My Understanding of Ethics and Its Application in My Life

Ethics plays a very crucial in everyone’s lives. Without ethics we would always be in moral
dilemmas. According to William Lillie, ethics is the normative science that distinguishes good
and bad conduct of human beings living in a society. We might think that we know what is good
and what is bad until we start to study philosophy. Throughout the course, I have learned about
various moral principles. However, what I learned is that clinging to only one moral principle
can be very dangerous. What we need is to use or follow moral principles that suit our current
situation. While not all moral principles can be applied to my daily life however I can reflect on
some of them.
One of the earliest moral principles that I learned in this course is ethical egoism and
utilitarianism. I think no one should follow any of these blindly. Personally, depending on
particular situations I might act as an ethical egoist or a utilitarian. According to ethical egoism, a
person should act in such a way that he or she should maximize their own interest. Sometimes,
when preparing for an exam I only think about myself, how I can outperform others, believing
that not helping anyone would increase my chances of success. Yet I learned it the hard way. I
found out that helping other made me feel good which in turn boosted my morale. Connecting to
the last part, I figured out that I am quite a utilitarian. I love helping people, as many people as I
can to my ability. This action brings happiness to those I aid. However, I fall victim to being a
utilitarian. I sometimes give in to the request of others to do something I might not have done,
just to please others. Furthermore, I believe if everyone followed Kant’s maxims, the world
would be a much better place than it is today. I think so far in my life, I have followed Kant’s
first two maxims without even knowing about them. Kant’s first maxim, “act in such a way that
your behavior becomes universal law”. Treat others how you want to be treated. I fully abide by
this rule and hopefully will continue to do so. Kant’s second maxim, “treat everyone as an end
and not as a means”. Throughout human history, people have been treating each other as ways to
achieve things, as slaves, as inferiors. This is something I definitely do not want to continue in
this world as each individual have an inherent value. The tricky part comes with Kant’s third
maxim, “duty for duty’s sake”. According to Kant, we must do the right things purely out of a
sense of duty. Most of the time I agree. However, in some situations, ethics of care gets to me.
Let’s say I caught a guy stealing some food. I found out that the guy is very hungry and cannot
afford the food and has to provide for his family. Now, according to Kant I have to hand him
over to the authorities because it is the right thing to do. Yet, I shall not do such thing. I might let
him go and buy him some food.
There are times when I wonder what kind of person I am. After a long time, I realized that I am
someone who wishes to live in harmony with people, animals and nature. This introduces animal
rights and ecological ethics. In terms of animal rights, I believe animals should have some rights
such as right to not be tortured, or used for entertainment. However, confusion lies about eating
animals. From the beginning of mankind, a lot of animals were hunted and were consumed by
our ancestors. Without eating animals, they could not have survived and we would not be here
today. Science will keep enhancing in future and perhaps one day we might not need to consume
animals for our diet. Until then, we have to minimize our atrocities toward animals. Peter Singer
said what animals and humans have in common is that they both can suffer. I don’t want anyone
to suffer. Here we are stuck in a moral dilemma, whether to eat animals or not. Moving on to
nature, I support each and every prescription deep ecology provides. From respecting diversity,
to abandoning excessive use to choosing quality life over material wealth, I agree with it all. We
are destroying and poisoning the very place that gives us shelter, food and warmth. Imagine you
were slowly destroying your own home? Nature is beautiful, it is a habitat for all species and it is
not something that we should alter. The rights humans receive are fundamental. As a citizen of
Bangladesh, I get some legal rights. Right to freedom of speech, right to vote, right to freedom of
religion, right to a fair trial and many more. However, in the last decade not many of our citizens
received some of those rights. Most did not have any freedom of speech and right to a fair trial.
When I look up to United States of America, I see how proud they are of their first amendment.
When I see citizens in the United States freely and openly criticize their government, powerful
figures without any fear, I feel like I do not get those rights here. At least on paper I did, but in
reality, nothing is given which was promised. Now that we are in a new period in our country, I
hope we could enjoy those rights as freely as those in the United States. In terms of distributive
justice, I think extreme form of capitalism and socialism is not good for the general people. I
agree more with John Rawls and his laws more. Since people are not equal in ability or
circumstance, distributing wealth and responsibilities equally would not be feasible . I want there
to be incentive to work, if I work harder and dedicate more hours and take more risks I should be
compensated generously. This view aligns partly with capitalism. However, capitalism does not
care for the weak and the vulnerable. What if I become weak and unable to work as hard? I want
a system where hard-working individuals are rewarded and the vulnerable are taken care of and
everyone receives basic fundamental rights. Not all moral principles will apply to my life, but
what I can do is have knowledge of everyone of them and use them to do good whenever
necessary. The important word here is “good”. How do I know what’s the meaning of good?
When I think of doing something “good”, I do not think of autobiographical, teleological, social
or utilitarian view. It just comes to me. Luckily there have not been a situation in my life where I
have done a good thing and later found that I did a bad thing. I try to do right what is right by
people, animals and nature. I strive not do anything that would hurt others. I would not harm
anyone if any religion or group of people tell me to do so.
In conclusion, we should do what is right and what is good as ethics helps us to distinguish
right/wrong conduct of human beings living in a society. Studying ethics has helped me to view
particular things more clearly and with a new approach. I also learned that I used a lot of these
moral principles in my life without knowing or studying about them. All these moral principles
were made to guide humans, to prevent chaos or injustice. There are many pros and cons to each
moral principle. They are not perfect nor are humans. So, we need to best apply these moral
principals depending on the situation we are in and in the best interest of everyone.

Reference
Course materials and class lectures