This essay won the Edgar Jones Philosophy Essay Competition from St. Peter's College Oxford.
As humans in a society, we are, however involuntarily, bound to the ideas of right and wrong. They are at the core of many aspects of our behaviour; our laws, our decisions, our attitude towards each other, all are affected by the moral principles we live by. Even those who deviate from the traditional ethical code, by opposing it, accept its existence. Yet despite all the importance we attach to these values, we cannot definitively determine their source, or their legitimacy, though we stand by them fiercely when they are contested.
