| Dictionary: Eth·ics |
[Cf. F. éthique. See Ethic.]
The science of human duty; the body of rules of duty drawn from this science; a particular system of principles and rules concerning duty, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to a single class of human actions; as, political or social ethics; medical ethics.
The completeness and consistency of its morality is the peculiar praise of the ethics which the Bible has taught.I. Taylor.
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: ethics |
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| Dental Dictionary: ethics |
1. the science of moral obligation; a system of moral principles, quality, or practice. n 2. the moral obligation to render to the patient the best possible quality of dental service and to maintain an honest relationship with other members of the profession and mankind in general.
| Encyclopedia of Judaism: Ethics |
Morality in the Bible
Of particular importance are the moral attributes used to describe God. The actions of God in Creation and in judging the world are seen as good and just. God Himself is held to the principles of justice and righteousness (Gen. 18:25), and in a special revelation He is described as "... merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity ..." (Ex. 34:6). Implicit in the Bible is the concept of imitatio dei (Imitation of God) which was to be fully articulated by the rabbis. For if man is "created in the image of God" (Gen. 1:27), then he is capable of being like God. If the "way of God is justice and righteousness" (Gen. 18:19), then it is proper for man to imitate God: "You shall walk in His ways" (Deut. 11:22).
The Pentateuch comprises the legislative core of Judaism and includes its essential moral teachings. In the books of the later prophets, these moral teachings are applied to the social problems of the time and are delivered in the contemporary context with passion and literary skill. While in the exhortations of Deuteronomy the moral element is absorbed in the overall religious demand, here the moral component is often emphasized as the single consideration upon which the destiny of Israel may depend (Jer. 9:23; Amos 2:6-14, 5:21-24; Mic. 6:7-8). In the Hagiographa portion of the Bible, moral values figure in the narratives of Ruth and Esther and are frequently the Divine attributes praised by the Psalmist (Ps. 11:7, 97:2, 99:4). In the Book of Proverbs, these moral teachings are judged wise and useful by the standards of human experience. Morality is presented here as dispositional character traits associated with particular moral types such as tsaddik ("just"), ḥakham ("wise"), and yashar ("honest"), and such negative types as rasha ("evil"), evil ("empty-headed"), kesil ("foolish"), and letz ("scoffer"). While the literary prophets emphasized social morality (see Social Ethics), the Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes) focused on personal morality, i.e., moral values which are internalized as character traits that become part of the individual's personality.
Already in the Bible the beginning of a reflective approach to morality can be found. The Book of Job deals with the theological problem of theodicy---of the apparently righteous person who is visited with suffering. The Book of Jonah is concerned with wicked people who are apparently permitted to escape punishment. In sections of the Psalms and the Prophets there are attempts to reduce the large number of Divine demands to a few essential moral requirements (Mic. 6:8; Ps. 15:1-2).
At first glance, the Bible seems to be unaware of morality as such, moral rules being presented simply as one of a variety of commandments with no distinction being made on the basis of content. All are equally important and equally obligatory. However, the use of special terms for different types of commandments (with moral rules falling into the category of mishpatim), the unusual concentration of moral rules in the Decalogue (Ex. 20:1-14), and the promise of special rewards for a certain type of commandment which calls for benevolence (Deut. 23:21, 22:7, 24:13, 15:10, 15:18) would seem to indicate that the Bible recognized the special nature of the moral commandments and accorded them special treatment and importance.
This is supported by the close identification of God with moral values. In pre-Sinaitic accounts, God Himself is associated with morality only in terms of His actions; He performs deeds of justice and kindness. However, in the special revelation granted to Moses (Ex. 34:6), God is described in terms of dispositional moral attributes ("merciful," "kind"), implying that, in some sense, moral qualities are essential attributes of God and by imitating God in this, man can come into close proximity with Him: "... to love the Lord your God, to walk in all of His ways and to cleave unto Him" (Deut. 11:22).
Morality in Rabbinic Literature
In treating the moral content of the biblical narratives, the rabbis employed the methods of aggadah and were able to discover many additional moral insights. Thus, from Genesis 18:12, 13 they learned that "one may bend the truth for the sake of domestic peace"; from Genesis 18:1-3 that "being kind to strangers is more important than receiving the Divine Presence," and from Genesis 38:25 that "one should prefer to be burned alive than to embarrass one's fellow man in public." They also explicitly made role models out of such biblical heroes as Abraham, Moses, and Aaron (e.g., Avot 1:12). In the Mishnah Avot there is an abundance of moral teachings which emphasize personal character traits in the style of the Book of Proverbs. Taking their lead from the Bible, the rabbis continued the search for the master principle or supreme values of the morality of Judaism (Avot 2:1, Mak. 23, 24). Thus: "R. Akiva said of the command 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself' that it is a great principle of the Torah. Ben Azzai said there is a principle that is even greater: 'This is the book of the generations of Adam ... in the likeness of God made He him'" (Gen. 4:1; Sif. ad loc.). In seeking to define the highest reaches of religious experience, the rabbis suggested moral qualities such as ḥasidut ("kindliness") and anavah ("humility"), while the biblical concept of kedushah ("holiness") was seen to have primarily a moral content (AZ 20).
The rabbis generally referred to morality by the phrase bén adam le-ḥavero ("between man and his fellow man"), which was embraced in the term Derekh Erets ("ways of the world" or right conduct). From various expressions by some of the most authoritative rabbis it could be inferred that morality was deemed one of the central components of Judaism: "Simon the Just said, 'The world stands on three things: Torah, avodah ("Divine service"), and acts of loving-kindness'" (Avot 1:2). Hillel said, "What is hateful to yourself do not do to your fellow man. This is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary. Go and study" (Shab. 31a).
In terms of the content of the morality of Judaism, the basic meaning of key moral terms such as mishpat ("justice"), tsedakah ("righteousness"), ḥesed ("kindness"), and raḥamim ("compassion") is much the same as what is understood by current philosophic analysis. Yet there are special qualities to the morality of Judaism which, in turn, seem to be the result of distinctive approaches.
The involvement of God in the moral struggle imparts a quality of urgency and passion which is unique to Judaism. "For I know their sorrows," says God (Ex. 3:7), and "... it shall come to pass that when he cries out unto Me that I shall hear" (Ex. 22:26). Hence the "hysterical" tone of the prophets. Injustice cannot be tolerated. Cruelty and human suffering shake the foundations of society. Judaism did not introduce new definitions of moral terms but rather revealed the true source of morality: God rather than man, prophecy rather than wisdom. Therefore, man could no longer be complacent about the moral situation. "Righteousness was asleep until it was awakened by Abraham" (Midrash Tehillim, Ps. 110).
In Judaism, the realm of morality is not restricted to deed but rather includes man's inner world of consciousness: thoughts, emotions, intentions, attitudes, motives. All are to a degree subject to man's control and qualify for moral judgment. Thus the Bible warns against coveting (Ex. 20:14; Deut. 5:18), against hating one's brother (Lev. 19:17), against "hardening one's heart" (Deut. 15:9, 10), while the rabbis inveighed against envy, desire, and anger (Avot 2:11) and noted that "thinking about transgression may be worse than transgression itself" (Yoma 29a).
Biblical sensitivity to the harm as well as the good that could be done by speech was unprecedented: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Prov. 18:21). Man must be careful not to lie, curse or slander (Lev. 19:11, 14, 16), nor to receive a false report or speak evil (Ex. 23:1; Deut. 19:16-18). The rabbis also condemned the use of flattery, hypocrisy, and obscene speech and urged the practice of clean, pleasant, and non-abusive language. In terms of the good that could be achieved by speech, the rabbis encouraged proper greetings to all, the need to cheer people with good humor, rebuke properly, and comfort with words in times of bereavement (BB 9, Ta'an 22a). The halakhah endowed the spoken word with legal force and in the area of vows and oaths applied the biblical teaching: "He shall not breach his word, he should do according to all that proceeds from his mouth" (Num. 30:3).
In the ancient world, animals were sometimes venerated as gods or exploited for work or sport with extreme cruelty. The morality of Judaism includes concern for man's relationship to all living creatures. They are seen as junior partners in the building of civilization and therefore entitled to rest on the Sabbath (Ex. 20:8-10). Since "the Lord is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works" (Ps. 145:9), man must follow suit: "A righteous man regards the life of his beast" (Prov. 12:10). Man must provide for those animals he has domesticated and must not cause them any unnecessary pain (BM 32b). A number of biblical laws seem to aim at preventing "anguish" and "frustration" to animals, particularly in regard to their care for their young (Ex. 23:5; Lev. 22:27, 28; Deut. 22:4, 6, 7, 10, 25:4). The rabbis prohibited causing animals pain for the sake of sport or hunting when not for the sake of food, and permitted experimentation with living creatures only when it seemed likely to lead to practical advances in medical treatment.
Concern for the dignity of man is another distinctive feature of the morality of Judaism, expressing itself primarily as respecting each person's privacy and being careful not to cause anyone shame or embarrassment. The rabbis incorporated into the halakhah a special category of "shame" or "indignity" in awarding compensation for damages (BK 8:1). In this area, they showed their awareness of the irreducible dignity or worth shared by every human being, as well as their sensitivity to the individual needs of people depending on their self-image and position in life.
Sources of Moral Knowledge
While the morality of Judaism is essentially theonomous, grounded in God, it has many features of moral autonomy. Morality is what man must do as man. Man, a creature formed in the likeness of God, is endowed with innate worth and freedom of will. This means that he deserves moral treatment and is capable of treating others morally. God commands man to be moral because He cannot do otherwise. It is in the nature of the good to do good to others. "You shall walk in His ways" (Deut. 28:9) teaches not only what God wants of man but what God Himself is. Once revealed by God, morality is seen to be independent of Him in the sense that God Himself is bound by it. Hence the religious Jew strives to be moral for the love of God, but since God is the absolute good, man may be said to be moral because it is moral.
The morality of Judaism is universal. Its principles of behavior apply to all men and obligate all men. In the Bible all men and women are created in the image of God and have equal opportunity to participate in man's ultimate destiny, be it immortality of the soul on the individual level or the experience of messianic redemption on the historical level. The Jew is called upon to love his fellow Jew as himself (Lev. 19:18), to love the stranger as himself (Lev. 19:33, 34), and indeed to love all of God's creatures (Avot 1:12).
The morality of Judaism constitutes a system in the sense that its parts are related to each other by common origin, common purpose, and logical connections. Moral rules can be justified on the grounds that they are deducible from moral principles. Thus all deeds of loving-kindness, such as visiting the sick, comforting the mourner, dowering the bride, are implied in the precept: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." No moral code can possibly anticipate the ever-changing human condition by providing in advance particular rules to cover all possible situations. Man was therefore given moral principles so that the members of each generation could deduce from them rules for themselves. The existence of these principles enables the system to achieve comprehensiveness, which is the ability to provide correct moral decisions for all situations.
Consistency is another feature of a moral system, implying the ability to resolve incipient conflicts between moral principles. The rabbis used their exegetical methods to infer from the Bible a hierarchy of values. Thus, "a positive precept overrides a negative precept" (Shab.133a), all negative commandments may be suspended in order to save a human life (Lev. 18:5), love of God stands higher than fear of God (Naḥmanides on Ex. 20:8), and peace is higher than truth (Sanh. 10; BM 87a). Human life, however, is not the highest value in Judaism, as the Jew must be prepared under certain conditions to sacrifice his life in defense of the Jewish people or in order to avoid desecrating the name of God.
In Judaism, moral norms which are of a behavioral nature are incorporated in the halakhah. However, morality and halakhah are not identical. There are areas in which the demands of morality may go beyond the requirements of the halakhah. These situations are called li-fenim mi-shurat ha-din ("beyond the letter of the law") and are deduced from a biblical source (Ex. 18:20; BK 99a). Thus, for example, there may be a situation where according to the letter of the law one is not required to return a certain lost object to its owner, yet the finder may be morally obligated to do so (BM 24b). Thus, there appears to be in Judaism a class of duties called supererogatory, i.e., actions for which one receives special credit if performed but for which one is not faulted if left undone. (See also Ethical Literature).
Man's Choice
When man chooses "the way of God," that is to say the moral life, he not only actualizes his human potential, he completes the work of creation. Since Judaism holds that man's nature remained essentially unaffected by his so-called Fall, it expects moral development leading to the Divine way of goodness to be initiated by man himself. Man, by fulfillment of God's commandments, is capable, on his own, of fulfilling his God-given potential.
Later Thinkers
Among the medieval philosophers, Judah Halevi and Crescas, unlike their rationalist predecessors, believed the essence of the God-idea to be goodness rather than thought. Refusing to accept that knowledge was the highest good, they taught that closeness to God and eternal happiness come from love of God and that this is achieved by keeping the commandments.
Only in the 16th century, however, did Judah Löw of Prague make explicit that the religious and spiritual aspects of morality do not stem merely from its being commanded by God. The connection is actually more substantive, since the most that has ever been revealed to man of God is His moral nature. Thus, only by acting morally does man walk in the ways of God and imitate Him, thereby attaining his Divine image. Moral action is the most direct way of cleaving to God and entering into fellowship with Him. Cruelty and injustice distance man from God, while kindness, love, and concern for his fellow man draw man closer. Love and fear of God are themselves based on such moral sentiments as gratitude, justice, and responsibility. Samson Raphael Hirsch taught that "justice is the sum total of life and is the sole concept which the Torah seeks to interpret. The Torah teaches us justice towards men, justice towards plants and animals and the earth, justice towards our own body and soul, and justice towards God who created us for love so that we may become a blessing for the world."
Later Jewish thinkers who accorded a central role to morality in their philosophy of Judaism included Samuel David Luzzatto, Hermann Cohen, and Martin Buber. The latter taught that the love of man is connected to the love of God in yet another sense: "Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou, the primary work addresses the eternal Thou."
According to Judaism, morality is the bridge by which man reaches out to God. Morality is what unites man with his fellow man on the basis of values grounded in the Divine. It is the fabric out of which man weaves for himself an ethical self and society achieves its redemptive goal.
| Philosophy Dictionary: ethics |
(Greek, ethos, character) The study of the concepts involved in practical reasoning: good, right, duty, obligation, virtue, freedom, rationality, choice. Also the second-order study of the objectivity, subjectivity, relativism, or scepticism that may attend claims made in these terms. For the kinds of problems encountered, see under the special terms. For a possible distinction between ethics and morality, see morality.
| US Government Guide: ethics |
The public expects its elected officials to have high ethical standards. But standards of ethical behavior have changed over time. When Daniel Webster served as a senator in the 1830s and 1840s, he carried on a private legal practice and argued cases before the Supreme Court. Since Congress met for only half the year, it was commonplace for members to continue their other business activities during the months of adjournment. Questions arose about members’ conflict of interest, and Congress began to meet year-round. The Senate and House revised their rules to prohibit members from representing legal clients and engaging in other outside activities. The old practice of a member putting his wife and children on the congressional payroll was banned. Ethics laws also prohibited the use of campaign funds for personal expenses. But no set of ethics laws will ever be final because political and financial practices, and public opinion, are constantly changing.
Some private groups, including Common Cause and Ralph Nader's Citizens' Watch on Congress Project, keep close watch on congressional behavior and publicize ethics lapses and abuses of position. The press also scrutinizes congressional ethics. The Senate Select Committee on Ethics and the House Standards of Official Conduct Committee advise members and staff and investigate charges of impropriety.
From time to time, scandals have stirred public opinion and caused Congress to reexamine its rules of behavior. In the 19th century, such lobbying scandals as the one involving Credit Mobilier in 1872—when high-ranking members of both houses accepted stock from a railroad company receiving subsidies from the federal government—began the movement to restrict members' outside business and financial activities. Similarly, the 1970s investigation of Abscam (in which an FBI agent posed as an Arab sheikh and offered bribes to members of Congress) and the savings and loan scandals of the 1990s—which caught some members offering their influence in return for campaign contributions—further tightened congressional rules of ethics. The public has also seen excessive perks of Congress, including travel junkets and check bouncing at the House bank, as indications of the need for continued reform.
Ethics in the executive branch
Like members of Congress, Presidents and their appointees are supposed to have high ethical standards, avoiding conflicts of interest between their public duties and private affairs. Concerns about ethics fall into three general categories: personal gain, conflict of interest, and misuse of public funds.
Presidents place their financial assets in a “blind trust,” a legal arrangement under which a trustee, chosen by the President, handles the President's personal financial affairs. During his term the President has no knowledge of the trustee's investment decisions, allowing him to make decisions without thinking of personal gain.
To avoid misusing public funds, modern Presidents pay for political activities out of their own pockets or through their political parties. Party national committees pay for such expenses as public opinion polls and the President's appearances at political events. Similarly, members of the administration are expected to reimburse the government for transportation and related expenses when they use government vehicles for personal or political trips. Sometimes officials misuse this privilege or blur the line between public and private or political business.
Restrictions on officials began in 1789, when the secretary of the Treasury was forbidden by law from investing in government securities. In 1853 Congress passed the first conflict-of-interest statute, but its criminal penalties were rarely enforced. Most Presidents in the 19th century, especially James Buchanan and Ulysses S. Grant, did not enforce ethical standards.
In modern times President Dwight Eisenhower was forced to dismiss his chief of staff, Sherman Adams, for accepting presents from a Boston financier. Jimmy Carter's director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance, resigned over charges involving his conduct as a banker in Georgia, though the charges were eventually dropped. In 1986 two officials of Ronald Reagan's administration, Michael Deaver and Lyn Nofziger, were prosecuted for violating a ban on lobbying the government for one year after leaving government service. Deaver was found guilty of perjury and Nofziger of violating the one-year ban, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. In 1987 Attorney General Edwin Meese was investigated by independent counsel for his efforts to help a friend build an oil pipeline between Iraq and Jordan. A 1988 report indicated that Meese had violated federal law, but not for personal gain. Meese was not prosecuted, but he resigned as attorney general.
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson issued Executive Order 11222, which ordered officials to avoid actions that gave the appearance of using their offices for private gain, giving preferential treatment to any individual or organization, “affecting adversely the confidence of the public in the integrity of government,” or making decisions outside official channels. President Jimmy Carter established strict standards for appointees, including disclosure of financial assets, divestiture or sale of assets that might create conflicts of interest, and restrictions on private employment after officials leave government, including a one-year prohibition on lobbying. These provisions were incorporated into the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, which established an Office of Ethics in the White House to monitor compliance with reporting provisions and to issue advisory opinions to government personnel.
The Presidential Transition Effectiveness Act of 1988 covers ethics issues during changes of administration. It provides that transition aides who make conduct investigations and make recommendations about policy in government departments and agencies must fill out disclosure forms, so that the public will know the names, recent employment history, and “Sources of funding” (if not paid for by transition funds) of such transition officials. During the transition to Bill Clinton's administration, rules for transition staff included a six-month ban on subsequent lobbying of government agencies by staffers involved with these agencies.
President Clinton ordered the strictest code of ethics for political appointees ever instituted. By executive order, he prohibited officials from lobbying their former departments for five years after leaving government service (an increase from the one-year ban in the 1978 law), although they could lobby other government agencies after one year. In addition, high officials in many departments, including U.S. trade negotiators, would also be banned for life from representing the interests of foreign governments and political parties, though they would be free to represent foreign corporations and interest groups after five years (an increase from the three-year ban in existing law). These rules covered the top 1,100 government officials. An additional 3,500 top executive branch officials are prohibited from lobbying federal agencies for one year after they leave government service.
Ethics in the Judicial Branch
Like members of the legislative and executive branches, federal judges are expected to have high standards of ethics. All federal judges follow the principles outlined in the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which has been adopted by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the federal courts' national policy-making group. The Code of Conduct includes these guidelines:
• A judge should uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary.
• A judge should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities.
• A judge should perform the duties of the office impartially and diligently.
• A judge may engage in extrajudicial activities to improve the law, the legal system, and the administration of justice.
• A judge should regulate extrajudicial activities to minimize the risk of conflict with judicial duties.
• A judge should regularly file reports of compensation received for law-related and extrajudicial activities.
• A judge should refrain from political activity.
According to these ethical standards, judges should not hear cases in which they have a financial interest, a personal bias regarding a party to the case, or earlier involvement in the case as a lawyer. Further, judges are expected to participate in activities that contribute to the public good through improvement of the legal and judicial systems, and as a result, many judges are engaged in law-related education activities in schools.
See also Campaign financing, congressional; Carter, Jimmy; Cleveland, Grover; Clinton, Bill; Credit Mobilier scandal (1872–73); Discipline, congressional; Executive Office of the President; Grant, Ulysses S.; House bank scandal (1992); Independent counsel; Junkets; Perks, congressional; White House Office
Sources
| Buddhism Dictionary: ethics |
There is no Buddhist term which exactly corresponds to ‘ethics’ as a branch of philosophy concerned with the analysis and evaluation of conduct in the way the subject is classified in the West. Instead, the various rules of moral conduct are subsumed under the rubric of śīla, which denotes internalized moral virtue and its expression in practice as abstention from immoral conduct. As far as monks are concerned, the Vinaya provides an externally enforced code for the regulation of communal life.
| Sports Science and Medicine: ethics |
1. The study of how people ought to act in order to be moral.
2. A moral code that guides the conduct of a group of professionals such as medical doctors. Medical ethics is particularly relevant to the application of drugs and ergogenic aids in sport.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: ethics |
Approaches to Ethical Theory
Ethics has developed as people have reflected on the intentions and consequences of their acts. From this reflection on the nature of human behavior, theories of conscience have developed, giving direction to much ethical thinking. Intuitionists (Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke), moral-sense theorists (the 3d earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson), and sentimentalists (J. J. Rousseau, Pierre-Simon Ballanche) postulated an innate moral sense, which serves as the ground of ethical decision. Empiricists (John Locke, Claude Helvétius, John Stuart Mill) deny any such innate principle and consider conscience a power of discrimination acquired by experience. In the one case conscience is the originator of moral behavior, and in the other it is the result of moralizing. Between these extremes there have been many compromises.
The Nature of the Good
Another major difference in the approach to ethical problems revolves around the question of absolute good as opposed to relative good. Throughout the history of philosophy thinkers have sought an absolute criterion of ethics. Frequently moral codes have been based on religious absolutes. Immanuel Kant, in his categorical imperative, attempted to establish an ethical criterion independent of theological considerations. Rationalists (Plato, Baruch Spinoza, Josiah Royce) founded their ethics on a metaphysics.
All varying methods of building an ethical system pose the question of the degree to which morality is authoritative (i.e., imposed by a power outside the individual). If the criterion of morality is the welfare of the state (G. W. Hegel), the state is supreme arbiter. If the authority is a religion, then that religion is the ethical teacher. Hedonism, which equates the good with pleasure in its various forms, finds its ethical criterion either in the good of the individual or the good of the group. An egoistic hedonism (Aristippus, Epicurus, Julien de La Mettrie, Thomas Hobbes) views the good of the individual as the ultimate consideration. A universalistic hedonism, such as utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham, James Mill), finds the ethical criterion in the greatest good for the greatest number.
Twentieth-Century Ethical Thought
Among ethical theories debated in the first half of the 20th cent. were instrumentalism (John Dewey), for which morality lies within the individual and is relative to the individual's experience; emotivism (Sir Alfred J. Ayer), wherein ethical considerations are merely expressions of the subjective desires of the individual; and intuitionism (G. E. Moore), which postulates an immediate awareness of the morally good. Agreeing with Moore that the morally good is directly apprehended through intuition, deontological intuitionists (H. A. Prichard, W. D. Ross) went on to distinguish between good and right and to argue that moral obligations are intrinsically compelling whether or not their fulfillment results in some greater good.
Important ethical theories since the mid-20th cent. have included the prescriptivism of R. M. Hare, who has compared moral precepts to commands, a crucial difference between them being that moral precepts can be universally applied. In his arguments for virtue ethics, Alasdair C. MacIntyre has cautioned against unbridled individualism and advocated correctives drawn from Aristotle's discussion of moral virtue as the mean between extremes. Thomas Nagel has held that, in moral decision making, reason supersedes desire, so that it becomes rational to choose altruism over a narrowly defined self-interest. See also bioethics.
Bibliography
See H. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics (1902); A. C. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (1965); M. Warnock, Ethics since 1900 (1979); W. D. Hudson, A Century of Moral Philosophy (1980); B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985); P. Singer, ed., Applied Ethics (1986).
| Psychoanalysis: Ethics |
Ethics concerns mores: human moral attitudes in general and, more specifically, rules of behavior and their justifications. This system of rules attributes values to behaviors by judging them to be good or bad according to their intrinsic moral qualities or their concrete social consequences. For Freud, ethics takes up where totemism and taboos leave off, and constitutes the basis of all religion.
In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a [1929]), Freud noted, "The cultural super-ego has developed its ideals and set up its demands. Among the latter, those which deal with the relations of human beings are comprised under the heading of ethics" (p. 142).
As early as the Studies on Hysteria (1895a), Freud analyzed hysterical conversion symptoms as the result of a conflict between patients' erotic thoughts and moral ideals. The adjective "ethical," ethisch in German, appeared for the first time in 1898 in "Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses." In that essay, Freud raised the question of whether physicians have the right to intrude into the sexual lives of their patients and whether their "ethical duty" might not be "to keep away from the whole business of sex" (p. 264).
The notion of ethics in Freud's work refers primarily to those moral ideals in the name of which individuals renounce any instinctual impulses that are irreconcilable with the narcissistic ideals of the ego. These ideals are based on images of loved objects and the esteem of the superego. For Freud, the symptoms of the transference neuroses were substitutes for the remains of old loves that were forbidden by morality.
The reign of "civilized morality" begins when the drives are renounced. This forms the basis of religion and culture. Yet when individuals renounce the drives, they are deprived of the sexual and aggressive satisfactions demanded by the id, and so run the risk of neurosis.
This traditional conception of ethics is emphasized when the German word Ethik is translated as morals or morality. In what Angélo Hesnard calls "the morbid universe of guilt," the unconscious feelings of guilt that cause neurotic symptoms do not relate to the material reality of the patient's actions. Neurotic patients are guilty only of their secret intentions. The psychic reality of the forbidden and repressed wishes of "the child that is in man" (Freud, 1910a [1909], p. 36) is accessible to us by dream interpretation and is realized in the course of analytic treatment in the love/hate relationship of the transference. And yet, by reawakening the demons banished by morality, does not psychoanalysis run the risk of destroying the very foundations of culture, which always demands sacrifices of the individual?
This question leads to another conception of ethics, one that is specific to psychoanalysis. The ethics of psychoanalysis is a consequence of how its practice implements its method and rules. Psychoanalysis does not aim to make the individual adapted to his or her environment. In other words, it does not serve the good; rather, it seeks the truth. When Freud recommended that physicians not give in to the amorous advances of their patients, he was giving voice less to traditional morality than to a psychoanalytic ethics conceived in terms of the requirements of a praxis founded on a method. The patient, by engaging in transference love, aggravated by a resistance to remembering, aims to reduce the analyst to a lover. The analyst is ethically bound not to respond, because he does not mistake the transference for true love. He wants to frustrate the analysand's love so that it can be analyzed. Otherwise, the analyst would become allied with the resistance. Here moral motives converge with psychoanalytic technique.
This psychoanalytic notion of ethics serves philosophical, religious, and moral causes. In Moses and Monotheism (1939a), Freud showed that ethics originates in "a sense of guilt felt on account of a suppressed hostility to God" (p. 134). Using Judaism, he returned to the myth of the murder of the father that he developed in Totem and Taboo (1912-1913a). Freud argued that people have always known that at one time they had a primitive father (which in religion becomes the godhead) and that they put him to death. The resulting "nostalgia for the father" reflected an insatiable need to appease a sense of guilt by changing the father's prohibitions into ethical obligations. When sons ingest the dead father's body, they come to identify with someone whom they simultaneously love and hate. Thus, the dead father becomes the superego, demanding self-sacrifice. When the subject obeys the superego and renounces his sexual and aggressive impulses, he can both hate and love the parental authority within himself.
Freud revealed the role that masochism and narcissism play when the drives are reined in by ethics. A subject who suffers by sacrificing his or her desires to the supposed demands of the Other feels loved and chosen by this Other while unconsciously reproaching the Other for sadism.
Jacques Lacan discussed how the death drive functions in the dialectic between the pleasure principle and the reality principle. He began by declaring the prohibition of incest to be the only universal law. All other rules of morality are merely historical and cultural variations of this law. Desire for the mother can never be satisfied, even after the murder of the deterring father, because acting out incest would cause the social order to collapse. For this reason, the "naturalist liberation" of pleasure fails (Lacan, p. 4), jouissance remains forbidden, and the prohibition is reinforced by the work of mourning. The human condition is tragic because the more the subject renounces pleasure, the more his superego demands greater sacrifices. Nevertheless, the superego is necessary to produce the economy of pleasure and to introduce desire into the world of symbolic mediation.
In the character of Antigone, Lacan found an incarnation of a "pure and simple desire for death" (p. 282). This "raw," "inflexible" "kid" (pp. 250, 263) opposes the ethics of the good, represented by Creon. With her sacrifice, Antigone becomes the pure and simple relation between being human and "the break introduced by the presence of language in the human life" (p. 279). The result is that "when an analysis is carried through to its end the subject will encounter the limit in which the problematic of desire is raised" (p. 300).
Jacques Lacan emphasized the human subject's debt to language in becoming human and thus proposed a psychoanalytic ethic that did not concern itself with happiness and the good. The idealization of the figure of Antigone produced a Hegelian imperative to "pure action" that could conceivably be added to or substituted for traditional ethico-religious ideals. What Patrick Guyomard refers to as "the enjoyment of the tragic" must give way to the specific requirements of psychoanalytic work, a work of mourning that, according to Conrad Stein, leads to a "crossing of the tragic." Thus the ethics of psychoanalysis is a consequence of its specific method.
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. (1898a). Sexuality in the aetiology of the neuroses. SE, 3: 259-285.
——. (1910a [1909]). Five lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 11: 7-55.
——. (1912-1913a). Totem and taboo. SE, 13: 1-161.
——. (1930a [1929]). Civilization and its discontents. SE, 21: 57-145.
——. (1939a). Moses and monotheism: Three essays. SE, 23: 1-137.
Freud, Sigmund, and Breuer, Josef. (1895a). Studies on hysteria. SE, 2: 48-106.
Guyomard, Patrick. (1992). La jouissance du tragique: Antigone, Lacan et le désir de l'analyste. Paris: Aubier.
Lacan, Jacques. (1997). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 7: The ethics of psychoanalysis (1959-1960) (Dennis Porter, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1986)
Stein, Conrad. (1995). La traversée du tragique en psychanalyse.Études freudiennes, 35, 33-48.
—ROLAND GORI
| Education Encyclopedia: Ethics |
This entry consists of the following articles:
| Law Encyclopedia: Ethics |
The branch of philosophy that defines what is good for the individual and for society and establishes the nature of obligations, or duties, that people owe themselves and one another.
The word ethics is derived from the Greek word ethos, which means "character," and from the Latin word mores, which means "customs." In modern society, it defines how individuals, business professionals, and corporations choose to interact with one another.
Aristotle was one of the first great philosophers to study the subject. To him, ethics was more than a moral, religious, or legal concept. He believed that the most important element in ethical behavior is knowledge that actions are accomplished for the betterment of the common good. He asked whether actions performed by an individual or group are good both for that individual or a group and for society. To determine what is ethically good for the individual and for society, Aristotle said, it is necessary to possess three virtues of practical wisdom: temperance, courage, and justice.
Making ethical decisions in business is often difficult because business ethics is not simply an extension of an individual's personal ethics or a society's standards of right and wrong. Just being a good person with high ethical standards may not be enough to handle the tough choices that frequently arise in the workplace. Persons with limited business experience are often called upon to answer troublesome questions about complex issues, such as Can a professional breach client confidentiality? When can a professional permit harm to a client for the sake of the welfare of another person or the public? Can a professional deceive a client for the client's own good?
Business executives are faced with two types of ethical issues in conducting their day-to-day affairs. Micromanagement issues include conflicts of interest, employee rights, fair performance appraisals, sexual harassment, proprietary information, discrimination, and accepting or offering gifts. Macromanagement issues include corporate social responsibility, product liability, environmental ethics, comparable worth, layoffs and downsizings, employee screening tests, employee rights to privacy in the workplace, and corporate accountability.
The need to control, regulate, and legislate ethical conduct on the individual, corporate, and government levels has ancient roots. For example, one of the first law codes developed, the Code of Hammurabi, made bribery a crime in Babylon during the eighteenth century b.c. Most societies share certain features in their ethical codes, such as forbidding murder, bodily injury, and attacks on personal honor and reputation. In modern societies, the systems of law and public justice are closely related to ethics in that they determine and enforce definite rights and duties. They also attempt to repress and punish deviations from these standards.
Laws can be neutral on ethical issues, or they can be used to endorse ethics. The prologue to the U.S. Constitution says that ensuring domestic tranquility is an objective of government, which is an ethically neutral statement. Civil rights laws, on the other hand, promote an ethical as well as legal commitment. Often laws and the courts are required to resolve strong ethical dilemmas in society, as in the controversial issues of abortion (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147), affirmative action (University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 98 S. Ct. 2733, 57 L. Ed. 2d 750), and segregation (Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873).
Laws also permit many actions that will not bear ethical scrutiny. In other words, what the law permits or requires is not necessarily what is ethically right. For instance, laws allow disloyalty toward friends, the breaking of promises that do not have the stature of legal contracts, and a variety of deceptions. Laws sometimes require gross immoralities, as did the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required citizens to return runaway slaves to their masters, and the U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, which seven years later declared that slaves were not citizens but property (60 U.S. 393, 19 How. 393, 15 L. Ed. 691).
Although local, state, and federal regulatory acts do influence the conduct of some professions, many ethical issues cannot be settled by the courts. The ethics of a particular act is many times determined independently of the legality of the conduct. In fact, decisive answers cannot always be given for many ethical issues because there are no enforceable standards or reliable theories for resolving ethical conflicts.
The response of many professions to the challenging and demanding problem of institutionalizing business ethics is to implement codes of ethics, develop statements of corporate goals, sponsor training and educational programs in ethics, install internal judiciary bodies that hear cases of improprieties, and create telephone hot lines through which employees can anonymously report possible ethical violations.
A code of ethics provides members of a profession with standards of behavior and principles to be observed regarding their moral and professional obligations toward one another, their clients, and society in general. A code of ethics is generally developed by a professional society within a particular profession. The higher the degree of professionalism required of society members, the stronger and therefore more enforceable the code. For instance, in medicine, the behavior required is more specific and the consequences are more stringent in the code of ethics for physicians than in the code of ethics for nurses.
In addition, professions that require licensure from a state-authorized board, which guarantees both the competency and the moral efficacy of its members, place a duty on the licensed professional to help prevent unauthorized practice by unlicensed providers as a means of protecting the public.
The primary function of a code of ethics is to provide guidance to employers and employees in ethical dilemmas, especially those that are particularly ambiguous. Decisions in such situations can be made more easily if the code is specific, gives detailed directions on what actions should or should not be taken, and spells out explicit penalties for unethical behavior.
Some large and influential professional associations have developed highly detailed and enforceable codes for their membership. The American Medical Association's (AMA's) Principles of Medical Ethics has seven provisions, supplemented by numerous interpretive opinions of a judicial council. The Model Rules of Professional Conduct of the American Bar Association (ABA) contains eight sections, construed according to 138 ethical considerations and implemented by a comparable number of parallel disciplinary rules. The Rules of Conduct of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants has six major principles, each with numerous specifications. The American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct contains six principles, with several provisions under each.
Other professions with codes of responsibility include dentistry, social work, education, government service, engineering, journalism, real estate, advertising, architecture, banking, insurance, and human resources management. However, because some of these professions are not licensed, anyone can claim their title and perform their function — thus making it difficult to find legal recourse to claims of unethical conduct.
All professional codes can be considered quasi-public because of the effect they may have on legal judgments during litigation. Many states adopt accrediting associations' codes of ethics, thereby establishing those standards as public codifications. Failure to comply with a code can, in some professions, result in expulsion from the profession. The AMA's Principles of Medical Ethics, for example, are not laws per se, but the maximum penalty for violation of the principles is expulsion from the AMA. In addition, the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct provide evidence of professional standards of loyalty and care, and they become directly enforceable public law when they or their variants are adopted as binding upon lawyers admitted to practice within a state.
The most common violations of ethics codes that are brought before state professional associations and the legal system are breach of contract, including that resulting from incompetent behavior or decisions or from failure to exercise good faith; fraud, or an intent to deceive; and professional malpractice or negligence, which include incompetence and the performance of unnecessary services.
Since the legal profession is more self-regulating (i.e., regulated by attorneys and judges themselves rather than by government or outside agencies) than most professions, every state supreme court or legislature has a committee authorized to enforce the state rules of professional legal conduct. The state conduct committees make factual determinations on whether to privately reprimand a lawyer, publicly censure him or her, suspend the attorney's license to practice, or permanently revoke the license (i.e., disbar the attorney, or permanently disqualify the attorney from practicing law in the state).
Specific procedures on professional discipline vary from state to state, but every state allows for court review of the conduct committee's recommendations. If a license is revoked, the lawyer may petition the committee for readmission to the bar after a period of time specified by the state rules. Not every violation results in disbarment. This drastic measure is most commonly reserved for theft or misuse of client funds.
Besides laws based on professional bar association codes of ethics, separate federal and state laws define attorney misconduct and empower judges to discipline unethical conduct by attorneys. For example, rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (28 U.S.C.A.) requires sanctions for lawyers and clients who file frivolous or abusive claims in court.
Finally, attorneys can be seriously disciplined, such as by suspension from the practice of law for a certain time period, for failing to report misconduct of other lawyers to the ABA.
Judges must comply with the Code of Judicial Conduct, which was formulated by the ABA in 1972. This code is not considered law; however, federal and state governments have adopted it, and its violations are used as the basis for punitive action against judges. Any person may lodge a complaint of misconduct against a judge with the appropriate judicial review council. Punitive actions include public or private reprimand and suspension from office.
Interest in ethics has resurged with the rapid social change and technological developments of modern society. For instance, physicians, who have taken the Hippocratic Oath to save life, cure disease, and alleviate suffering, are now faced with whether to use medical devices that can prolong life at the cost of increasing suffering, or to follow patients' requests to be allowed to die without extraordinary lifesaving precautions or to be provided with medications or devices that will end life.
New fields of ethics, such as bioethics, engineering ethics, and environmental ethics, have opened up new areas of concern, not just for the professions involved but for society as well. As these professions grapple with expanding their codes of responsibility to keep up with technological advances and societal pressures for stricter business ethics, changes in laws governing business ethics are bound to change too. Since societal ethics have evolved through the law, they mirror the ethical norms agreed on by the majority.
Renewed interest in more government regulation of business, in teaching ethics in academic institutions, and in extensive corporate involvement in establishing ethics committees and codes of responsibility suggests that business ethics is emerging not only as a major intellectual and legal concern but as a full-fledged social movement.
As society and the moral dilemmas facing businesses have become more sophisticated and complex, some leaders in business ethics have referred appropriately to Mark Twain's age-old axiom, "Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest."
See: death and dying.
| Veterinary Dictionary: ethics |
Rules or principles which govern right conduct. Each practitioner, upon entering a profession, is invested with the responsibility to adhere to the standards of ethical practice and conduct set by the profession.
| Quotes About: Ethics |
Quotes:
"I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life."
- George F. Will
"Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?"
- George F. Will
"No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style."
- Oscar Wilde
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God."
- George Washington
"Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself."
- Bertrand Russell
"Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics -- a rational ethics -- as a precondition of rebirth."
- Ayn Rand
See more famous quotes about Ethics
| Wikipedia: Ethics |
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Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality; that is, about concepts like good and bad, right and wrong, justice, virtue, etc.
Major branches of ethics include meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how their truth-values (if any) may be determined; normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action; applied ethics, about how moral outcomes can be achieved in specific situations; moral psychology, about how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is; and descriptive ethics, about what moral values people actually abide by. Within each of these branches are many different schools of thought and still further sub-fields of study.
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Meta-ethics is concerned primarily with the meaning of ethical judgments and/or prescriptions and with the notion of which properties, if any, are responsible for the truth or validity thereof. Meta-ethics as a discipline gained attention with G.E. Moore's famous work Principia Ethica from 1903 in which Moore first addressed what he referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. Moore's rebuttal of naturalistic ethics, his Open Question Argument sparked an interest within the analytic branch of western philosophy to concern oneself with second order questions about ethics; specifically the semantics, epistemology and ontology of ethics.
The semantics of ethics divides naturally into descriptivism and non-descriptivism. Descriptivism holds that ethical language (including ethical commands and duties) is a subdivision of descriptive language and has meaning in virtue of the same kind of properties as descriptive propositions. Non-descriptivism contends that ethical propositions are irreducible in the sense that their meaning cannot be explicated sufficiently in terms of descriptive truth-conditions.
Correspondingly, the epistemology of ethics divides into cognitivism and non-cognitivism; a distinction that is often perceived as equivalent to that between descriptivists and non-descriptivists. Non-cognitivism may be understood as the claim that ethical claims reach beyond the scope of human cognition or as the (weaker) claim that ethics is concerned with action rather than with knowledge. Cognitivism can then be seen as the claim that ethics is essentially concerned with judgments of the same kind as knowledge judgments; namely about matters of fact.
The ontology of ethics is concerned with the idea of value-bearing properties, i.e. the kind of things or stuffs that would correspond to or be referred to by ethical propositions. Non-descriptivists and non-cognitivists will generally tend to argue that ethics do not require a specific ontology, since ethical propositions do not refer to objects in the same way that descriptive propositions do. Such a position may sometimes be called anti-realist. Realists on the other hand are left with having to explain what kind of entities, properties or states are relevant for ethics, and why they have the normative status characteristic of ethics.
Traditionally, normative ethics (also known as moral theory) was the study of what makes actions right and wrong. These theories offered an overarching moral principle to which one could appeal in resolving difficult moral decisions.
At the turn of the 20th century, moral theories became more complex and are no longer concerned solely with rightness and wrongness, but are interested in many different kinds of moral status. During the middle of the century, the study of normative ethics declined as meta-ethics grew in prominence. This focus on meta-ethics was in part caused by an intense linguistic focus in analytic philosophy and by the popularity of logical positivism.
In 1971, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, noteworthy in its pursuit of moral arguments and eschewing of meta-ethics. This publication set the trend for renewed interest in normative ethics.
Socrates (469 BC – 399 BC) was one of the first Greek philosophers to encourage both scholars and the common citizen to turn their attention from the outside world to the condition of man. In this view, Knowledge having a bearing on human life was placed highest, all other knowledge being secondary. Self-knowledge was considered necessary for success and inherently an essential good. A self-aware person will act completely within their capabilities to their pinnacle, while an ignorant person will flounder and encounter difficulty. To Socrates, a person must become aware of every fact (and its context) relevant to his existence, if he wishes to attain self-knowledge. He posited that people will naturally do what is good, if they know what is right. Evil or bad actions, are the result of ignorance. If a criminal were truly aware of the mental and spiritual consequences of his actions, he would neither commit nor even consider committing those actions. Any person who knows what is truly right will automatically do it, according to Socrates. While he correlated knowledge with virtue, he similarly equated virtue with happiness. The truly wise man will know what is right, do what is good, and therefore be happy.[1]
Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) posited an ethical system that may be termed "self-realizationism." In Aristotle's view, when a person acts in accordance with his nature and realizes his full potential, he will do good and be content. At birth, a baby is not a person, but a potential person. In order to become a "real" person, the child's inherent potential must be realized. Unhappiness and frustration are caused by the unrealized potential of a person, leading to failed goals and a poor life. Aristotle said, "Nature does nothing in vain." Therefore, it is imperative for persons to act in accordance with their nature and develop their latent talents, in order to be content and complete. Happiness was held to be the ultimate goal. All other things, such as civic life or wealth, are merely means to the end. Self-realization, the awareness of one's nature and the development of one's talents, is the surest path to happiness.[2]
Aristotle asserted that man had three natures: vegetable (physical), animal (emotional) and rational (mental ). Physical nature can be assuaged through exercise and care, emotional nature through indulgence of instinct and urges, and mental through human reason and developed potential. Rational development was considered the most important, as essential to philosophical self-awareness and as uniquely human. Moderation was encouraged, with the extremes seen as degraded and immoral. For example, courage is the moderate virtue between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness. Man should not simply live, but live well with conduct governed by moderate virtue. This is regarded as difficult, as virtue denotes doing the right thing, to the right person, at the right time, to the proper extent, in the correct fashion, for the right reason.[3]
Hedonism posits that the principle ethic is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. There are several schools of Hedonist thought ranging from those advocating the indulgence of even momentary desires to those teaching a pursuit of spiritual bliss. In their consideration of consequences, they range from those advocating self-gratification regardless of the pain and expense to others, to those stating that the most ethical pursuit maximizes pleasure and happiness for the most people.[4]
Founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, Cyrenaics supported immediate gratification. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Even fleeting desires should be indulged, for fear the opportunity should be forever lost. There was little to no concern with the future, the present dominating in the pursuit for immediate pleasure. Cyrenaic hedonism encouraged the pursuit of enjoyment and indulgence without hesitation, believing pleasure to be the only good.[4]
Epicurus rejected the extremism of the Cyrenaics, believing some pleasures and indulgences to be detrimental to human beings. Epicureans observed that indiscriminate indulgence sometimes resulted in negative consequences. Some experiences were therefore rejected out of hand, and some unpleasant experiences endured in the present to ensure a better life in the future. The summum bonum, or greatest good, to Epicurus was prudence, exercised through moderation and caution. Excessive indulgence can be destructive to pleasure and can even lead to pain. For example, eating one food too often will cause a person to lose taste for it. Eating too much food at once will lead to discomfort and ill-health. Pain and fear were to be avoided. Living was essentially good, barring pain and illness. Death was not to be feared. Fear was considered the source of most unhappiness. Conquering the fear of death would naturally lead to a happier life. Epicurus reasoned if there was an afterlife and immortality, the fear of death was irrational. If there was no life after death, then the person would not be alive to suffer, fear or worry; he would be non-existent in death. It is irrational to fret over circumstances that do not exist, such as one's state in death in the absence of an afterlife.[5]
Christian Hedonism is a controversial Christian doctrine current in some evangelical circles, particularly those of the Reformed tradition. The term was coined by Reformed Baptist pastor John Piper in his 1986 book Desiring God. Piper summarizes this philosophy of the Christian life as "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him."[6]
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus posited that the greatest good was contentment and serenity. Peace of mind, or Apatheia, was of the highest value; self-mastery over one's desires and emotions leads to spiritual peace. The "unconquerable will" is central to this philosophy. The individual will should be independent and inviolate. Allowing a person to disturb the mental equilibrium is in essence offering yourself in slavery. If a person is free to anger you at will, you have no control over your internal world, and therefore no freedom. Freedom from material attachments is also necessary. If a thing breaks, the person should not be upset, but realize it was a thing that could break. Similarly, if someone should die, those close to them should hold to their serenity because the loved one was made of flesh and blood destined to death. Stoic philosophy says to accept things that cannot be changed, resigning oneself to existence and enduring in a rational fashion. Death is not feared. People do not "lose" their life, but instead "return", for they are returning to God (who initially gave what the person is as a person). Epictetus said difficult problems in life should not be avoided, but rather embraced. They are spiritual exercises needed for the health of the spirit, just as physical exercise is required for the health of the body. He also stated that sex and sexual desire are to be avoided as the greatest threat to the integrity and equilibrium of a man's mind. Abstinence is highly desirable. Epictetus said remaining abstinent in the face of temptation was a victory for which a man could be proud.[7]
In the modern era, ethical theories were generally divided between consequentialist theories of philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and deontological ethics as epitomized by the work of Immanuel Kant.
Consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action (or create a structure for judgment, see rule consequentialism). Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as the aphorism "The ends justify the means".
The term "consequentialism" was coined by G.E.M. Anscombe in her essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" in 1958, to describe what she saw as the central error of certain moral theories, such as those propounded by Mill and Sidgwick.[8] Since then, the term has become common in English-language ethical theory.
The defining feature of consequentialist moral theories is the weight given to the consequences in evaluating the rightness and wrongness of actions.[9] In consequentialist theories, the consequences of an action or rule generally outweigh other considerations. Apart from this basic outline, there is little else that can be unequivocally said about consequentialism as such. However, there are some questions that many consequentialist theories address:
One way to divide various consequentialisms is by the types of consequences that are taken to matter most, that is, which consequences count as good states of affairs. According to hedonistic utilitarianism, a good action is one that results in an increase in pleasure, and the best action is one that results in the most pleasure for the greatest number. Closely related is eudaimonic consequentialism, according to which a full, flourishing life, which may or may not be the same as enjoying a great deal of pleasure, is the ultimate aim. Similarly, one might adopt an aesthetic consequentialism, in which the ultimate aim is to produce beauty. However, one might fix on non-psychological goods as the relevant effect. Thus, one might pursue an increase in material equality or political liberty instead of something like the more ephemeral "pleasure". Other theories adopt a package of several goods, all to be promoted equally. Whether a particular consequentialist theory focuses on a single good or many, conflicts and tensions between different good states of affairs are to be expected and must be adjudicated.
Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty"; and -λογία, -logia) is an approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining acts, rather than third-party consequences of the act as in consequentialism, or the intentions of the person doing the act as in virtue ethics. Deontologists look at rules[10] and duties. For example, the act may be considered the right thing to do even if it produces a bad consequence[11], if it follows the rule that “one should do unto others as they would have done unto them”[10], and even if the person who does the act lacks virtue and had a bad intention in doing the act[citation needed]. We have a duty to act in a way that does those things that are inherently good as acts ("truth-telling" for example), or follow an objectively obligatory rule (as in rule utilitarianism). For deontologists, the ends or consequences of our actions are not important in and of themselves, and our intentions are not important in and of themselves.
Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics is considered deontological for several different reasons.[12][13] First, Kant argues that to act in the morally right way, people must act from duty (deon).[14] Second, Kant argued that it was not the consequences of actions that make them right or wrong but the motives of the person who carries out the action.
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Kant's argument that to act in the morally right way, one must act from duty, begins with an argument that the highest good must be both good in itself, and good without qualification.[15] Something is 'good in itself' when it is intrinsically good, and 'good without qualification' when the addition of that thing never makes a situation ethically worse. Kant then argues that those things that are usually thought to be good, such as intelligence, perseverance and pleasure, fail to be either intrinsically good or good without qualification. Pleasure, for example, appears to not be good without qualification, because when people take pleasure in watching someone suffering, this seems to make the situation ethically worse. He concludes that there is only one thing that is truly good:
Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.[15]
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The 20th century saw a remarkable expansion of critical theory and its evolution. The earlier Marxist Theory created a paradigm for understanding the individual, society and their interaction. The Renaissance Enlightened Man had persisted up until the Industrial Revolution when the romantic vision of noble action began to fade.
Modernism, exemplified in the literary works of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, wrote out God, then antihumanists such as Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault and structuralists such as Roland Barthes presided over the death of the author and man himself. As critical theory developed in the later 20th century, post-structuralism queried the existence of reality. Jacques Derrida argued reality was in the linguistic realm, stating ‘There is nothing outside the text’, while Jean Baudrillard theorised that signs and symbols or simulacra had usurped reality, particularly in the consumer world.
Post-structuralism and postmodernism are both heavily theoretical and follow a fragmented, anti-authoritarian course which is absorbed in narcissistic and near nihilistic activities.[citation needed] Normative issues are generally ignored. This has led to some opponents of these later movements echoing the critic Jurgen Habermas who fears ‘that the postmodern mood represents a turning away from both political responsibilities and a concern for suffering’(cited in Lyon, 1999, p. 103).
David Couzens Hoy says that Emmanuel Levinas’ writings on the face of the Other and Derrida’s mediations on the relevance of death to ethics are signs of the ‘ethical turn’ in Continental philosophy that occurs in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Hoy clarifies post-critique ethics as the ‘obligations that present themselves as necessarily to be fulfilled but are neither forced on one or are enforceable’ (2004, p. 103).
This aligns with Australian philosopher Peter Singer’s thoughts on what ethics is not. He firstly claims it is not a moral code particular to a sectional group. For example it has nothing to do with a set of prohibitions concerned with sex laid down by a religious order. Neither is ethics a ‘system that is noble in theory but no good in practice’ (2000, p. 7). For him, a theory is good only if it is practical. He agrees that ethics is in some sense universal but in a utilitarian way it affords the ‘best consequences’ and furthers the interests of those affected (2000, p. 15).
Hoy in his post-critique model uses the term ethical resistance. Examples of this would be an individual’s resistance to consumerism in a retreat to a simpler but perhaps harder lifestyle, or an individual’s resistance to a terminal illness. Hoy describes these examples in his book Critical Resistance as an individual’s engagement in social or political resistance. He provides Levinas’s account as ‘not the attempt to use power against itself, or to mobilize sectors of the population to exert their political power; the ethical resistance is instead the resistance of the powerless’(2004, p. 8).
Hoy concludes that
In present day terms the powerless may include the unborn, the terminally sick, the aged, the insane, and animals. It is in these areas that ethical action will be evident. Until legislation or state apparatus enforces a moral order that addresses the causes of resistance these issues will remain in the ethical realm. For example, should animal experimentation become illegal in a society, it will no longer be an ethical issue. Likewise one hundred and fifty years ago, not having a black slave in America may have been an ethical choice. This later issue has been absorbed into the fabric of a more utilitarian social order and is no longer an ethical issue but does of course constitute a moral concern. Ethics are exercised by those who possess no power and those who support them, through personal resistance.
Applied ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts to apply ethical theory to real-life situations. The discipline has many specialized fields, such as bioethics and business ethics.
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Applied ethics is used in some aspects of determining public policy. The sort of questions addressed by applied ethics include: "Is getting an abortion immoral?" "Is euthanasia immoral?" "Is affirmative action right or wrong?" "What are human rights, and how do we determine them?" and "Do animals have rights as well?"
A more specific question could be: "If someone else can make better out of his/her life than I can, is it then moral to sacrifice myself for them if needed?" Without these questions there is no clear fulcrum on which to balance law, politics, and the practice of arbitration — in fact, no common assumptions of all participants—so the ability to formulate the questions are prior to rights balancing. But not all questions studied in applied ethics concern public policy. For example, making ethical judgments regarding questions such as, "Is lying always wrong?" and, "If not, when is it permissible?" is prior to any etiquette.
People in-general are more comfortable with dichotomies (two choices). However, in ethics the issues are most often multifaceted and the best proposed actions address many different areas concurrently. In ethical decisions the answer is almost never a "yes or no", "right or wrong" statement. Many buttons are pushed so that the overall condition is improved and not to the benefit of any particular faction.
Relational ethics are related to an ethics of care.[16] They are used in qualitative research, especially ethnography and authoethnography. Researchers who employ relational ethics value and respect the connection between themselves and the people they study, and "between researchers and the communities in which they live and work" (Ellis, 2007, p. 4).[17] Relational ethics also help researchers understand difficult issues such as conducting research on intimate others that have died and developing friendships with their participants.[18][19]
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Military ethics is a set of practices and philosophy to guide members of the armed forces to act in a manner consistent with the values and standards as established by military tradition, and to actively clarify and enforce these conditions rigorously in its administrative structure. Military ethics is evolutionary and the administrative structure is modified as new ethical perspectives consistent with national interests evolve.
Some ethical issues involving a country's military establishment, such as:
And others.
Moral psychology is a field of study in both philosophy and psychology. Some use the term "moral psychology" relatively narrowly to refer to the study of moral development.[20] However, others tend to use the term more broadly to include any topics at the intersection of ethics and psychology (and philosophy of mind).[21] Such topics are ones that involve the mind and are relevant to moral issues. Some of the main topics of the field are moral responsibility, moral development, moral character (especially as related to virtue ethics), altruism, psychological egoism, moral luck, and moral disagreement.[22]
Evolutionary ethics concerns approaches to ethics (morality) based on the role of evolution in shaping human psychology and behavior. Such approaches may be based in scientific fields such as evolutionary psychology or sociobiology, with a focus on understanding and explaining observed ethical preferences and choices.[23]
Descriptive ethics is a value-free approach to ethics which examines ethics not from a top-down a priori perspective but rather observations of actual choices made by moral agents in practice. Some philosophers rely on descriptive ethics and choices made and unchallenged by a society or culture to derive categories, which typically vary by context. This can lead to situational ethics and situated ethics. These philosophers often view aesthetics, etiquette, and arbitration as more fundamental, percolating "bottom up" to imply the existence of, rather than explicitly prescribe, theories of value or of conduct. The study of descriptive ethics may include examinations of the following:
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Look up ethics in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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Wikiversity has learning materials about Ethics |
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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Ethics. |
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| Translations: Ethics |
Dansk (Danish)
n. pl. - etik, moral, moralkodeks
n. - etik, morallære
Français (French)
n. pl. - morale, moralité, code de déontologie
n. - éthique morale
idioms:
Deutsch (German)
n. - (Philos.) Ethik
n. pl. - Ethik, Grundprinzipien, Moral
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - ηθική (επιστήμη), ηθικές αρχές, ήθος, δεοντολογία, κανόνες κοινωνικής συμπεριφοράς, ηθικοί κανόνες
Português (Portuguese)
n. - ética (f) (Filos.)
Русский (Russian)
этика, корректность
Español (Spanish)
n. pl. - ética, moralidad
n. - ética
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - etik, morallära
中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
伦理学, 道德学, 伦理观, 伦理学著作, 道德标准
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. pl. - 倫理學, 道德學, 倫理觀, 倫理學著作, 道德標準
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 倫理学, 倫理, 道義
עברית (Hebrew)
n. pl. - תורת המידות, מוסר, אתיקה
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 | Dictionary. Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy Read more |
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