no offence intended just some thoughts
how do you know what is right and what is wrong people were burned at the stakes and made slave for speaking against religion the religious people viewed it as right and we nowadays view at as wrong. is right simply what we have been told? or does it differ form person to person if so how come there are winners in votes of any kind? if right is what we have been told then or their only a few ways of thinking? for 90 percent of people could vote for thing which just means everyone is back to ground zero and even justice is a form of manipulation and control
It is really difficult understand what is right. What now we consider
allegedly(as in, what most people publicly defend) as right may, as you say, change drastically with time. This can be one definition of right.
But if I disagree with what is publicly said, then I do not consider it right, deep down. My judgement about right is different, and it is not simply a matter of opinion. I have a strong feeling that public opinion is
wrong.
I think that it is really difficult to understand what really is Right and Wrong (with capital letters to point out that I am referring to universal and atemporal moral judgements, which should not be dependent of circumstances and cultures). Historically, those people who thought they possessed knowledge of Right and Wrong were most likely to go to war for it.
In contemporary society, we are learning (VERY little by little), to live together with people who have different ideas of what is right and wrong. We are learning that we are fallible in our moral judgements, and that people who disagree with us are not simply stupid (technically speaking, each person has the same "moral powers" as every other person, there are not people who have a greater insight on this matters, provided that each of us uses his/her moral powers to the fullest), and thus we should find a way to establish a peaceful cohabitation with those who disagree with us.
That's why some political philosophers are now defending conceptions of morality that may seem "weaker" than those who established a strong conception of Right and Wrong. What really matters now is the fact that we agree on certain general principles that should rule our interactions (first and foremost respect for other people, which is another way of saying that we accept that all people have the same moral powers), and thus we create a society on the basis of those principles only.
Those principles are not Right in the sense of what I specified before, but are widely accepted, and as such can be considered 'right' in a weaker sense (exactly the sense that those are the principles that are widely accepted).
How do we find those principles? Through public debate, which should be regulated by the idea of "public reason", which is the idea that in public debate people should use arguments that could be accepted by people who do not always share their beliefs (for example, if I'm Christian and I'm talking to a Muslim, I would not use an argument whose pivotal point is the existence of the Christian God).
This is the idea that should constitute the basis of democracy, as John Rawls puts it. It think it is a pretty well thought account of the principles at the basis of democracy.
The problem is, it is a incredibly delicate balance, that of public reason, and it requires a terrible amount of education and commitment to those principles from people who take part in public debate. That's why democracy is always in danger of falling apart, in the exact moment in which people who partake in public debate do not really endorse, deep down, the principle of public reason.
