Many
philosophers such as Aristotle, Kant, Nietzsche, etc. have used or mention religion at some point
or another in their teachings. Some worshiped Gods and Goddesses and others worshiped a
singular God. From the teachings of faith, we as a society have grown to accept a Universal
Morality in which some actions are considered universally good while others are recognized as
universally bad. Alan quotes a theory called Universal Prescriptivism. Theorized by R.M.
Hare, All moral judgements are advanced as either being or presupposing universal
prescriptions that is, prescriptions which can be formulated without referring to individual
persons or things except by descriptions. (Donagan 215). Universal prescription would be more
general and not leaning towards one person or race, i.e. a majority of people that have a certain
trait etc which reflects the Hebrew-Christian Tradition.

In, The Book Thief, the story takes place during World War II in the heart of Nazi
Germany. Here a young girl by the name of Liesel is orphaned by her mother who leaves her in
the care of someone else and witnessed her only other sibling, a baby brother, die and be buried.
She is taken into the family of the Hubermanns, Hans and Rosa. At first she feels betrayed and
thinks negatively about life. Nightmares about her dead brother haunt her and not knowing how
her real mother is doing is worrying her. However, Hans noticed these bad vibes and began to
comfort her in her time of need. As her relationship grew with her foster father, she began to

cheer up more and made new friends and meets a diverse group of people. This is just one
example of how outside influences can make an impact on someones life. If Liesel did not meet
Hans or was never adopted into a family, she would have turned out very differently. It was
because of the gentle nature of a close family member and the outgoing nature of her friends that
she became a good, but mischievous person with a hunger for knowledge.

Hans Hubermann is the kind adoptive father of Liesel. He is the main person of interest
in helping Lisel get through the dark times of her world. Hans has a good sense of what it is to
be good morally. The Nazis, during this era, have been spreading numerous propaganda against
their enemies with one group in particular, the Jews. Hans knows better than to believe their
propaganda from his experiences in his life. Hans served in World War I and met a German-Jew
by the name of Erik Vandenburg. They were the best of friends and would give their lives for
each other, unfortunately one did. Erik, unbeknownst to him, would switch jobs with Hans and
went to the front line and died during combat. Because of his experience with Erik during the
war, Hans knows the truth that the Jews are not how they are portrayed in the propaganda. He
has a better morality towards people because of this. Dont judge a book by its cover. is the
philosophy Hans uses and teaches to his foster daughter Liesel, whom has adjusted to these
teachings very well.

A real life example of this theory would go towards Martin Luther King Jr. MLK had
always experienced bad vibes and treatment from his fellow man ever since he was a young
child. While most people opted for violence and hatred to fuel their quest for respect and
equality, King chose a different approach. Because he was very religious, King strictly followed
the rules held down by the Christian faith and believed in the teachings of this religion. He

looked past the outer layer on how to solve the issue and began to delve into an intellectual
approach, a non violent approach. I have passed spots where Negroes had been savagely
lynched and had watched the Ku Klux Klan on its rides at night. I had seen police brutality with
my own eyes and watched Negroes receive the most tragic injustices in the courts. (Hanes 41).
MLK realized that violence only leads to more violence and that the change for his fellow man
would only prolong and be apart of a very dark history for the world. From there the rest is
history, but because of the environment King was raised in, either by his family or outside
sources such as Christianity, he constructed an intellectual approach to a very heavy and dark
situation and ended up making everyone happy and possibly saving hundreds if not thousands of
lives.
While environment can play a major role in how you behave, act, and come up with your
own morals, there is another side to the story not yet told. Researchers have believed that the key
cause on why some people turn out to be serial killers or murderers are due to a defect in their
brain that hinders their ability to exhibit emotion. Jonah Lehrer, born in 1981 and American
philosopher and author of How We Decide, goes into detail about how serial killers behave and
that they make a choice to kill people. When we hear about someone killing one or multiple
people on local media, we tend to judge them as monsters, savage creatures that are mentally
unstable and sporadic in their actions, turns out we were wrong all along. According to Lehrer, a
journalist by the name of Alec Wilkinson was tasked to interview a serial killer by the name of
John Gacy around the 1980s. Gacy was considered to be a normal man, grew up in a normal
non-hostile environment and lived a normal life. However, there was in fact a dark secret to this
almost seemingly perfect life. In March of 1980, Gacy was convicted of murdering 30 teenage
boys and was sentenced to life in prison. How could this happen to a man who had lived a

normal life? When Wilkinson entered the prison he didnt know what to expect. Would Gacy be
as the news media portrayed him as, a violent savage of a human being with a only blood thirsty
trait, or something else? Turns out it was something completely different. Gacy appears to have
no inner being...Compared to other murderers at the prison, Gacy seemed tranquil. (Lehrer, 169170). Gacy appeared calm, emotionless, and nothing like what the news media had portrayed
him as. In Lehrers eyes it made sense. In order for someone to stomach to kill without losing
sanity in the process, one would have to be in an emotionless remorseless person or in a state of
mind that is like this. Something that keeps human beings from doing bad things is emotion. We
feel emotion when doing actions good or bad. If the emotions are cut off then doing harder more
morally ill actions are easier to do. We have no sentiment in doing these things and therefore can
execute them with ease. Most if not all serial killers have this trait. They are physically and
mentally unable to feel emotion, hence why they can do their evil action regardless.

Geoffrey Thomas, author and Sociologist of The Moral Philosophy of T.H. Green, goes
into depth about the thinking behind our actions. Thomas explains that If it [the action] was
physically or logically impossible for me to do an action, or I lacked opportunity, then no
intention of mine could have produced the action and I cannot blamed for not doing it: I escape
responsibility. (Thomas 74). From there, he goes on about there being three necessary
conditions of moral responsibility for an action. (A) was able to do (X), (A) did (X) knowingly,
(A) could have done otherwise, if he had chosen (X). (Thomas 75). These reasons present
themselves to be true for the most part. If we cannot perform the action, we generally do not do
the action to avoid any responsibility if we fail. The three conditions are also presented true.
Each action that we perform or are able to perform coincides with condition one, we are able to
do the action. Condition two is proven to be true because of each action that we act out, we did

the action knowing what was at stake. In other words the pros and cons of what we did.
Condition three is also met because if we had learn another way, a more correct way in doing an
action, we would have taken that way. These conditions can be associated with emotions. Some
of these emotions can be linked towards Fear, sadness, pride, guilt, laziness, etc. Emotions are
generated from our brain and without them we become blank, bland, almost like a serial killer.
Sometimes we associate these emotions by performing an act on things that are known to be true.
For example, we know that if we touch a hot surface our fingers will start to burn and cause jolts
of pain that go through our bodies. The emotions that we experience is pain followed by guilt
and sadness. With that knowledge, we do not touch hot surfaces. This is what is known as The
Rationality of Moral Actions. (Thomas 81). We perform certain actions based on what is true.
We rationalize what is bad and what is good and make the good choices based on the current
situation.
Both sides to the story seem to have good points. There are facts in which science does
prove that missing certain parts of the brain can and will affect the way we think and the actions
we perform. We associate certain actions with emotions and usually we tend to do actions that
make us happy and others as well. We also tend to avoid actions that make people sad or mad.
Emotions play a key role in moral actions. The public tends to choose their morality towards
things that ends up receiving a positive or good reception while avoiding doing things to receive
a negative reception. However, there are those that do not have the ability to produce emotions
such as sympathy in their mind and thus are able to do despicable things without remorse. Serial
Killers exhibit this trait as a true serial killer is calm and tranquil opposed to the ones we hear on
the news and because they are incapable to produce emotions or have emotional connections,
they can easily kill another living creature or person. I would believe that a normal person would

not be able to become a serial killer so easily. So to the scientists that believe that this is a fact, I
do support their evidence and claims.

On the other side of the story, environment does play a huge role in determining the kind
of person we become. A child raised in a peaceful loving environment will be better morally
because they were taught better unlike other kids that are unfortunate to live in bad conditions.
Towards the example of the Book Thief, this was apparent in all cases. Hans determined that not
all Jews are bad people that the Nazis portrayed them as. They are human beings like everyone
else in the world and they should be treated like human beings. The same for MLK, as he
determined that violence would only lead to more violence and the there would be an endless
cycle of hate and blood that would prolong the eventual equality rights for African Americans. It
is all about maturity in that sense and the people that influence your life help you mature into the
person that you can become.

In my opinion, I believe that both approaches are to be true, not only one side. While
environment can help you overcome the mental disabilities that a human can be born with,
sometimes there are certain situations in which they become almost incurable. A mix of the two
stories make the most sense to me. After all, two halves do make a whole. The facts and
statements given out by the sources cited here today were very concrete and precise. The
evidence laid out to me were presented in such a way that they can be compared side by side and
be almost similar in the point they were trying to make.

Ultimately, both sides present good evidence and reasons on their theory of how we
determine our morality. I find this topic to be very important because of the evil and chaos that is

caused from morally bad choices. Nothing good comes from those choices at all. If we find the
root cause for those morally corrupted people, we can take measures and precautions to prevent
such acts from even happening. There is so much evil in the world and it can never be stopped.
However, we can prevent and lower the rate at which it appears in not only our society but in the
world. Whether or not its mostly science based or environment based, morality and the concepts
are pretty vast to interpret and understand. I believe that we only scratched the surface of what
the term morality truly means.

Works Cited

Lehrer, Jonah. "The Moral Mind." How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
2009. 167-74. Print.
Raz, Joseph. "About Morality and the Nature of Law." About Morality and the Nature of
Law. N.p., 2003. Web. 22 Oct. 2015.
Tilly, Charles. "Chapter 3 and Chapter 4: Credit/Blame." Credit and Blame. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 2008. N. pag. Print.
Thomas, Geoffrey. "Chapter 2: Ethics and Moral Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives
and Green." The Moral Philosophy of T.H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987. N. pag.
Print.
Walton, Hanes. "Chapter 3: The Foundation of King's Moral and Political Philosophy."
The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Westport, CT: Greenwood Pub.,
1971. 38-76. Print.
Donagan, Alan. The Theory of Morality. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1977. Print.
Langer, Susanne K. "Ethics without Morality." Feeling and Form: A Theory of Art Developed
From Philosophy in a New Key. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953. N. pag. Print.