What
is Ethics?
Some
years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, "What does
an ethic mean to you?" Among their replies were the following:
"Ethics
has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong."
"Ethics
has to do with my religious beliefs."
"Being
ethical is doing what the law requires."
"Ethics
consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts."
"I
don't know what the word means."
These
replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of "ethics" is hard
to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.
Like
Baumhart's first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their
feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's
feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is
right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical.
Nor
should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate
high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics
would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the
behavior of the atheist as to that of the saint. Religion can set high ethical
standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics,
however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion.
Being
ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates
ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings,
can deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the
old apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples
of laws that deviate from what is ethical.
Finally,
being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts." In
any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But
standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire
society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a
morally corrupt society.
Moreover,
if being ethical were doing "whatever society accepts," then to find
out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts. To decide
what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey
of American society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts.
But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further,
the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate
ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many
others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would
have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist.
What,
then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded
standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in
terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific
virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the
reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault,
slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of
honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards
relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from
injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of
ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.
Secondly,
ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. As
mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is
ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure
that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the
continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and
striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to
standards that are reasonable and solidly-based. (Manuel
Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer, 1987)
If
ethical theories are to be useful in practice, they need to affect the way
human beings behave.
Some
philosophers think that ethics does do this. They argue that if a person realizes
that it would be morally good to do something then it would be irrational for
that person not to do it.
But
human beings often behave irrationally - they follow their 'gut instinct' even
when their head suggests a different course of action.
However,
ethics does provide good tools for thinking about moral issues.
Ethics can provide a moral map
Most
moral issues get us pretty worked up - think of abortion and euthanasia for
starters. Because these are such emotional issues we often let our hearts do
the arguing while our brains just go with the flow.
But
there's another way of tackling these issues, and that's where philosophers can
come in - they offer us ethical rules and principles that enable us to take a
cooler view of moral problems.
So
ethics provides us with a moral map, a framework that we can use to find our
way through difficult issues.
Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement
Using
the framework of ethics, two people who are arguing a moral issue can often
find that what they disagree about is just one particular part of the issue,
and that they broadly agree on everything else.
That
can take a lot of heat out of the argument, and sometimes even hint at a way
for them to resolve their problem.
But
sometimes ethics doesn't provide people with the sort of help that they really
want.
Ethics doesn't give right answers
Ethics
doesn't always show the right answer to moral problems.
Indeed
more and more people think that for many ethical issues there isn't a single
right answer - just a set of principles that can be applied to particular cases
to give those involved some clear choices.
Some
philosophers go further and say that all ethics can do is eliminate confusion
and clarify the issues. After that it's up to each individual to come to their
own conclusions.
Ethics can give several answers
Many
people want there to be a single right answer to ethical questions. They find
moral ambiguity hard to live with because they genuinely want to do the 'right'
thing, and even if they can't work out what that right thing is, they like the
idea that 'somewhere' there is one right answer.
But
often there isn't one right answer - there may be several right answers, or
just some least worst answers - and the individual must choose between them.
For
others moral ambiguity is difficult because it forces them to take
responsibility for their own choices and actions, rather than falling back on
convenient rules and customs.
Ethics
and people
Ethics
is about the 'other'
Ethics
is concerned with other people
At
the heart of ethics is a concern about something or someone other than us and
our own desires and self-interest.
Ethics
is concerned with other people's interests, with the interests of society, with
God's interests, with "ultimate goods", and so on.
So
when a person 'thinks ethically' they are giving at least some thought to
something beyond them.
Ethics
as source of group strength
One
problem with ethics is the way it's often used as a weapon.
If
a group believes that a particular activity is "wrong" it can then
use morality as the justification for attacking those who practice that
activity.
When
people do this, they often see those who they regard as immoral as in some way
less human or deserving of respect than themselves; sometimes with tragic
consequences.
Good
people as well as good actions
Ethics
is not only about the morality of particular courses of action, but it's also
about the goodness of individuals and what it means to live a good life.
Virtue
Ethics is particularly concerned with the moral character of human beings.
Searching
for the source of right and wrong
At
times in the past some people thought that ethical problems could be solved in
one of two ways:
- by discovering what God wanted
people to do
- by thinking rigorously about moral
principles and problems
If
a person did this properly they would be led to the right conclusion.
But
now even philosophers are less sure that it's possible to devise a satisfactory
and complete theory of ethics - at least not one that leads to conclusions.
Modern
thinkers often teach that ethics leads people not to conclusions but to
'decisions'.
In
this view, the role of ethics is limited to clarifying 'what's at stake' in
particular ethical problems.
Philosophy
can help identify the range of ethical methods, conversations and value systems
that can be applied to a particular problem. But after these things have been
made clear, each person must make their own individual decision as to what to
do, and then react appropriately to the consequences. (BBC , 2006)
Bibliography
