I.
INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS
Theme 1. What is Ethics?
• Ethical issues affect everyone in a very personal way, although many people may
be quite indifferent towards specifically moral issues due to relativism.
¾ Daily life presents us with ethical dilemmas that touch on our behaviour and
way of relating to other people.
¾ The whole issue of the dress code in Strathmore University is an example of
this. We are asked to dress in a certain way because our behaviour, our
relationship with others, our language, tone of voice and gestures all reflect
who we are as human beings. The code challenges us to discover our dignity
as human beings by helping us to respect our own personal intimacy and that
of others in our free acts.
¾ All this has a moral or an ethical value or meaning.
• Everyone sees that they need to find an answer to the many questions that crop up
each day.
¾ Must I always keep my promises under every circumstance?
¾ How can tell the difference between what is good and what is bad?
¾ Is it always wrong to lie?
¾ Will my conduct always be good if I have a good intention?
¾ Are moral norms fixed or can they change with time?
• In order to be able to answer these questions, we need some reference points,
so as to adjust our acts to them; the study of Ethics will bring us closer to
those reference points.
The nature of Ethics
• All through time, when we stop to think about human actions, those of others
and our own, we ask ourselves about their goodness of badness.
¾ We can identify good or virtuous ways of acting and bad or evil ways
of acting.
¾ We can refer to someone being a good friend or not; a person who
works well or who works badly; a person can drive well or can drive in
an imprudent and dangerous way.
¾ It is through ethical judgments that we compare what really happens
with what we think ought to happen.
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¾ So the issue of good and bad acts is closely connected to human
behaviour.
¾ To the extent that a person is what his behaviour is; a person who acts
well, in a good way, is a good person; a person who acts badly, in a
bad way, is a bad person.
¾ This is why ethics is so important: in reality, we all want to be good
people; so we need to know how we must act in order to be good
people
• The person begins to ask himself these questions when he realizes that his free
actions do not only refer to choosing between different external things; but
rather, his free actions have a deeper and more important consequences.
¾ When he freely chooses one thing or another, he is making a decision
about himself as a person; he is choosing the type of person he wants
to be.
¾ It is the person himself who will be affected by the free decision,
attaining happiness through it or getting frustrated as a consequence of
this free decision.
¾ For this reason, when the person discovers his freedom, he discovers
himself as a person and his responsibility to himself as a person.
• Each person is the main “actor” in his own life and is the one who is
responsible for his own moral value.
• It is because of this that each person tends to gather up ideas, values, and
criteria as he goes through life, and makes decisions and judges the actions of
other persons on the basis of those values.
¾ This “bunch” of values, ideas, criteria, are called in technical terms:
spontaneous moral knowledge = knowledge of good and evil based on
personal experience, the advice of others and so on.
• On the basis of this spontaneous moral knowledge, the human being is
capable of going further; he can carry out a rational investigation into the
basic moral foundations of his actions.
¾ This is Ethics: it is the science which aims at clarifying, from the
rational and philosophical point of view, the nature of man’s moral life
(what makes the person’s life good or bad).
¾ The aim, or goal of Ethics, is to establish a series of norms and criteria
for judging which can be a useful reference point in order to guide the
responsible taking of our free human decisions.
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• Ethics is the area of Philosophy which studies the moral life of man; that is,
his human life as a person, considered from the point of view of it’s goodness
or it’s badness.
¾ So we can say that, like other fields of study, ethics is a reflection on
the human person.
¾ However, the reflection is specifically focused on the free and
responsible behaviour of the person.
• As such, Ethics is a reflection on reality, the reality of the human person, from
the perspective of the most basic underlying cause of the human person’s
existence and the underlying, most basic reason for his existence.
¾ In a rational, scientific, systematic way, Ethics aims at studying the
most basic truth about the meaning of human life, considered as a
whole, in order to discover the deepest and most common truths about
the human person.
¾ Ethics reflects on the deepest meaning of the moral life; it seeks to
discover the goal of any human being’s life, in order to ascertain
which types of behaviour can lead each man to this goal that is
ultimately, happiness.
¾ From all this we can see that Ethics is really at the service of the
human person, because it can help to live in a better, more human way.
• If we look at the various meanings of the term Ethics, it may help to
understand the nature of this field of study better.
¾ Ethics: general meaning = science of customs (like moral: Mors =
custom).
¾ Specific meaning: has it’s roots in two Greek words:
o Ethos: (accent on e) = custom: principles and customs which
governed a community and guided the life of the city.
Social habits, customs or behaviour (not so much emphasis on
the individual person in himself, only in terms of his living the
established customs).
o Ethos: (hat on e) = character (usual way of being).
Refers to the individual person and their personal, qualities that
characterize their way of acting: the generous person acts in a
generous way and so has a generous character.
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“Character”: way of being and acting acquired by the person
throughout their life through the habits they have formed in
themselves: virtues = good personal habits; vices = bad
personal habits.
For this reason, ethics is often understood to be the exercising
of the virtues or the vices in a person’s normal behavour.
¾ Latin term: “mors” = custom.
o Morality: knowledge of customs.
¾ So “ethics” and “morality” have a similar meaning originally, but with
time:
o Ethics: the philosophical science (rational investigation into the
foundation of human moral life).
o Moral knowledge: theological investigation into the
foundations of human moral life taking into account man’s
supernatural goal (happiness for ever in heaven).
¾ Ethics: related to personal customs, character and way of being and
acting which give rise to a particular type of life that the person
develops day by day through their free actions.
o Ethics should make known and foster a good moral life that
may be acquired through the development of virtues.
o Ethics should study and make known the main guidelines that
ought to orient the personal conscience when seeking to choose
and carry out or do what is good.
• Each human person, through his own free actions, changes himself as a
person, making him, little by little, become a good, generous, person for
example, or a bad, selfish person.
¾ Ethics studies these free human act from the point of view of how they
affect the person, changing his way of being and affecting his future.
¾ And all, this keeping in mind the aim or goal that the person seeks
through their free actions.
• In conclusion, we can define Ethics as the part of Philosophy that studies free
human acts, from the point of view of view of their moral value (goodness or
badness) in relation with the last end of man, the ultimate meaning of man’s
life; the aim is to obtain, based on universal principles, true and systematic
knowledge of up-right and true human behaviour.
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The object of Ethics
• Aristotle defined science as “certain knowledge through causes”; it is a body
of knowledge about some aspect of reality, which comes from a reflection on
the basic principles behind that reality.
• Ethics is a science because it explains reality from the viewpoint of the causes
of reality.
¾ Specifically, Ethics studies the reality of human actions, and reflects on
these actions in order to understand the principles that guide those actions.
¾ We are not aiming here at just giving opinions about the goodness of
badness of an action.
¾ Rather, in Ethics we aim to form real judgments about the goodness or
badness of some act, while at the same time, giving reasons for that
judgment.
¾ For example, in Ethics we do not only say “it is wrong to steal”; we also
want to explain that this is wrong because it goes against justice (to give
each person what is due to them), and justice is necessary for life in
society and for the development of the good life in the person; otherwise,
life is society would be chaos!
• All sciences study a particular aspect of the real world and this object of study
distinguishes one science from another.
¾ Ethics studies the human person from the point of view of their goodness
or badness, which depends on their free human acts.
• We can distinguish between the material object and the formal object of
Ethics.
The material object of Ethics
• The material object of any science is the group of realities that the science
studies; the material object of Ethics is made up of the human acts which
influence and form the way of being of the person.
• Here it is important to distinguish between acts of man and human acts.
¾ Acts of man: acts carried out by man but over which he has no rational and
free control; he cannot dominate or orient those acts directly.
- For example: the digestion process; circulation of the blood; physical
growing process.
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- These acts are not carried out freely and so, they are of no interest for
Ethics.
¾ Human acts: those acts which man carries out according to his nature that
is characterized by freedom; the human acts are the acts that the person
carries out freely.
- For example: decide to study [Link] or [Link]; have one type of
sandwich or another in the canteen; to marry or not.
- These acts have ethical value because the person carries them our
using his intellect, will and conscience.
- The person knows he acted like that and he knows why he did it;
hence, he can explain his actions and so, is responsible for them and
their consequences.
- These human acts we can say, are acts which the human person
“owns” in that they belong to him and so he can decide to carry them
out or not, to do them in one way or in another.
- These human acts are free: fruit of a deliberate act of the intellect and
the will.
- Through these acts the person chooses the type of person he wants to
be and he gives meaning to his own life, which is in his hands.
- Through these acts the person directs himself toward the goal that he
has freely chosen for his life, based on his knowledge of the real
world.
The formal object of Ethics
• The formal object of any science is the perspective from which it studies a
given reality; the formal object of Ethics is the orientation of free human acts
with respect to the final goal of the human being as such.
¾ Ethics studies human acts in as much as they are good or bad; they are
good if they are oriented towards man’s final goal; they are bad, if they
draw man away from his final goal.
¾ For this reason, Ethics has also been called “the science of good and evil”;
when we speak of the goodness or badness of a human act, we are
speaking of the morality or the moral value of the action.
¾ Thus, we can also say that the formal object of Ethics is the “morality” of
human acts.
• Other sciences also deal with human acts, however, they consider these acts
from other view points; psychology analyses the structure and carrying out of
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human acts; sociology deals with the e customs of men living in society, and
so on.
¾ However, Ethics studies man as a being who grows and develops
constantly in a never ending life project; as a person who is capable of
developing himself through his free actions and of giving meaning to his
life; Ethics thus helps to know what direction man should give to his life
in order to become a better human being and attain his final goal.
¾ So, although Ethics has the same material object as other sciences (human
acts), only Ethics deals with this object from the viewpoint of the morality
of those acts.
• When referring to the morality of the human acts, we refer to their goodness;
however that goodness can be understood in different ways, it has different
meanings.
¾ Natural goodness: the ontological goodness of an act; this refers to the
goodness the act possess because it is real, it exists; every human act has
this natural goodness in as much as it is a real act (it has being).
¾ Technical goodness: the effectiveness of the act in it’s carrying out; the
correct technique and skill was used to carry out the act
- For example: a cake may be baked with good technique; even cheating
at an exam may be done with skill, technique, (technical goodness)
although the act in itself is morally speaking wrong, bad.
¾ Moral goodness: expresses the fact that the act is directed towards the
objective good and final goal of man and affects the person who carries it out,
orienting him in the same direction, and thus making him good in himself.
• So Ethics basically studies free human acts in terms of their goodness or
badness, that is, whether they are directed towards the real and objective good
for the human person (his final goal) or they are directed towards what is
objectively bad for the person and leads him away from his true final goal.
Ethics as a practical, theoretical and a normative science
• Ethics is the science of customs which studies the goodness or badness
intrinsically attached to each human act and how it relates to the goal of each
person’s life.
• Ethics is practical and theoretical at the same time because it studies human
acts in order to reflect on the morality of these acts in terms of the final goal,
or the meaning of life.
• On the basis of this reflection, Ethics formulates value judgments and norms
of behaviour with the aim of guiding the personal freedom of each human
being to what is good for the human person as such.
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¾ It involves real speculative knowledge of the truth about what is really good
and really evil for the person, about the nature of man’s moral activity, about
the virtues, justice, etc.
¾ Ethics is also a practical science because it aims at changing the lives of those
who study it.
¾ Hence, knowledge of Ethics should be a reference point for the taking of free
human decisions; the aim of this knowledge is that it be put into practice;
Ethics is knowing in order to act.
• At the same time, Ethics is also a normative science in that, based on
philosophical reflection, it establishes norms, rules of conduct, to help people
to choose what is really good for them.
• Does this mean that Ethics is trying to tell me what to do with my life? Yes
and no. It aims at helping you to discover what is best for you as a person, and
the attractiveness of this. In this way, you can freely want and choose that
attractive way of acting, and so achieve true human fulfillment.
¾ We need to know these norms that are based on reason, in order to act well
and so be able to achieve moral perfection and become the best person that
we can be.
¾ Ethics deals with what man should do in order to live and how he should
live to become what he ought to be, in order to achieve his final goal,
which is the reason for his existence and towards which he should head
with each free decision.