CHAPTER ONE: Why be ethical?

Four Ways of Locating the Ethical in You The scream- The experience of personal response -Something, like a scream, breaks through your reverie, and forces you to awareness. -You feel a call to action without having to think about it. -This almost automatic response is what it means to experience an ethical response

Four Ways... 2) The beggar- The experience of the other Comes from French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995) When encountering another person, we have an ethical experience because face-to-face encounters remind us of our responsibility for the “Other” For example: When you come across a beggar, you debate with yourself how to respond...whether you choose to give or not, as you walk away you defend your decision to yourself, ie. a response has been evoked You cannot look at the “Others” face neutrally, it makes you feel responsible and through this you have an ethical experience

Four Ways... 3) “I have to...” The experience of obligation Your ethical sense is turned on when someone orders you to do something Example: If your parents tell you to be home by midnight, as time passes you grow increasingly aware of your need to get going. If you choose to ignore this and stay anyways, you experience feelings of unrest. Your ethical side obliges something in you to follow the law, or do what is considered the right thing to do Your response to an order from someone you consider to have authority over you, such as your parents, has everything to do with ethics, as you show yourself to be an ethical being

Four Ways... 4) This is intolerable! This isn’t fair!- The experience of contrast An ethical experience occurs when you feel outraged by something blatantly unjust or unfair happening to yourself or to others Example: Your feelings of indignation towards the abuse of children is an experience of contrast to what ought to be It is an ethical experience to recoil from destruction and the intolerable

Defining Ethics At a general level, ethics is about the “goodness” of human life Ethics seeks answers to questions like “How do we aim at the good life” Recognizing that “ the good life is the aim of ethics” then influences us to ask “who determines what is ’good’” In answering these questions ethicists begin to diverge into different camps that each give us a different perspective on the search for good

Aristotle (384-322 BC): Technological Ethics Biography: Aristotle's childhood studies of anatomy and medical practices influenced his ideas about how we come to know and understand the world Following his parents death he went to continue his education in Plato’s Academy Him and Plato approached philosophy very differently Plato focused on the abstraction and the world of ideas Aristotle explored the natural world and human experience

Biography Continued Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great When he died in 323, there was a great backlash associated with Macedonian rule and due to his association with Alexander and his father Philip, Aristotle found himself in a difficult position He was charged with not respecting the gods of the state, and though he fled for his life died within the year

Aristotle’s Teleological Effects The pursuit of happiness -Human life is shaped to its full extent in the context of a community- it is there the citizen will find happiness -Happiness is not equated with pleasure, pleasure is only momentary while happiness is an enduring state of someone who does well the tasks typical of a human being For Aristotle, ethics aims to discover what is good for us as human beings, what permits us to reach our potential, what is our internal compass, or what we are intended to be

Aristotle’s teleological... Teleology We are intended to be rational and our greatest capacity as humans is our intelligence Humans are rational beings and so we must base our actions on reasoning Therefore: to act ethically is to engage our capacity to reason as we develop good character, and that is the highest form of happiness The good person is one whose actions are solidly based on excellent reasoning and who spends a great amount of time thinking

Aristotle’s teleological... Human excellence -When people seek to become who they are intended to be, they develop habits that represent the best of what it means to be human -> these are excellent virtues -To act virtuously means allowing reason to guide ones action’s -Aristotle held that a good person would use reason to control desire

Aristotle’s teleological... The mean There is a need to maintain balance in our actions Aristotle’s doctrine: Be moderate in all things This applies to moral qualities because they are destroyed by defect and by excess For example: In the case of self control, one who shuns everything becomes a coward

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): Deontological Ethics Biography: Kant was born in Prussia and never ventured more than 100 km from his birthplace He worked as a teacher until he was hired as a professor of logic and metaphysics He wrote many books such as “Critique of Pure Reason”

Kant... Theoretical reason The area of reasoning by which we come to know how the laws of nature, or cause and effect, govern human behaviour An area of life where freedom of choice is not an issue Kant tried to clarify how humans come to know things

Practical Reason Using theoretical reason we can only know what people actually do, while using practical reason we can come to understand what people ought to do Example: Using theoretical reason we know the effects of alcohol consumption upon the body, while using practical reason we know we ought not to drink and drive Kant contributed the concept of moral duty to our understanding of ethics

Kant’s ethics -Kant was primarily concerned about the certainty of the principles of ethical reasoning -He recognized we cannot arrive at the same type of certainty we can in physics and mathematics There are three areas of interest: God, freedom and immortality These cannot be proven empirically but we need these practice principles to be able to pursue and attain the supreme good

1) God Humans cannot out of their own power achieve supreme good God exists to allow us to achieve the supreme good 2) Freedom If supreme good is to be our achievement then what we ought to do we Can do Therefore: by nature humans are free Immortality Achieving the supreme good is an immense task, it is impossible to obtain it completely in this life That is why there is a life beyond, where we can achieve the supreme good

The good will Kants ethics is to be discovered in private life, in the autonomy of the individual For Kant “good will” is the will to do our duty for no other reason than that it is our duty Kant's theory is deontological, and it acknowledges that impulses and desires can easily draw us away from our duty (contrast to Aristotle) Human action is morally good when it is done for the sake of duty -> doing a good deed for a friend is not a moral act, but being kind to someone when you don’t feel like it is For Kant, it is your decision to act in accordance with your good will

Kant’s use of moral maxims An ethical maxim is one on which every rational person would necessarily act if reason were fully in charge of his or her actions Kant’s most famous maxim: “I should act in a way that I would everyone else in the world to act”

The person as an end, not a means Second maxim: People should never be treated as only a means, their dignity must be regarded For example: it is unethical to take advantage of workers who are poor Kant’s concept of the “kingdom of ends’ proposes all participants would act according to this second maxim

Emmanuel Levinas (1905- 1995): An ethics of the face The sameness of things Levinas perceived the Western philosophical tradition attempting to overcome all difference by grouping everything under an all encompassing unity, “Being” -everything ultimately carried a stamp of sameness, and difference is reduced to being accidental

The singularity of things Levinas said the Hebrew tradition glorified in the singular, and it is the singularity of things that gives each thing its identity Nothing holds these singularities together (in contrast to Western notions) The experience of the war, his whole family dying in the Holocaust, heightened Levinas’ awareness of his Jewish roots

The Good is infinite The “Good” is the central question of all philosophy, which Levinas says goes beyond the search of Being because Being takes away the uniqueness of each person To Levinas these unique traits are the persons traces of the Good or God We do not encounter God anywhere but only a trace of God, as the Infinite One is always a step ahead

The face as witness of the Good We encounter traces of God on the faces of humans, especially the eyes - In a face to face experience the eyes of the “Other” call you to not reduce their face the to same as any other face “No, I refuse to let you deny this face in its uniqueness” Levinas goes so far as to translate this to “No! You shall not murder”

The face as ethical The face is ethical because the Other is a stranger who is totally defenceless and pleads you provide it hospitality The face makes you responsible by making you awate that you are not as innocent as you thought you were It suggests there is another order of existence: the order of an incredible good calling us to be responsible for the beggar with the mumbling voice - This is how the divine speaks to us- as a humble God who refuses to use power, God is the goodness who never seduces

Made responsible by the face For Levinas the face makes us responsible This responsibility is our human vocation, and here the search for the Good ends God touches us through the face of the other who begs spare change of us Goodness translates into responsibility for the other- how far should this goodness go?...it sets no limit.

In Conclusion....the human is ethical Aristotle, Kant and Levinas convince us that the ethical is indispensible for human life “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes” –Catechism of the Catholic Church

Key Terms Teleological- Having to do with the design or purpose of something. Trying to think of the “end” as not an endpoint but as completion, as fullness Teleological thinking- seeking to understand the ultimate goal, purpose or end of something. Empiricism- a theory that says that knowledge comes from experience, or from evidence that can be perceived by the senses

Subjective- relating to a person;s own perception and understanding of a reality; arising from the individuals own mind, feelings, perception Objective- relating to a sensible experience that is independent of any one’s individual thought, and that can be perceived by others