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Divine Command Theory revolves around the idea that morality is synonymous with following God’s commands. While various religions may have Gods that endorse different beliefs and behaviors, Divine Command Theory encompasses all instances of a deity dictating a society’s morals. Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma is a dialogue written to point out the inconsistencies of this philosophy.

Anthropologists at the University of Oxford published a study in 2019 examining 60 different cultures and their principles. This study was conducted by reviewing ethnographic content from each culture. Seven fundamentals were identified beforehand, and historic writings were analyzed to search for either positive or negative moral valence of each one. They found that 99.9% of the time, these seven behaviors were considered “moral”– helping kin, helping group, reciprocating, being brave, respecting superiors, dividing resources, and respecting property. These principles appeared across all cultures studied, and only one counterexample was found– an instance of the “respecting property” value clashing with “being brave” (Curry, Mullins, and Whitehouse).

The Moral Foundations theory, developed by Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, proposes that there are “intuitive ethics,” or morals that individuals subscribe to within cultures. There are 5 foundations that a person’s behaviors tend to adhere to: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Haidt argues that these morals are cross-cultural, and alignment with them is present at birth. Importantly, the Moral Foundations Theory does not assert that every culture has the same morals, but rather each has developed their own set of acceptable behaviors, and there tends to be crossover in the areas listed above.