1. CHAPTER ONE:
Why be ethical?

2. 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

3. Four Ways... 2) The beggar- The experience of the other
Comes from French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas ( )
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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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”

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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”

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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”

25. 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

26. 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.

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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