This is a good article. Make sure you read it and leave your comments.
http://ejbo.jyu.fi/pdf/ejbo_vol12_no2_pages_32-39.pdf
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Dirty Hands Problem
Are Dirty Hands Necessary in Politics?
By Michael Walzer
By Michael Walzer
Summary:
Why is Dirty Hands so Popular?
• The decision to indulge in "dirty hands" happens whenever someone is forced to choose between upholding an important moral principle and avoiding some looming disaster.
• It is impossible to govern innocently, innocent people govern. But this does not mean that it isn’t possible to do the right thing while governing.
• If the politician chooses to remain innocent he not only fails to do the right thing (in utilitarian terms), he may also fail to measure up to the duties of his office.
• The notion of dirty hands derives from an effort to refuse "absolutism" without denying the reality of the moral dilemma.
• It is suggested that the dilemma of dirty hands arises not merely as an occasional crisis in the career of this or that unlucky politician but systematically and frequently.
• The politician is different than other entrepreneurs for three reasons.
- He doesn’t merely cater to our interests; he acts on our behalf, even in our name.
- He has purposed in mind, causes and projects that require the support and redound to the benefit, not of each of us individually, but of all of us, together.
- He hustles, lies and intrigues for us – or so he claims.
• He cannot serve us without serving himself, for success brings him power and glory, the greatest rewards that men can win from their fellows. The competition for these two is fierce; the risks are often great, but the temptations are greater.
• The men who act for us and in our name are often killers, or seem to become killers too quickly and too easily.
The Teachings of Machiavelli
• Good and decent people still enter political life, however, they are required to learn the lesson Machiavelli first set out to teach: "how not to be good."
• These decent people will not succeed unless they learn, for they have joined the terrible competition for power and glory; they have chosen to work and struggle as Machiavelli say, among "so many who are not good."
• They can do no good themselves unless they win the struggle, which they are unlikely to do unless they are willing and able to use the necessary means.
• How can it be wrong to do what is right? Or, how can we get our hands dirty by doing what we ought to do?
• His willingness to acknowledge and bear (and perhaps to repent and do penance for) his guilt is evidence, and it is the only evidence he can offer us, both that he is not too good for politics and that he is good enough.
• It is easy to get one’s hands dirty in politics and it is often right to do so.
Some Definitions
Moral Principle: The principles of right and wrong that are accepted by an individual or a social group. (The set of principles that conclude that the act in question which is used to further a political agenda, is indeed immoral, thus making it an act of dirty hands politics.)
Absolutism: An absolute doctrine, principle, or standard. No form of compromise. (If the politician decides to follow the absolutist side, he does not use dirty hands politics.)
Dirty Hands: Having the conscience that one has preformed immoral acts while in power. (Sometimes a necessary to further a political agenda through "dirty" acts. It should not be put into effect lightly, but as a means of a last option.)
Machiavelli: Italian political theorist whose book The Prince (1513) describes the achievement and maintenance of power by a determined ruler indifferent to moral considerations. (The basic foundation for dirty hands politics.)
Necessary Means: According to Machiavelli, the means one must pursue in order to attain the wanted outcome. "The ends justify the means."
Support: To Provide for or maintain backing for a politician by the countries electorate. (The feedback that is received by the politician often affects the decision to resort to dirty hands political measures.)
Scruples: An uneasy feeling arising from conscience or principle that tends to hinder action. (The moral conscience of the politician may restrict him from using "dirty hands".)
Campaign: An operation or series of operations energetically pursued to accomplish a purpose. (Because the politician must win at all costs, "dirty hands" is often present in such campaigns.)
Examples of Dirty Hands in Politics
-The FLQ Crisis in which Prime Minister Trudeau enacted the War Measures Act, which took democratic liberties away from Canadian civilians.
-In the wake of Sept. 11th, in order to boost appearances of cracking down on terrorism, Western governments weakened their democratic liberties.
-Countries within the United Nations are siding with
-The Decision to deny support to Kosovo, while the United Nations and NATO knew of the ethnic cleansing taking place.
-Would Hitler's attempt to gain power in
-Perhaps putting sanctions on
-Getting rid of/Exterminating Saddam Hussein will yield a stable Iraqi democratic state.
-What about the Japanese concentration camps, I'm sure in that day, that action would have been viewed as a form of dirty hands.
Interactive Questioning
1. Is there a place in politics for "dirty hands"?
2. Should the politician be totally accountable to the electorate?
3. Is Machiavelli’s philosophy, "the ends justify the means" a moral one?
4. When does the usage of "dirty hands" politics go to far?
5. If the outcome is good then the means are waved, however, if the outcome is bad, then how can we judge the politician who may of embarked on the decision to use dirty hands?
6. Can we stop and rid "dirty hands" from politics? Should we?
7. Does the fact that the public can only view certain situations in a present way, give the politician the right to use dirty hands to achieve an outcome that will suffice the bigger picture?
8. If
professional joke of the day
A new client had just come in to see a famous lawyer.
"Can you tell me how much you charge?", said the client.
"Of course", the lawyer replied, "I charge $200 to answer three questions!"
"Well that's a bit steep, isn't it?"
"Yes it is", said the lawyer, "And what's your third question?"
"Can you tell me how much you charge?", said the client.
"Of course", the lawyer replied, "I charge $200 to answer three questions!"
"Well that's a bit steep, isn't it?"
"Yes it is", said the lawyer, "And what's your third question?"
Friday, December 21, 2007
The nature of morality
The Nature of Morality by William H. ShawFrom Social and Personal Ethics (Wadsworth, 1999), 3-10 Ethics.
"The word ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, meaning character or custom," writes philosophy professor Robert C. Solomon. Today we use the word ethos to refer to the distinguishing disposition, character, or attitude of a specific people, culture, or group (as in, for example, "the American ethos" or "the business ethos"). According to Solomon, the etymology of ethics suggests its basic concerns: (1) individual character, including what it means to be "a good person," and (2) the social rules that govern and limit our conduct, especially the ultimate rules concerning right and wrong, which we call morality.
Some philosophers like to distinguish ethics from morality. To them morality refers to human conduct and values, and ethics refers to the study of those areas. Ethics does, of course, denote an academic subject, but in everyday parlance we interchange ethical and moral to describe people we consider good and actions we consider right. And we interchange unethical and immoral to describe what we consider bad people and wrong actions. This essay follows that common usage.
Moral Versus Nonmoral Standards
What falls outside the sphere of moral concern is termed nonmoral. Whether your new sports car will top out at 120 or 130 miles per hour is a nonmoral question. Whether you should top it out on Main Street on a Wednesday at high noon (or even at 3 A.M., for that matter) is a moral question. To see why requires an understanding of the difference between moral standandards and other kinds of standards. Wearing shorts to a formal dinner party is boorish behavior.
Murdering the King’s English with double negatives violates the basic conventions of proper language usage. Photographing the finish of a horse race with low-speed film is poor photographic technique. In each case a standard is violated -- fashion, grammatical, artistic -- but the violation does not pose a serious threat to human well-being.
Moral standards are different because they concern behavior that is of serious consequence to human welfare, that can profoundly injure or benefit people. The conventional moral norms against lying, stealing, and murdering deal with actions that can hurt people. And the moral principle that human beings should be treated with dignity and respect uplifts the human personality. Whether products are healthful or harmful, work conditions safe or dangerous, personnel procedures biased or fair, privacy respected or invaded are also matters that seriously affect human well-being. The standards that govern our conduct in these areas are moral standards.
A second characteristic follows from the first. Moral standards take priority over other standards, including self-interest. Something that morality condemns-for instance, the burglary of your neighbor’s home-cannot be justified on the nonmoral grounds that it would be a thrill to do it or that it would payoff handsomely. We take moral standards to be more important than other considerations in guiding our actions.
A third characteristic of moral standards is that their soundness depends on the adequacy of the reasons that support or justify them. For the most part, fashion standards are set by clothing designers, merchandisers, and consumers; grammatical standards by grammarians and students of language; technical standards by practitioners and experts in the field. Legislators make laws, boards of directors make organizational policy, and licensing boards establish standards for professionals.
In every case, some authoritative body is the ultimate validating source of the standards and thus can change the standards if it wishes. Moral standards are not made by such bodies, although they are often endorsed or rejected by them. More precisely, the validity of moral standards depends not on authoritative fiat but on the adequacy of the reasons that support or justify them. Precisely what constitutes adequate reasons for moral standards is problematic and, as we shall see, underlies disagreement about the legitimacy of specific moral principles.
Morality and etiquette
Etiquette refers to any special code of behavior or courtesy. In our society, for example, it is usually considered bad etiquette to chew with one’s mouth open or to use obscene language in public; it is considered good etiquette to say "please" when requesting and "thank you" when receiving and to hold a door open for someone entering immediately behind us. Good business etiquette, to take another example, typically calls for writing follow-up letters after meetings, returning phone calls, and dressing appropriately. It is commonplace to judge people’s manners as "good" or "bad" and the conduct that reflects them as "right" or "wrong." "Good," "bad," "right," and "wrong" here simply mean socially appropriate or socially inappropriate. In these contexts, such words express judgments about manners, not ethics.
So-called rules of etiquette that you might learn in an etiquette book are prescriptions for socially acceptable behavior. If you want to fit in, get along with others, and be thought well of by them, you should observe common rules of etiquette. If you violate the rules, then you are rightly considered ill-mannered, impolite, or even uncivilized-but not necessarily immoral.
Scrupulous observance of rules of etiquette does not make one moral.
In fact, it can camouflage moral issues. Not too long ago in some parts of the United States, it was thought bad manners for blacks and whites to eat together. Those who obeyed the convention and were thus judged well-mannered certainly had no grounds for feeling moral. The only way to dramatize the injustice underlying this practice was to violate the rule and be judged ill-mannered. For those in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, being considered boorish was a small price to pay for exposing the unequal treatment and human degradation that underlay this rule of etiquette.
Morality and law
The legality of an action does not guarantee that the action is morally right. Consider an actual case of a four-month-old baby suffering from diarrhea and fever. The family physician prescribed medication on the second day of the child’s illness and saw him during office hours on the third day. On the fourth day, the child’s condition worsened. Knowing that the doctor was not in the office that day, the parents whisked the child to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. There they were told that hospital policy forbade treating anyone already under a doctor’s care without first contacting the doctor. Unable to reach the doctor and thus denied emergency treatment, the parents took their child home, where he died later that day of bronchial pneumonia.
There was a time when hospitals had a legal right to accept for emergency treatment only those they chose to accept. Under such a rule, then, the hospital would have been exercising its legal right. But would the hospital have been morally justified in exercising that right, when by so doing it would deny the child lifesaving care? Philosophers might disagree in their answers. But they would agree that the issue can- not be satisfactorily resolved by appeal to law alone. (As it happened, the case went to court and set a precedent by repudiating the traditional discretionary powers given a hospital in operating its emergency facility. But even if the court had upheld the institution’s legal right, the hospital’s policy would still be open to moral assessment and possible criticism. )
Consider a second case. Suppose that you’re driving to work one day and see an accident victim on the side of the road, blood oozing from his leg. He is clearly in need of immediate medical attention, which you can provide because you just completed a first-aid course.
Legally speaking, you have no obligation to stop and offer aid. Under common law, the prudent thing would be to drive on, because by stopping you would bind yourself to use reason - able care. If you fail to do so and the victim thereby suffers injury, you would incur legal liability. Many states have enacted so-called "Good Samaritan laws" to provide immunity from damages to those rendering aid {except for gross negligence or serious misconduct). But in most states the law does not oblige people to render such aid or even to call an ambulance. Moral theorists would agree, however, that if you sped away without rendering aid or even calling for help, your action might be perfectly legal but would be morally suspect. Regardless of the law, such conduct would almost certainly be morally wrong.
What then may we say of the relationship between law and morality? In theory and practice, law codifies a society’s customs, ideals, norms, and moral values. Changes in law undoubtedly reflect changes in what a society takes to be right and wrong, good and bad. But it is a mistake to see law as sufficient to establish the moral standards that should guide an individual, a profession, an organization, or a society. Law simply cannot cover the variety of individual and group conduct. The law does prohibit egregious affronts to a society’s moral standards and in that sense is the floor of moral conduct. But breaches of moral conduct can fall through the cracks in that floor.
Conformity with law is not sufficient for moral conduct any more than conformity with etiquette is. By the same token, nonconformity with law is not necessarily immoral, for the law disobeyed may be unjust. Probably no one in the modern era has expressed this point more eloquently than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Confined in the Birmingham city jail on charges of parading without a permit, King penned his now famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" to eight of his fellow clergymen who had published a statement attacking as unwise and untimely King’s unauthorized protest of racial segregation. King wrote:
All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. ... Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court*, for it is mor-ally right; and I can urge them to disobey seg- segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong. ("Letter from Birmingham Jail," in Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 85)[* In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Supreme Court struck down the half-century-old "separate but equal doctrine," which permitted racially segregated schools as long as comparable quality was maintained. ]
Professional codes of ethics
Somewhere between etiquette and law lie professional codes of ethics. These are the rules that are supposed to govern the conduct of members of a given profession. Generally speaking, the members of a profession are understood to have agreed to abide by those rules as a condition of their engaging in that profession.
Violation of the professional code may result in the disapproval of one’s professional peers and, in serious cases, loss of one’s license to practice that profession. Sometimes these codes are unwritten and are part of the common understanding of members of a profession-for example, that professors should not date students in their classes. In other instances, these codes or portions of them may be written down by an authoritative body so they may be better taught and more efficiently enforced.
These written rules are sometimes so vague and general as to be of little value, and often they amount to little more-than self-promotion by the professional organization. In other cases-for example with attorneys-professional codes can be very specific and detailed. It is difficult to generalize about the content of professional codes of ethics, however, because they frequently involve a mix of purely moral rules (for example, client confidentiality), of professional etiquette (for example, the billing of services to other professionals ), and of restrictions intended to benefit the group’s economic interests (for example, limitations on price competition).
Given their nature, professional codes of ethics are neither a complete nor a completely reliable guide to one’s moral obligations. First, not all the rules of a professional code are purely moral in character, and even when they are, the fact that a rule is officially enshrined as part of the code of a profession does not guarantee that it is a sound moral principle. As a professional, you must take seriously the injunctions of your profession, but you still have the responsibility to critically assess those rules for yourself.
Where do moral standards come from?So far you have seen how moral standards are different from various nonmoral standards, but you probably wonder about the source of those moral standards. Most, if not all, people have certain moral principles or a moral code that they explicitly or implicitly accept.
Because the moral principles of different people in the same society overlap, at least in part, we can also talk about the moral code of a society, meaning the moral standards shared by its members. How do we come to have certain moral principles and not others? Obviously, many things influence us in the moral principles we accept: our early up- bringing, the behavior of those around us, the explicit and implicit standards of our culture, our own experiences, and our critical reflections on those experiences.
For philosophers, though, the important question is not how in fact we came to have the particular principles we have. The philosophical issue is whether the principles we have can be justified. Do we simply take for granted the values of those around us? Or like Martin Luther King, Jr., are we able to think independently about moral matters? By analogy, we pick up our nonmoral beliefs from all sorts of sources: books, conversations with friends, movies, experiences we’ve had.
The philosopher’s concern is not so much with how we actually got the beliefs we have, but whether or to what extent those beliefs - for example, that women are more emotional than men or that telekinesis is possible - can withstand critical scrutiny. Likewise, ethical theories attempt to justify moral standards and ethical beliefs. The second introductory essay examines some of the major theories of normative ethics. That is, it looks at what some of the major thinkers in human history have argued are the best-justified standards of right and wrong.
But first the relationship between morality and religion on the one hand and morality and society on the other needs to be discussed. Some people maintain that morality just boils down to religion. Others have argued for the doctrine of ethical relativism, which says that right and wrong are only a function of what a particular society takes to be right and wrong. Both these views are mistaken.
Religion and Morality
Any religion provides its believers with a world view, part of which involves certain moral instructions, values, and commitments. The Jewish and Christian traditions, to name just two, offer a view of humans as unique products of a divine intervention that has endowed them with consciousness and an ability to love. Both these traditions posit creatures who stand midway between nature and spirit. On the one hand, we are finite and bound to earth, not only capable of wrongdoing but born morally flawed (original sin). On the other, we can transcend nature and realize infinite possibilities.
Primarily because of the influence of Western religion, many Americans and others view them- selves as beings with a supernatural destiny, as possessing a life after death, as being immortal. One’s purpose in life is found in serving and loving God. For the Christian, the way to serve and love God is by emulating the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In the life of Jesus, Christians find an expression of the highest virtue-love. They love when they perform selfless acts, develop a keen social conscience, and realize that human beings are creatures of God and therefore intrinsically worthwhile. For the Jew, one serves and loves God chiefly through expressions of justice and righteousness. Jews also develop a sense of honor derived from a commitment to truth, humility, fidelity, and kindness. This commitment hones their sense of responsibility to family and community.
Religion, then, involves not only a formal system of worship but also prescriptions for social relationships. One example is the mandate "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Termed the Golden Rule, this injunction represents one of humankind’s highest moral ideals and can be found in essence in all the great religions of the world:
Good people proceed while considering that what is best for others is best for themselves- ( Hitopadesa, Hinduism )
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (Leviticus 19:18, Judaism)
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. (Matthew 7:12, Christianity)
Hurt not others with that which pains yourself. (Udanavarga 5:18, Buddhism)
What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. (Analects 15:23, Confucianism) .
No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. ( Traditions, Islam )
Although inspiring, such religious ideals are very general and can be difficult to translate into precise policy injunctions. Religious bodies, nevertheless, occasionally articulate positions on more specific political, educational, economic, and medical issues, which help mold public opinion on matters as diverse as abortion, euthanasia, nuclear weapons, and national defense.
Morality needn’t rest on religionMany people believe that morality must be based on religion, either in the sense that without religion people would have no incentive to be moral or in the sense that only religion can provide moral guidance. Others contend that morality is based on the commands of God. None of these claims is convincing.
First, although a desire to avoid hell and to go to heaven may prompt sori1e of us to act morally, this is not the only reason or even the most common reason that people behave morally. Often we act morally out of habit or simply because that is the kind of person we are. It would just not occur to most of us to swipe an elderly woman’s purse. And if the idea did occur to us, we wouldn’t do it because such an act simply doesn’t fit with our personal standards or with our concept of ourselves. We are often motivated to do what is morally right out of concern for others or just because it is right. In addition, the approval of our peers, the need to appease our consciences, and the desire to avoid earthly punishment may all motivate us to act morally. Furthermore, atheists generally live lives as moral and upright as believers.
Second, the moral instructions of the world’s great religions are general and imprecise: They do not relieve us of the necessity to engage in moral reasoning ourselves. For example, the Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill." Yet Christians disagree among themselves over the morality of fighting in wars, of capital punishment, of killing in self-defense, of slaughtering animals, of abortion and euthanasia, and of allowing foreigners to die from famine because we have not provided them with as much food as we might have. The Bible does not give unambiguous answers to these moral problems. So even believers must engage in moral philosophy if they are to have intelligent answers. On the other hand, there are lots of reasons for believing that, say, a cold-blooded murder motivated, by greed. is immoral; you do not have to believe in a religion to figure that out.
Third, although some theologians have advocated the divine command theory -- that if something is wrong (like killing an innocent person for fun), then the only reason it is wrong is that God commands us not to do it-many theologians and certainly most philosophers would reject this view. They would contend that if God commands human beings not to do something, like commit rape, it is because God sees that rape is wrong, but it is not God’s forbidding rape that makes it wrong. The fact that rape is wrong is independent of God’s decrees.
Most believers think not only that God gives us moral instructions or rules but also that God has moral reasons for giving them to us. According to the divine command theory, this would make no sense. In this view, there is no reason that something is right or wrong, other than it being God’s will. All believers, of course, believe that God is good and that He commands us to do what is right and forbids us to do what is wrong. But this doesn’t mean, say critics of the divine command theory, that God’s saying so makes a thing wrong, any more than your mother’s telling you not to steal makes it wrong to steal.
All this is simply to argue that morality is not necessarily based on religion in any of these three senses. That religion influences the moral standards and values of most of us is beyond doubt. But given that religions differ in their moral principles and that even members of the name faith often disagree among themselves on moral matters, practically speaking you cannot justify a moral principle simply by appealing to religion - for that will only persuade those who already agree with your particular interpretation of your particular religion. Besides, most religions hold that human reason is capable of understanding what is right and wrong, so it is human reason to which you will have to appeal in order to support your ethical principle.
Ethical Relativism
Some people do not believe that morality boils down to religion but rather that it is just a function of what a particular society happens to believe. This view is called ethical relativism, the theory that what is right is determined by what culture or society says is right. What is right in one place may be wrong in another, because the only criterion for distinguishing right from wrong - and so the only ethical standard for doing an action - is the moral system of the society in which the act occurs.
Abortion, for example, is condemned as immoral in Catholic Ireland but is practiced as a morally neutral form of birth control in Japan. According to the ethical relativist, then, abortion is wrong in Ireland but morally permissible Japan. The relativist is not saying merely that the Irish believe abortion is abominable and the Japanese do not; that is acknowledged by everyone. Rather, the ethical relativist contends that abortion is immoral in Ireland because the Irish believe it to be immoral and morally permissible Japan because the Japanese believe it to be so. Thus, for the ethical relativist there is no absolute ethical standard independent of cultural context, no criteria of right and wrong by which judge other than those of particular societies. In short, what morality requires is relative to society.
Those who endorse ethical relativism point o the apparent diversity of human values and he multiformity of moral codes to support heir case. From our own cultural perspective, some seemingly immoral moralities have been adopted; polygamy, homosexuality, stealing, slavery, infanticide, and cannibalism have all been tolerated or even encouraged by the moral system of one society or another. In light of this fact, the ethical relativist believes that there can be no non-ethnocentric standard by which to judge actions.
Contrary to the relativist, some argue that the moral differences among societies are hot as great or as significant as they appear. They contend that variations in moral standards reflect differing factual beliefs and differing circumstances rather than fundamental differences in values. But suppose the relativist is right about this matter. His conclusion still does not follow. As Allan Bloom writes, "The fact that there have been different opinions about good and bad in different times and places in no way proves that none is true or superior to others. To say that it does so prove is as absurd as to say at the diversity of points of view expressed in a college bull session proves there is no truth." (The Closing of the American Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster ,1987, 39). Disagreement in ethical matters does not imply at all opinions are equally correct.
Moreover, ethical relativism has some unpleasant implications. First, it undermines any moral criticism of the practices of other societies long as their actions conform to their own standards. We cannot say that slavery in a slave society like that of the American South of the last century was immoral and unjust as long as that society held it to be morally permissible.
Second, and closely related, is the fact that the relativist there is no such thing as ethical progress. Although moralities may change, they mot get better or worse. Thus, we cannot say that our moral standards today are any more enlightened than they were in the Middle Ages.
Third, it makes no sense from the relativist’s point of view for people to criticize principles or practices accepted by their own society. People can be censured for not living up to their society’s moral code, but that is all; the moral code itself cannot be criticized. Whatever a society takes to be right really is right for it. Reformers who identify injustices in their society and campaign against them are only encouraging people to be immoral - that is, to depart from the moral standards of their society - unless or until the majority of the society agrees with the reformers. The minority can never be right in moral matters; to be right it must be- come the majority.
The ethical relativist is right to emphasize that in viewing other cultures we should keep an open mind and not simply dismiss alien social practices on the basis of our own cultural prejudices. But the relativist’s theory of morality doesn’t hold up. The more carefully we examine it, the less plausible it becomes. There is no good reason for saying that the majority view on moral issues is automatically right, and the belief that it is automatically right has unacceptable consequences.
"The word ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, meaning character or custom," writes philosophy professor Robert C. Solomon. Today we use the word ethos to refer to the distinguishing disposition, character, or attitude of a specific people, culture, or group (as in, for example, "the American ethos" or "the business ethos"). According to Solomon, the etymology of ethics suggests its basic concerns: (1) individual character, including what it means to be "a good person," and (2) the social rules that govern and limit our conduct, especially the ultimate rules concerning right and wrong, which we call morality.
Some philosophers like to distinguish ethics from morality. To them morality refers to human conduct and values, and ethics refers to the study of those areas. Ethics does, of course, denote an academic subject, but in everyday parlance we interchange ethical and moral to describe people we consider good and actions we consider right. And we interchange unethical and immoral to describe what we consider bad people and wrong actions. This essay follows that common usage.
Moral Versus Nonmoral Standards
What falls outside the sphere of moral concern is termed nonmoral. Whether your new sports car will top out at 120 or 130 miles per hour is a nonmoral question. Whether you should top it out on Main Street on a Wednesday at high noon (or even at 3 A.M., for that matter) is a moral question. To see why requires an understanding of the difference between moral standandards and other kinds of standards. Wearing shorts to a formal dinner party is boorish behavior.
Murdering the King’s English with double negatives violates the basic conventions of proper language usage. Photographing the finish of a horse race with low-speed film is poor photographic technique. In each case a standard is violated -- fashion, grammatical, artistic -- but the violation does not pose a serious threat to human well-being.
Moral standards are different because they concern behavior that is of serious consequence to human welfare, that can profoundly injure or benefit people. The conventional moral norms against lying, stealing, and murdering deal with actions that can hurt people. And the moral principle that human beings should be treated with dignity and respect uplifts the human personality. Whether products are healthful or harmful, work conditions safe or dangerous, personnel procedures biased or fair, privacy respected or invaded are also matters that seriously affect human well-being. The standards that govern our conduct in these areas are moral standards.
A second characteristic follows from the first. Moral standards take priority over other standards, including self-interest. Something that morality condemns-for instance, the burglary of your neighbor’s home-cannot be justified on the nonmoral grounds that it would be a thrill to do it or that it would payoff handsomely. We take moral standards to be more important than other considerations in guiding our actions.
A third characteristic of moral standards is that their soundness depends on the adequacy of the reasons that support or justify them. For the most part, fashion standards are set by clothing designers, merchandisers, and consumers; grammatical standards by grammarians and students of language; technical standards by practitioners and experts in the field. Legislators make laws, boards of directors make organizational policy, and licensing boards establish standards for professionals.
In every case, some authoritative body is the ultimate validating source of the standards and thus can change the standards if it wishes. Moral standards are not made by such bodies, although they are often endorsed or rejected by them. More precisely, the validity of moral standards depends not on authoritative fiat but on the adequacy of the reasons that support or justify them. Precisely what constitutes adequate reasons for moral standards is problematic and, as we shall see, underlies disagreement about the legitimacy of specific moral principles.
Morality and etiquette
Etiquette refers to any special code of behavior or courtesy. In our society, for example, it is usually considered bad etiquette to chew with one’s mouth open or to use obscene language in public; it is considered good etiquette to say "please" when requesting and "thank you" when receiving and to hold a door open for someone entering immediately behind us. Good business etiquette, to take another example, typically calls for writing follow-up letters after meetings, returning phone calls, and dressing appropriately. It is commonplace to judge people’s manners as "good" or "bad" and the conduct that reflects them as "right" or "wrong." "Good," "bad," "right," and "wrong" here simply mean socially appropriate or socially inappropriate. In these contexts, such words express judgments about manners, not ethics.
So-called rules of etiquette that you might learn in an etiquette book are prescriptions for socially acceptable behavior. If you want to fit in, get along with others, and be thought well of by them, you should observe common rules of etiquette. If you violate the rules, then you are rightly considered ill-mannered, impolite, or even uncivilized-but not necessarily immoral.
Scrupulous observance of rules of etiquette does not make one moral.
In fact, it can camouflage moral issues. Not too long ago in some parts of the United States, it was thought bad manners for blacks and whites to eat together. Those who obeyed the convention and were thus judged well-mannered certainly had no grounds for feeling moral. The only way to dramatize the injustice underlying this practice was to violate the rule and be judged ill-mannered. For those in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, being considered boorish was a small price to pay for exposing the unequal treatment and human degradation that underlay this rule of etiquette.
Morality and law
The legality of an action does not guarantee that the action is morally right. Consider an actual case of a four-month-old baby suffering from diarrhea and fever. The family physician prescribed medication on the second day of the child’s illness and saw him during office hours on the third day. On the fourth day, the child’s condition worsened. Knowing that the doctor was not in the office that day, the parents whisked the child to the emergency room of a nearby hospital. There they were told that hospital policy forbade treating anyone already under a doctor’s care without first contacting the doctor. Unable to reach the doctor and thus denied emergency treatment, the parents took their child home, where he died later that day of bronchial pneumonia.
There was a time when hospitals had a legal right to accept for emergency treatment only those they chose to accept. Under such a rule, then, the hospital would have been exercising its legal right. But would the hospital have been morally justified in exercising that right, when by so doing it would deny the child lifesaving care? Philosophers might disagree in their answers. But they would agree that the issue can- not be satisfactorily resolved by appeal to law alone. (As it happened, the case went to court and set a precedent by repudiating the traditional discretionary powers given a hospital in operating its emergency facility. But even if the court had upheld the institution’s legal right, the hospital’s policy would still be open to moral assessment and possible criticism. )
Consider a second case. Suppose that you’re driving to work one day and see an accident victim on the side of the road, blood oozing from his leg. He is clearly in need of immediate medical attention, which you can provide because you just completed a first-aid course.
Legally speaking, you have no obligation to stop and offer aid. Under common law, the prudent thing would be to drive on, because by stopping you would bind yourself to use reason - able care. If you fail to do so and the victim thereby suffers injury, you would incur legal liability. Many states have enacted so-called "Good Samaritan laws" to provide immunity from damages to those rendering aid {except for gross negligence or serious misconduct). But in most states the law does not oblige people to render such aid or even to call an ambulance. Moral theorists would agree, however, that if you sped away without rendering aid or even calling for help, your action might be perfectly legal but would be morally suspect. Regardless of the law, such conduct would almost certainly be morally wrong.
What then may we say of the relationship between law and morality? In theory and practice, law codifies a society’s customs, ideals, norms, and moral values. Changes in law undoubtedly reflect changes in what a society takes to be right and wrong, good and bad. But it is a mistake to see law as sufficient to establish the moral standards that should guide an individual, a profession, an organization, or a society. Law simply cannot cover the variety of individual and group conduct. The law does prohibit egregious affronts to a society’s moral standards and in that sense is the floor of moral conduct. But breaches of moral conduct can fall through the cracks in that floor.
Conformity with law is not sufficient for moral conduct any more than conformity with etiquette is. By the same token, nonconformity with law is not necessarily immoral, for the law disobeyed may be unjust. Probably no one in the modern era has expressed this point more eloquently than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Confined in the Birmingham city jail on charges of parading without a permit, King penned his now famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" to eight of his fellow clergymen who had published a statement attacking as unwise and untimely King’s unauthorized protest of racial segregation. King wrote:
All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. ... Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court*, for it is mor-ally right; and I can urge them to disobey seg- segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong. ("Letter from Birmingham Jail," in Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 85)[* In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Supreme Court struck down the half-century-old "separate but equal doctrine," which permitted racially segregated schools as long as comparable quality was maintained. ]
Professional codes of ethics
Somewhere between etiquette and law lie professional codes of ethics. These are the rules that are supposed to govern the conduct of members of a given profession. Generally speaking, the members of a profession are understood to have agreed to abide by those rules as a condition of their engaging in that profession.
Violation of the professional code may result in the disapproval of one’s professional peers and, in serious cases, loss of one’s license to practice that profession. Sometimes these codes are unwritten and are part of the common understanding of members of a profession-for example, that professors should not date students in their classes. In other instances, these codes or portions of them may be written down by an authoritative body so they may be better taught and more efficiently enforced.
These written rules are sometimes so vague and general as to be of little value, and often they amount to little more-than self-promotion by the professional organization. In other cases-for example with attorneys-professional codes can be very specific and detailed. It is difficult to generalize about the content of professional codes of ethics, however, because they frequently involve a mix of purely moral rules (for example, client confidentiality), of professional etiquette (for example, the billing of services to other professionals ), and of restrictions intended to benefit the group’s economic interests (for example, limitations on price competition).
Given their nature, professional codes of ethics are neither a complete nor a completely reliable guide to one’s moral obligations. First, not all the rules of a professional code are purely moral in character, and even when they are, the fact that a rule is officially enshrined as part of the code of a profession does not guarantee that it is a sound moral principle. As a professional, you must take seriously the injunctions of your profession, but you still have the responsibility to critically assess those rules for yourself.
Where do moral standards come from?So far you have seen how moral standards are different from various nonmoral standards, but you probably wonder about the source of those moral standards. Most, if not all, people have certain moral principles or a moral code that they explicitly or implicitly accept.
Because the moral principles of different people in the same society overlap, at least in part, we can also talk about the moral code of a society, meaning the moral standards shared by its members. How do we come to have certain moral principles and not others? Obviously, many things influence us in the moral principles we accept: our early up- bringing, the behavior of those around us, the explicit and implicit standards of our culture, our own experiences, and our critical reflections on those experiences.
For philosophers, though, the important question is not how in fact we came to have the particular principles we have. The philosophical issue is whether the principles we have can be justified. Do we simply take for granted the values of those around us? Or like Martin Luther King, Jr., are we able to think independently about moral matters? By analogy, we pick up our nonmoral beliefs from all sorts of sources: books, conversations with friends, movies, experiences we’ve had.
The philosopher’s concern is not so much with how we actually got the beliefs we have, but whether or to what extent those beliefs - for example, that women are more emotional than men or that telekinesis is possible - can withstand critical scrutiny. Likewise, ethical theories attempt to justify moral standards and ethical beliefs. The second introductory essay examines some of the major theories of normative ethics. That is, it looks at what some of the major thinkers in human history have argued are the best-justified standards of right and wrong.
But first the relationship between morality and religion on the one hand and morality and society on the other needs to be discussed. Some people maintain that morality just boils down to religion. Others have argued for the doctrine of ethical relativism, which says that right and wrong are only a function of what a particular society takes to be right and wrong. Both these views are mistaken.
Religion and Morality
Any religion provides its believers with a world view, part of which involves certain moral instructions, values, and commitments. The Jewish and Christian traditions, to name just two, offer a view of humans as unique products of a divine intervention that has endowed them with consciousness and an ability to love. Both these traditions posit creatures who stand midway between nature and spirit. On the one hand, we are finite and bound to earth, not only capable of wrongdoing but born morally flawed (original sin). On the other, we can transcend nature and realize infinite possibilities.
Primarily because of the influence of Western religion, many Americans and others view them- selves as beings with a supernatural destiny, as possessing a life after death, as being immortal. One’s purpose in life is found in serving and loving God. For the Christian, the way to serve and love God is by emulating the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In the life of Jesus, Christians find an expression of the highest virtue-love. They love when they perform selfless acts, develop a keen social conscience, and realize that human beings are creatures of God and therefore intrinsically worthwhile. For the Jew, one serves and loves God chiefly through expressions of justice and righteousness. Jews also develop a sense of honor derived from a commitment to truth, humility, fidelity, and kindness. This commitment hones their sense of responsibility to family and community.
Religion, then, involves not only a formal system of worship but also prescriptions for social relationships. One example is the mandate "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Termed the Golden Rule, this injunction represents one of humankind’s highest moral ideals and can be found in essence in all the great religions of the world:
Good people proceed while considering that what is best for others is best for themselves- ( Hitopadesa, Hinduism )
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. (Leviticus 19:18, Judaism)
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. (Matthew 7:12, Christianity)
Hurt not others with that which pains yourself. (Udanavarga 5:18, Buddhism)
What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others. (Analects 15:23, Confucianism) .
No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself. ( Traditions, Islam )
Although inspiring, such religious ideals are very general and can be difficult to translate into precise policy injunctions. Religious bodies, nevertheless, occasionally articulate positions on more specific political, educational, economic, and medical issues, which help mold public opinion on matters as diverse as abortion, euthanasia, nuclear weapons, and national defense.
Morality needn’t rest on religionMany people believe that morality must be based on religion, either in the sense that without religion people would have no incentive to be moral or in the sense that only religion can provide moral guidance. Others contend that morality is based on the commands of God. None of these claims is convincing.
First, although a desire to avoid hell and to go to heaven may prompt sori1e of us to act morally, this is not the only reason or even the most common reason that people behave morally. Often we act morally out of habit or simply because that is the kind of person we are. It would just not occur to most of us to swipe an elderly woman’s purse. And if the idea did occur to us, we wouldn’t do it because such an act simply doesn’t fit with our personal standards or with our concept of ourselves. We are often motivated to do what is morally right out of concern for others or just because it is right. In addition, the approval of our peers, the need to appease our consciences, and the desire to avoid earthly punishment may all motivate us to act morally. Furthermore, atheists generally live lives as moral and upright as believers.
Second, the moral instructions of the world’s great religions are general and imprecise: They do not relieve us of the necessity to engage in moral reasoning ourselves. For example, the Bible says, "Thou shalt not kill." Yet Christians disagree among themselves over the morality of fighting in wars, of capital punishment, of killing in self-defense, of slaughtering animals, of abortion and euthanasia, and of allowing foreigners to die from famine because we have not provided them with as much food as we might have. The Bible does not give unambiguous answers to these moral problems. So even believers must engage in moral philosophy if they are to have intelligent answers. On the other hand, there are lots of reasons for believing that, say, a cold-blooded murder motivated, by greed. is immoral; you do not have to believe in a religion to figure that out.
Third, although some theologians have advocated the divine command theory -- that if something is wrong (like killing an innocent person for fun), then the only reason it is wrong is that God commands us not to do it-many theologians and certainly most philosophers would reject this view. They would contend that if God commands human beings not to do something, like commit rape, it is because God sees that rape is wrong, but it is not God’s forbidding rape that makes it wrong. The fact that rape is wrong is independent of God’s decrees.
Most believers think not only that God gives us moral instructions or rules but also that God has moral reasons for giving them to us. According to the divine command theory, this would make no sense. In this view, there is no reason that something is right or wrong, other than it being God’s will. All believers, of course, believe that God is good and that He commands us to do what is right and forbids us to do what is wrong. But this doesn’t mean, say critics of the divine command theory, that God’s saying so makes a thing wrong, any more than your mother’s telling you not to steal makes it wrong to steal.
All this is simply to argue that morality is not necessarily based on religion in any of these three senses. That religion influences the moral standards and values of most of us is beyond doubt. But given that religions differ in their moral principles and that even members of the name faith often disagree among themselves on moral matters, practically speaking you cannot justify a moral principle simply by appealing to religion - for that will only persuade those who already agree with your particular interpretation of your particular religion. Besides, most religions hold that human reason is capable of understanding what is right and wrong, so it is human reason to which you will have to appeal in order to support your ethical principle.
Ethical Relativism
Some people do not believe that morality boils down to religion but rather that it is just a function of what a particular society happens to believe. This view is called ethical relativism, the theory that what is right is determined by what culture or society says is right. What is right in one place may be wrong in another, because the only criterion for distinguishing right from wrong - and so the only ethical standard for doing an action - is the moral system of the society in which the act occurs.
Abortion, for example, is condemned as immoral in Catholic Ireland but is practiced as a morally neutral form of birth control in Japan. According to the ethical relativist, then, abortion is wrong in Ireland but morally permissible Japan. The relativist is not saying merely that the Irish believe abortion is abominable and the Japanese do not; that is acknowledged by everyone. Rather, the ethical relativist contends that abortion is immoral in Ireland because the Irish believe it to be immoral and morally permissible Japan because the Japanese believe it to be so. Thus, for the ethical relativist there is no absolute ethical standard independent of cultural context, no criteria of right and wrong by which judge other than those of particular societies. In short, what morality requires is relative to society.
Those who endorse ethical relativism point o the apparent diversity of human values and he multiformity of moral codes to support heir case. From our own cultural perspective, some seemingly immoral moralities have been adopted; polygamy, homosexuality, stealing, slavery, infanticide, and cannibalism have all been tolerated or even encouraged by the moral system of one society or another. In light of this fact, the ethical relativist believes that there can be no non-ethnocentric standard by which to judge actions.
Contrary to the relativist, some argue that the moral differences among societies are hot as great or as significant as they appear. They contend that variations in moral standards reflect differing factual beliefs and differing circumstances rather than fundamental differences in values. But suppose the relativist is right about this matter. His conclusion still does not follow. As Allan Bloom writes, "The fact that there have been different opinions about good and bad in different times and places in no way proves that none is true or superior to others. To say that it does so prove is as absurd as to say at the diversity of points of view expressed in a college bull session proves there is no truth." (The Closing of the American Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster ,1987, 39). Disagreement in ethical matters does not imply at all opinions are equally correct.
Moreover, ethical relativism has some unpleasant implications. First, it undermines any moral criticism of the practices of other societies long as their actions conform to their own standards. We cannot say that slavery in a slave society like that of the American South of the last century was immoral and unjust as long as that society held it to be morally permissible.
Second, and closely related, is the fact that the relativist there is no such thing as ethical progress. Although moralities may change, they mot get better or worse. Thus, we cannot say that our moral standards today are any more enlightened than they were in the Middle Ages.
Third, it makes no sense from the relativist’s point of view for people to criticize principles or practices accepted by their own society. People can be censured for not living up to their society’s moral code, but that is all; the moral code itself cannot be criticized. Whatever a society takes to be right really is right for it. Reformers who identify injustices in their society and campaign against them are only encouraging people to be immoral - that is, to depart from the moral standards of their society - unless or until the majority of the society agrees with the reformers. The minority can never be right in moral matters; to be right it must be- come the majority.
The ethical relativist is right to emphasize that in viewing other cultures we should keep an open mind and not simply dismiss alien social practices on the basis of our own cultural prejudices. But the relativist’s theory of morality doesn’t hold up. The more carefully we examine it, the less plausible it becomes. There is no good reason for saying that the majority view on moral issues is automatically right, and the belief that it is automatically right has unacceptable consequences.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The Poll
I have just started a poll. Look down at the end of the contents, take few seconds and poll.
codes of ethics
CODES OF ETHICS
Codes of ethics establish broad rules of conduct for a profession and its members, and thus can be differentiated from an individual moral code which governs particular decisions in both private and professional life. Codes of ethical conduct for the professional and moral decisions for the individual overlap with legal requirements but are distinct from them. While codes of ethics in the health and human services provide the professional with rules and guidance, they are not legally binding as such unless they are otherwise codified or incorporated into law. Unethical conduct may be sanctioned by a professional association, resulting in an admonishment, suspension from practice or expulsion from the profession. However, whether the unethical conduct is legally actionable remains a different question and will depend on applicable legal provisions.
Van Hoose and Kottler have identified several purposes served by codes of ethics. One main function is to provide guidance for professional conduct and decision making. A second function is to legitimate the profession in the eyes of the public, and a third is to preempt governmental regulation and the imposition of external standards. A fourth function is to establish rules of conduct with which a professional's conduct can be compared, either to protect the professional who operates within that code or to discipline the professional who violates its provisions (Van Hoose and Kottler, 1985).
Codes of Ethics and Law
Legal provisions and professional codes of ethics are often in agreement--that is, professional conduct is usually both legal and ethical, or occasionally both illegal and unethical. Sometimes, however, the two may not clearly coincide and the resulting conflict may pose some real dilemmas for the health and human services professional. Professional conduct may be unethical and yet remain legal; in some instances conduct may be illegal and yet still be ethical. A simple topology will illustrate the relation between law and ethics.
Here is the sample code of ethics http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp. You will remember that I distributed some copies during the lecture on media ethics.descripritions of ethical theories and principles
Descriptions of Ethical Theories and Principles
Ethical theories and principles are the foundations of ethical analysis because they are the viewpoints from which guidance can be obtained along the pathway to a decision. Each theory emphasizes different points such as predicting the outcome and following one's duties to others in order to reach an ethically correct decision. However, in order for an ethical theory to be useful, the theory must be directed towards a common set of goals. Ethical principles are the common goals that each theory tries to achieve in order to be successful. These goals include beneficence, least harm, respect for autonomy and justice (1,2,3,4).
The principle of beneficence guides the ethical theory to do what is good. This priority to "do good" makes an ethical perspective and possible solution to an ethical dilemma acceptable. This principle is also related to the principle of utility, which states that we should attempt generate the largest ratio of good over evil possible in the world (2). This principle stipulates that ethical theories should strive to achieve the greatest amount of good because people benefit from the most good. This principle is mainly associated with the utilitarian ethical theory found in the following section of this paper. An example of "doing good" is found in the practice of medicine in which the health of an individual is bettered by treatment from a physician (1,2).
This is similar to beneficence, but deals with situations in which neither choice is beneficial. In this case, a person should choose to do the least harm possible and to do harm to the fewest people. For instance, in the Hippocratic oath, a physician is first charged with the responsibility to "do no harm" to the patient since the physician's primary duty is to provide helpful treatment to the patient rather than to inflict more suffering upon the patient (3,4).
One could also reasonably argue that people have a greater responsibility to "do no harm" than to take steps to benefit others. For example, a person has a larger responsibility to simply walk past a person rather than to punch a person as they walk past with no justified reason (3,4).
This principle states that an ethical theory should allow people to reign over themselves and to be able to make decisions that apply to their lives. This means that people should have control over their lives as much as possible because they are the only people who completely understand their chosen type of lifestyle. Each man deserves respect because only he has had those exact life experiences and understands his emotions, motivations and body in such an intimate manner. In essence, this ethical principle is an extension of the ethical principle of beneficence because a person who is independent usually prefers to have control over his life experiences in order to obtain the lifestyle that he enjoys (1,4).
There are, however, two ways of looking at the respect for autonomy. In the paternalistic viewpoint, an authority prioritizes a dependent person's best interests over the dependent person's wishes (1). For example, a patient with terminal cancer may prefer to live the rest of her life without the medication that makes her constantly ill. The physician, on the other hand, may convince the patient and her family members to make the patient continue taking her medication because the medication will prolong her life. In this situation, the physician uses his or her authority to manipulate the patient to choose the treatment that will benefit him or her best medically. As noted in this example, one drawback of this principle is that the paternalistic figure may not have the same ideals as the dependent person and will deny the patient's autonomy and ability to choose her treatment. This, in turn, leads to a decreased amount of beneficence.
A second way in which to view the respect for autonomy is the libertarian view. This standpoint prioritizes the patient's wishes over their best interests. This means that the patient has control over her life and should be content with her quality of life because she has chosen the path of life with the greatest amount of personal beneficence. Although this viewpoint is more mindful of the patient's desires, it does not prevent the patient from making decisions that may be more harmful than beneficial (1).
The justice ethical principle states that ethical theories should prescribe actions that are fair to those involved. This means that ethical decisions should be consistent with the ethical theory unless extenuating circumstances that can be justified exist in the case. This also means that cases with extenuating circumstances must contain a significant and vital difference from similar cases that justify the inconsistent decision. An ethical decision that contains justice within it has a consistent logical basis that supports the decision (1,3,4). For example a policeman is allowed to speed on the highway if he must arrive at the scene of a crime as quickly as possible in order to prevent a person from getting hurt. Although the policeman would normally have to obey the speed limit, he is allowed to speed in this unique situation because it is a justified under the extenuating circumstances.
Ethical theories are based on the previously explained ethical principles. They each emphasize different aspects of an ethical dilemma and lead to the most ethically correct resolution according to the guidelines within the ethical theory itself. People usually base their individual choice of ethical theory upon their life experiences (1,2).
The deontological theory states that people should adhere to their obligations and duties when analyzing an ethical dilemma. This means that a person will follow his or her obligations to another individual or society because upholding one's duty is what is considered ethically correct (1,2). For instance, a deontologist will always keep his promises to a friend and will follow the law. A person who follows this theory will produce very consistent decisions since they will be based on the individual's set duties.
Deontology provides a basis for special duties and obligations to specific people, such as those within one's family. For example, an older brother may have an obligation to protect his little sister when they cross a busy road together. This theory also praises those deontologists who exceed their duties and obligations, which is called "supererogation" (1). For example, if a person hijacked a train full of students and stated that one person would have to die in order for the rest to live, the person who volunteers to die is exceeding his or her duty to the other students and performs an act of supererogation.
Although deontology contains many positive attributes, it also contains its fair number of flaws. One weakness of this theory is that there is no rationale or logical basis for deciding an individual's duties. For instance, businessman may decide that it is his duty to always be on time to meetings. Although this appears to be a noble duty we do not know why the person chose to make this his duty. Perhaps the reason that he has to be at the meeting on time is that he always has to sit in the same chair. A similar scenario unearths two other faults of deontology including the fact that sometimes a person's duties conflict, and that deontology is not concerned with the welfare of others. For instance, if the deontologist who must be on time to meetings is running late, how is he supposed to drive? Is the deontologist supposed to speed, breaking his duty to society to uphold the law, or is the deontologist supposed to arrive at his meeting late, breaking his duty to be on time? This scenario of conflicting obligations does not lead us to a clear ethically correct resolution nor does it protect the welfare of others from the deontologist's decision. Since deontology is not based on the context of each situation, it does not provide any guidance when one enters a complex situation in which there are conflicting obligations (1,2).
The utilitarian ethical theory is founded on the ability to predict the consequences of an action. To a utilitarian, the choice that yields the greatest benefit to the most people is the choice that is ethically correct. One benefit of this ethical theory is that the utilitarian can compare similar predicted solutions and use a point system to determine which choice is more beneficial for more people. This point system provides a logical and rationale argument for each decision and allows a person to use it on a case-by-case context (1,2).
There are two types of utilitarianism, act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism adheres exactly to the definition of utilitarianism as described in the above section. In act utilitarianism, a person performs the acts that benefit the most people, regardless of personal feelings or the societal constraints such as laws. Rule utilitarianism, however, takes into account the law and is concerned with fairness. A rule utilitarian seeks to benefit the most people but through the fairest and most just means available. Therefore, added benefits of rule utilitarianism are that it values justice and includes beneficence at the same time (1,2).
As with all ethical theories, however, both act and rule utilitarianism contain numerous flaws. Inherent in both are the flaws associated with predicting the future. Although people can use their life experiences to attempt to predict outcomes, no human being can be certain that his predictions will be true. This uncertainty can lead to unexpected results making the utilitarian look unethical as time passes because his choice did not benefit the most people as he predicted (1,2). For example, if a person lights a fire in a fireplace in order to warm his friends, and then the fire burns down the house because the soot in the chimney caught on fire, then the utilitarian now seems to have chosen an unethical decision. The unexpected house fire is judged as unethical because it did not benefit his friends.
Another assumption that a utilitarian must make is that he has the ability to compare the various types of consequences against each other on a similar scale. However, comparing material gains such as money against intangible gains such as happiness is impossible since their qualities differ to such a large extent (1).
A third failing found in utilitarianism is that it does not allow for the existence of supererogation or heroes. In other words, people are obligated to constantly behave so that the most people benefit regardless of the danger associated with an act (1). For instance, a utilitarian who sacrifices her life to save a train full of people is actually fulfilling an obligation to society rather than performing a selfless and laudable act.
As explained above, act utilitarianism is solely concerned with achieving the maximum good. According to this theory an individual's rights may be infringed upon in order to benefit a greater population. In other words, act utilitarianism is not always concerned with justice, beneficence or autonomy for an individual if oppressing the individual leads to the solution that benefits a majority of people.
Another source of instability within act utilitarianism is apparent when a utilitarian faces one set of variable conditions and then suddenly experiences a change in those variables that causes her to change her original decision. This means that an act utilitarian could be nice to you one moment and then dislike you the next moment because the variables have changed, and you are no longer beneficial to the most people (1).
Rule utilitarianism also contains a source of instability that inhibits its usefulness. In rule utilitarianism, there is the possibility of conflicting rules (1). Let us revisit the example of a person running late for his meeting. While a rule utilitarian who just happens to be a state governor may believe that it is ethically correct to arrive at important meetings on time because the members of the state government will benefit from this decision, he may encounter conflicting ideas about what is ethically correct if he is running late. As a rule utilitarian, he believes that he should follow the law because this benefits an entire society, but at the same time, he believes that it is ethically correct to be on time for his meeting because it is a state government meeting that also benefits the society. There appears to be no ethically correct answer for this scenario (1).
In the rights ethical theory the rights set forth by a society are protected and given the highest priority. Rights are considered to be ethically correct and valid since a large or ruling population endorses them. Individuals may also bestow rights upon others if they have the ability and resources to do so (1). For example, a person may say that her friend may borrow the car for the afternoon. The friend who was given the ability to borrow the car now has a right to the car in the afternoon.
A major complication of this theory on a larger scale, however, is that one must decipher what the characteristics of a right are in a society. The society has to determine what rights it wants to uphold and give to its citizens. In order for a society to determine what rights it wants to enact, it must decide what the society's goals and ethical priorities are. Therefore, in order for the rights theory to be useful, it must be used in conjunction with another ethical theory that will consistently explain the goals of the society (1). For example in America people have the right to choose their religion because this right is upheld in the Constitution. One of the goals of the founding fathers' of America was to uphold this right to freedom of religion. However, under Hitler's reign in Germany, the Jews were persecuted for their religion because Hitler decided that Jews were detrimental to Germany's future success. The American government upholds freedom of religion while the Nazi government did not uphold it and, instead, chose to eradicate the Jewish religion and those who practiced it.
The casuist ethical theory is one that compares a current ethical dilemma with examples of similar ethical dilemmas and their outcomes. This allows one to determine the severity of the situation and to create the best possible solution according to others' experiences. Usually one will find paradigms that represent the extremes of the situation so that a compromise can be reached that will hopefully include the wisdom gained from the previous examples (2).
One drawback to this ethical theory is that there may not be a set of similar examples for a given ethical dilemma. Perhaps that which is controversial and ethically questionable is new and unexpected. Along the same line of thinking, a casuistical theory also assumes that the results of the current ethical dilemma will be similar to results in the examples. This may not be necessarily true and would greatly hinder the effectiveness of applying this ethical theory (2).
The virtue ethical theory judges a person by his character rather than by an action that may deviate from his normal behavior. It takes the person's morals, reputation and motivation into account when rating an unusual and irregular behavior that is considered unethical. For instance, if a person plagiarized a passage that was later detected by a peer, the peer who knows the person well will understand the person's character and will be able to judge the friend. If the plagiarizer normally follows the rules and has good standing amongst his colleagues, the peer who encounters the plagiarized passage may be able to judge his friend more leniently. Perhaps the researcher had a late night and simply forgot to credit his or her source appropriately. Conversely, a person who has a reputation for scientific misconduct is more likely to be judged harshly for plagiarizing because of his consistent past of unethical behavior (2).
One weakness of this ethical theory is that it does not take into consideration a person's change in moral character. For example, a scientist who may have made mistakes in the past may honestly have the same late night story as the scientist in good standing. Neither of these scientists intentionally plagiarized, but the act was still committed. On the other hand, a researcher may have a sudden change from moral to immoral character may go unnoticed until a significant amount of evidence mounts up against him or her (2).
Ethical theories and principles bring significant characteristics to the decision-making process. Although all of the ethical theories attempt to follow the ethical principles in order to be applicable and valid by themselves, each theory falls short with complex flaws and failings.
However, these ethical theories can be used in combination in order to obtain the most ethically correct answer possible for each scenario. For example, a utilitarian may use the casuistic theory and compare similar situations to his real life situation in order to determine the choice that will benefit the most people.
The deontologist and the rule utilitarian governor who are running late for their meeting may use the rights ethical theory when deciding whether or not to speed to make it to the meeting on time. Instead of speeding, they would slow down because the law in the rights theory is given the highest priority, even if it means that the most people may not benefit from the decision to drive the speed limit. By using ethical theories in combination, one is able to use a variety of ways to analyze a situation in order to reach the most ethically correct decision possible (1).
We are fortunate to have a variety of ethical theories that provide a substantial framework when trying to make ethically correct answers. Each ethical theory attempts to adhere to the ethical principles that lead to success when trying to reach the best decision. When one understands each individual theory, including its strengths and weaknesses, one can make the most informed decision when trying to achieve an ethically correct answer to a dilemma.
1. Ridley, Aaron. 1998. Beginning Bioethics. New York: St. Martin's Press.
2. Penslar, Robin L,. 1995. Research Ethics: Cases and Materials. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
3. "General Ethical Foundation." Online. Accessed February 17, 2002. http://stedwards.edu/urswery/norm.htm
4. "Ethical Principles." Online. Accessed February 17, 2002. http://peds.ufl.edu/ethics_course/Ethics,%20Ethical%20Principles.htm
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
general moral principles
Here is a good link http://comp.uark.edu/~rlee/gmp/help.html with examples from Joan Callahan book we have been using in our seminars.
ethics
Four Ethical Approaches
There are many ways to define "ethics," almost as many as there are ethicists. For
our purposes, let's use this definition:
Ethics is the discipline and practice of applying value to human behavior
(as well as to the constructs of human culture particularly to morality, customs and
laws) resulting in meaningfulness.
From the earliest moments of recorded human consciousness, the ethical discipline has exhibited four fundamental "approaches" These four approaches are often called "ethical decision-making frameworks:" Utilitarian Ethics (outcome based), Deontological Ethics (duty based), Virtue Ethics (virtue based) and Communitarian Ethics (community based).
Each has a distinctive point of departure as well as distinctive ways of doing the fundamental ethical task of raising and answering questions of value. It is also important to understand that all four approaches have both overlaps and common elements.
Some of the "common elements" of all four approaches are the following:
· Impartiality: weighting interests equally
· Rationality: backed by reasons a rational person would accept
· Consistency: standards applied similarly to similar cases
· Reversibility: standards that apply no matter who "makes" the rules
These are, in a sense, the rules of the "ethics game", no matter which school or approach to ethics one feels the closest identity.
The Utilitarian approach is perhaps the most familiar and easiest to understand of all the four approaches to ethics. Whether we think about it or not, most of us are doing utilitarian ethics a much of the time, especially those of us in business.
The Utilitarians asks a very important question: "How will my actions affect others?" And they go on to attempt to "quantify" the impact of their actions based on some "least common denominator," like happiness, pleasure, or wealth. Therefore, Utilitarians are also called "consequentalists" because they look to the consequences of their actions to determine whether any particular act is right or wrong.
"The greatest good for the greatest number" is the Utilitarian motto. Of course, defining "good" has been no easy task, others think of as worthless. When a businessperson does a "cost benefit analysis," he/she is doing Utilitarian ethics. The least common denominator is usually money. Everything from the cost of steel to the cost of a human life must be given a dollar value, and then one "just does the math." The Ford Pinto was a product of just such reasoning thirty years ago at the Ford Motor Company. Fixing the gas-tank problem Ford reasoned would cost more than human lives were worth. Stuff (like rear-end accidents) happens. Folks die.
The most familiar use of "outcome based reasoning" is in legislative committees in representative democracies. How many constituents will benefit from a tax credit vs. how many will be diminished is the question before the Revenue Committee at tax rectification time.
Representative democracies depend on most decisions being decided on the greatest good for the greatest number. Democratic governments are naturally majoritarian. But in constitutional democracies there are some things that cannot be decided by "doing the math", i.e. adding up the votes. Some questions should not even be voted on. The founders of our nation expressed this fundamental concept with three words: certain unalienable rights.
Enter the Deontological Ethicists. Immanuel Kant is the quintessential (1724-1804), was one of the most amazing intellects of all time, writing books on astronomy, philosophy, politics and ethics. He once said, "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe . . . the starry heavens above and the moral law within." For Kant there were some verities as eternal as the stars.
"Deontological" simply means the study (or science) of duty. Kant did not believe that humans could predict "outcomes" (future consequences) with any substantial degree of certainty. Ethical theory based on a "guess" about future consequences appalled him. What he did believe was that if we used our unique (unique among the higher animals) facility of reason, we could determine with certainty our ethical duty, but whether or not doing our duty would make things better or worse (and for whom), he was agnostic.
Duty-based ethics is enormously important for, though consistently ignored by, at least two kinds of folks: politicians and business people. It is also the key to understanding better our responsibilities as members of teams. Teams (like workgroups or political campaign committees) are narrowly focused on achieving very clearly defined goals: winning the election, successfully introducing a new product, or winning a sailboat race. Sometimes a coach or a boss will say, "Look, just do whatever it takes." Ethically, "whatever it takes" means the ends justify the means. This was Kant's fundamental criticism of the Utilitarians.
For Kant, there were some values (duties) that could never be sacrificed to the "greater good." "So act", he wrote, "as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only."
Fellow team members, employees, campaign staffs, customers, partners etc. are always to some extent "means" to our various goals (ends), but they are also persons. And persons, Kant believed, cannot be "just used," they must also be respected in their own right whether or not the goal is achieved. He called this absolute respect for persons a "Categorical Imperative."
In any team situation, the goal is critical, but treating team-members with respect is imperative. Teams fall apart when a team-member feels used or abused, that is, treated as less important than the overall goal itself. Great leaders (coaches, bosses, presidents) carry the double burden of achieving a worthwhile end without causing those who sacrifice to achieve the goal being trashed as merely expendable. Persons are never merely a means to an end. They are ends in themselves! We owe that understanding to Immanuel Kant.
It is one thing to understand that there are duties which do not depend on consequences; it is quite another to develop the character to act on those duties. This is where Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) comes in. Aristotle wrote the first systematic treatment of ethics in Western Civilization: The Nicomachean Ethic. Today we call this approach to ethics today "virtue ethics."
For Aristotle "virtue" meant (as it did for other Greek thinkers) "the excellence of a thing." The virtue of a knife is to cut. The virtue of a physician is to heal. The virtue of a lawyer is to seek justice. Ethics in this sense is the discipline of discovering and practicing virtue. Aristotle begins his thinking about ethics by asking, "what do people desire?" And he discovers the usual things - wealth, honor, physical and psychological security - but he realizes that these things are not ends in themselves; they are means to ends.
The ultimate end for a person, Aristotle taught, must be an end that is self-sufficient - "that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else." This end of ends, Aristotle designates with the Greek word "eudemonia", usually translated by the English word "happiness." But happiness does not do Aristotle or his ethics justice. Yes, eudemonia means happiness, but really so much more. "Fulfillment" or "full flourishing" or "being all that you can be" are the sort of words needed to understand the concept contained in the Greek word eudemonia and that is where virtue and character come in.
Aristotle thought that one discovers virtue by using his/her unique gift of human reasoning, that is, through rational contemplation. "The unexamined life is not worth living," wrote Socrates almost 100 years before Aristotle. And like Aristotle and Aristotle's teacher Plato, Socrates knew that we two legged creatures need to engage our brains before we open our mouths or spring into some decisive action. For Aristotle, the focus of that brainwork was chiefly about how to balance between the fears and excesses in which the human condition always abounds. Between our fears (deficits) and exuberances (excesses) lies a sweet spot, a "golden mean," called virtue.
An example. At times of physical peril, say in a big storm on a small sailboat, one may be immobilized by fear and unable to function putting at risk not only his life, but that of crewmates as well. Or the opposite could happen. A devil-may-care attitude in the face of real danger can as easily lead to disaster. Courage is the virtue located at the mean between cowardness and rashness. But identifying such a virtue and making that virtue a part of ones character are two quiet different things. Aristotle called one "intellectual virtue" and the other "practical virtue."
Practical virtues were characteristics - a part of a person's character - developed by practice.
Practice is how one learns to deal with fear; practice is how one learns to tell the truth; practice is how one learns to face both personal and professional conflicts, and practice is the genius of Aristotle's contribution to the development of ethics. Virtues do not become a part of our moral muscle fiber because we believe in them, or advocate them. Virtues become characteristics by being exercised. How does one learn to be brave in a storm at sea? "Just do it."
And the ultimate goal of developing characteristics of virtue: eudemonia, a full flourishing of self, true happiness. Many of us from the Judaic-Christian tradition tend to think of ethics (or morality) as the business of figuring out how to be good rather than bad. That was not the true end of ethics so far as Aristotle was concerned. The end, the ultimate goal, of developing character was fulfillment, becoming who you truly are, being your best in every sense.
Just as the virtue of the knife is to cut, or the virtue of the boat is to sail, the virtue of yourself is becoming who you essentially are. This is happiness (eudemonia). Just as the well-trained athlete talks about "being in the zone," that state of perfect performance, achieved by practice, so Aristotle wrote about a truly virtuous life. To use a sailing metaphor, when you get a sailboat perfectly trimmed, in the grove, you'll feel it, and that's the boat's eudemonia.
All three of the approaches to ethics described above are principally focused on the individual: the singular conscience, rationally reflecting on the meaning of duty or responsibility, and in the case of Virtue Ethics, the ethical athlete practicing and inculcating the capacity to fulfill that duty. Communitarian Ethics has a quite different point of departure, not the individual, but rather the community (or team, or group, or company, or culture) within which the individual places him/herself is the critical context of ethical decision-making.
The Communitarian asks the important question, "What are the demands (duties) that the community(ies) of which I am a part make on me?" The Scottish ethicists W. D. Ross (himself a student of Aristotle) focused his own ethical writings on the question of, "Where do duties come from?" And his answer was that they come from relationships. We know our duties toward our fellow human beings by the nature and quality of our relationships with them. The duty we owe a colleague in the workplace is different from the duties we owe a spouse, and those duties different from the duties we owe our country.
The Communitarian asks us not simply to look within to understand how values should be applied to human conduct, but to look out, and to face up to the duties of being a creature for the company we keep.
Communitarians are quite critical today of the attitude of so many in our society who while adamant about their individual rights are negligent of their social duties. The "me, me, me generation" has given rise to a new breed of ethicists who insist that from family and neighborhood to nation and global ecosystem, the communities in which we live require of us substantial responsibilities. Environmentalists, neighborhood activists, feminists, globalists are some of the groups loosely identified today with the Communitarian Movement.
Amitai Etzioni (Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda, Crown Publishing 1993) is a leading spokesperson for this somewhat disorganized "movement." Etizioni's thesis is that we need to pay more attention to common duties as opposed to individual rights. Our neighborhoods, he believes, can be safe again from crime, without turning our country into a police state. Our families can flourish again without forcing women to stay home and otherwise violating their rights. Our schools can provide "essential moral education" without indoctrinating young people or violating the First Amendment's prohibition of "establishing religion."
The key to this social transformation the communitarian believes is the balancing of rights and responsibilities: "Strong rights presume strong responsibilities." In a long, but single sentence, Etzioni states the Communitarian Agenda: Correcting the current imbalance between rights and responsibilities requires a for-point agenda: a moratorium on the minting of most, if not all, new rights; reestablishing the link between rights and responsibilities; recognizing that some responsibilities do not entail rights; and, most carefully, adjusting some rights to the changed circumstances.
Here, if nothing else, is a frontal attack on the Libertarian mindset of our age. But Communitarianism is not new, at least if one defines it as an approach to ethics and value referencing significant communities of meaning. Most of the world's great religions -- clearly Judaism and Christianity -are in this sense "communitarian." It is the "community of faith" out of which the faithful person develops a sense of self and responsibility. Ethics cannot be separated from the ethos of the religious community. The new communitarian -- the feminist, the environmentalist, the neighborhood rights advocate -- may or may not be religiously inclined, but each is clearly a part of a tradition of ethical approach as old as time.
In the context of teams, the communitarian approach to ethics has much to commend itself. How much of your own personal agenda are you willing to sacrifice for the overall goal of winning a sailboat race? Under what conditions are you willing to let the values or culture (spirit?) of the team alter your own ethical inclinations? To what extent do the relationships you have with team members give rise to duties that you are willing to honor? How willing are you to share the credit when the team succeeds? How willing are you to accept the blame when the team looses? Under what conditions would you break with the team?
All of the above are questions asked by communitarians. If Ross is correct (and I suspect he is to a greater extent than most of us are willing to admit) that duties come from relationships, paying attention to the "company we keep" may be more than a social obligation. It is perhaps our ethical duty.
our purposes, let's use this definition:
Ethics is the discipline and practice of applying value to human behavior
(as well as to the constructs of human culture particularly to morality, customs and
laws) resulting in meaningfulness.
From the earliest moments of recorded human consciousness, the ethical discipline has exhibited four fundamental "approaches" These four approaches are often called "ethical decision-making frameworks:" Utilitarian Ethics (outcome based), Deontological Ethics (duty based), Virtue Ethics (virtue based) and Communitarian Ethics (community based).
Each has a distinctive point of departure as well as distinctive ways of doing the fundamental ethical task of raising and answering questions of value. It is also important to understand that all four approaches have both overlaps and common elements.
Some of the "common elements" of all four approaches are the following:
· Impartiality: weighting interests equally
· Rationality: backed by reasons a rational person would accept
· Consistency: standards applied similarly to similar cases
· Reversibility: standards that apply no matter who "makes" the rules
These are, in a sense, the rules of the "ethics game", no matter which school or approach to ethics one feels the closest identity.
The Utilitarian approach is perhaps the most familiar and easiest to understand of all the four approaches to ethics. Whether we think about it or not, most of us are doing utilitarian ethics a much of the time, especially those of us in business.
The Utilitarians asks a very important question: "How will my actions affect others?" And they go on to attempt to "quantify" the impact of their actions based on some "least common denominator," like happiness, pleasure, or wealth. Therefore, Utilitarians are also called "consequentalists" because they look to the consequences of their actions to determine whether any particular act is right or wrong.
"The greatest good for the greatest number" is the Utilitarian motto. Of course, defining "good" has been no easy task, others think of as worthless. When a businessperson does a "cost benefit analysis," he/she is doing Utilitarian ethics. The least common denominator is usually money. Everything from the cost of steel to the cost of a human life must be given a dollar value, and then one "just does the math." The Ford Pinto was a product of just such reasoning thirty years ago at the Ford Motor Company. Fixing the gas-tank problem Ford reasoned would cost more than human lives were worth. Stuff (like rear-end accidents) happens. Folks die.
The most familiar use of "outcome based reasoning" is in legislative committees in representative democracies. How many constituents will benefit from a tax credit vs. how many will be diminished is the question before the Revenue Committee at tax rectification time.
Representative democracies depend on most decisions being decided on the greatest good for the greatest number. Democratic governments are naturally majoritarian. But in constitutional democracies there are some things that cannot be decided by "doing the math", i.e. adding up the votes. Some questions should not even be voted on. The founders of our nation expressed this fundamental concept with three words: certain unalienable rights.
Enter the Deontological Ethicists. Immanuel Kant is the quintessential (1724-1804), was one of the most amazing intellects of all time, writing books on astronomy, philosophy, politics and ethics. He once said, "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe . . . the starry heavens above and the moral law within." For Kant there were some verities as eternal as the stars.
"Deontological" simply means the study (or science) of duty. Kant did not believe that humans could predict "outcomes" (future consequences) with any substantial degree of certainty. Ethical theory based on a "guess" about future consequences appalled him. What he did believe was that if we used our unique (unique among the higher animals) facility of reason, we could determine with certainty our ethical duty, but whether or not doing our duty would make things better or worse (and for whom), he was agnostic.
Duty-based ethics is enormously important for, though consistently ignored by, at least two kinds of folks: politicians and business people. It is also the key to understanding better our responsibilities as members of teams. Teams (like workgroups or political campaign committees) are narrowly focused on achieving very clearly defined goals: winning the election, successfully introducing a new product, or winning a sailboat race. Sometimes a coach or a boss will say, "Look, just do whatever it takes." Ethically, "whatever it takes" means the ends justify the means. This was Kant's fundamental criticism of the Utilitarians.
For Kant, there were some values (duties) that could never be sacrificed to the "greater good." "So act", he wrote, "as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only."
Fellow team members, employees, campaign staffs, customers, partners etc. are always to some extent "means" to our various goals (ends), but they are also persons. And persons, Kant believed, cannot be "just used," they must also be respected in their own right whether or not the goal is achieved. He called this absolute respect for persons a "Categorical Imperative."
In any team situation, the goal is critical, but treating team-members with respect is imperative. Teams fall apart when a team-member feels used or abused, that is, treated as less important than the overall goal itself. Great leaders (coaches, bosses, presidents) carry the double burden of achieving a worthwhile end without causing those who sacrifice to achieve the goal being trashed as merely expendable. Persons are never merely a means to an end. They are ends in themselves! We owe that understanding to Immanuel Kant.
It is one thing to understand that there are duties which do not depend on consequences; it is quite another to develop the character to act on those duties. This is where Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) comes in. Aristotle wrote the first systematic treatment of ethics in Western Civilization: The Nicomachean Ethic. Today we call this approach to ethics today "virtue ethics."
For Aristotle "virtue" meant (as it did for other Greek thinkers) "the excellence of a thing." The virtue of a knife is to cut. The virtue of a physician is to heal. The virtue of a lawyer is to seek justice. Ethics in this sense is the discipline of discovering and practicing virtue. Aristotle begins his thinking about ethics by asking, "what do people desire?" And he discovers the usual things - wealth, honor, physical and psychological security - but he realizes that these things are not ends in themselves; they are means to ends.
The ultimate end for a person, Aristotle taught, must be an end that is self-sufficient - "that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else." This end of ends, Aristotle designates with the Greek word "eudemonia", usually translated by the English word "happiness." But happiness does not do Aristotle or his ethics justice. Yes, eudemonia means happiness, but really so much more. "Fulfillment" or "full flourishing" or "being all that you can be" are the sort of words needed to understand the concept contained in the Greek word eudemonia and that is where virtue and character come in.
Aristotle thought that one discovers virtue by using his/her unique gift of human reasoning, that is, through rational contemplation. "The unexamined life is not worth living," wrote Socrates almost 100 years before Aristotle. And like Aristotle and Aristotle's teacher Plato, Socrates knew that we two legged creatures need to engage our brains before we open our mouths or spring into some decisive action. For Aristotle, the focus of that brainwork was chiefly about how to balance between the fears and excesses in which the human condition always abounds. Between our fears (deficits) and exuberances (excesses) lies a sweet spot, a "golden mean," called virtue.
An example. At times of physical peril, say in a big storm on a small sailboat, one may be immobilized by fear and unable to function putting at risk not only his life, but that of crewmates as well. Or the opposite could happen. A devil-may-care attitude in the face of real danger can as easily lead to disaster. Courage is the virtue located at the mean between cowardness and rashness. But identifying such a virtue and making that virtue a part of ones character are two quiet different things. Aristotle called one "intellectual virtue" and the other "practical virtue."
Practical virtues were characteristics - a part of a person's character - developed by practice.
Practice is how one learns to deal with fear; practice is how one learns to tell the truth; practice is how one learns to face both personal and professional conflicts, and practice is the genius of Aristotle's contribution to the development of ethics. Virtues do not become a part of our moral muscle fiber because we believe in them, or advocate them. Virtues become characteristics by being exercised. How does one learn to be brave in a storm at sea? "Just do it."
And the ultimate goal of developing characteristics of virtue: eudemonia, a full flourishing of self, true happiness. Many of us from the Judaic-Christian tradition tend to think of ethics (or morality) as the business of figuring out how to be good rather than bad. That was not the true end of ethics so far as Aristotle was concerned. The end, the ultimate goal, of developing character was fulfillment, becoming who you truly are, being your best in every sense.
Just as the virtue of the knife is to cut, or the virtue of the boat is to sail, the virtue of yourself is becoming who you essentially are. This is happiness (eudemonia). Just as the well-trained athlete talks about "being in the zone," that state of perfect performance, achieved by practice, so Aristotle wrote about a truly virtuous life. To use a sailing metaphor, when you get a sailboat perfectly trimmed, in the grove, you'll feel it, and that's the boat's eudemonia.
All three of the approaches to ethics described above are principally focused on the individual: the singular conscience, rationally reflecting on the meaning of duty or responsibility, and in the case of Virtue Ethics, the ethical athlete practicing and inculcating the capacity to fulfill that duty. Communitarian Ethics has a quite different point of departure, not the individual, but rather the community (or team, or group, or company, or culture) within which the individual places him/herself is the critical context of ethical decision-making.
The Communitarian asks the important question, "What are the demands (duties) that the community(ies) of which I am a part make on me?" The Scottish ethicists W. D. Ross (himself a student of Aristotle) focused his own ethical writings on the question of, "Where do duties come from?" And his answer was that they come from relationships. We know our duties toward our fellow human beings by the nature and quality of our relationships with them. The duty we owe a colleague in the workplace is different from the duties we owe a spouse, and those duties different from the duties we owe our country.
The Communitarian asks us not simply to look within to understand how values should be applied to human conduct, but to look out, and to face up to the duties of being a creature for the company we keep.
Communitarians are quite critical today of the attitude of so many in our society who while adamant about their individual rights are negligent of their social duties. The "me, me, me generation" has given rise to a new breed of ethicists who insist that from family and neighborhood to nation and global ecosystem, the communities in which we live require of us substantial responsibilities. Environmentalists, neighborhood activists, feminists, globalists are some of the groups loosely identified today with the Communitarian Movement.
Amitai Etzioni (Spirit of Community: Rights, Responsibilities and the Communitarian Agenda, Crown Publishing 1993) is a leading spokesperson for this somewhat disorganized "movement." Etizioni's thesis is that we need to pay more attention to common duties as opposed to individual rights. Our neighborhoods, he believes, can be safe again from crime, without turning our country into a police state. Our families can flourish again without forcing women to stay home and otherwise violating their rights. Our schools can provide "essential moral education" without indoctrinating young people or violating the First Amendment's prohibition of "establishing religion."
The key to this social transformation the communitarian believes is the balancing of rights and responsibilities: "Strong rights presume strong responsibilities." In a long, but single sentence, Etzioni states the Communitarian Agenda: Correcting the current imbalance between rights and responsibilities requires a for-point agenda: a moratorium on the minting of most, if not all, new rights; reestablishing the link between rights and responsibilities; recognizing that some responsibilities do not entail rights; and, most carefully, adjusting some rights to the changed circumstances.
Here, if nothing else, is a frontal attack on the Libertarian mindset of our age. But Communitarianism is not new, at least if one defines it as an approach to ethics and value referencing significant communities of meaning. Most of the world's great religions -- clearly Judaism and Christianity -are in this sense "communitarian." It is the "community of faith" out of which the faithful person develops a sense of self and responsibility. Ethics cannot be separated from the ethos of the religious community. The new communitarian -- the feminist, the environmentalist, the neighborhood rights advocate -- may or may not be religiously inclined, but each is clearly a part of a tradition of ethical approach as old as time.
In the context of teams, the communitarian approach to ethics has much to commend itself. How much of your own personal agenda are you willing to sacrifice for the overall goal of winning a sailboat race? Under what conditions are you willing to let the values or culture (spirit?) of the team alter your own ethical inclinations? To what extent do the relationships you have with team members give rise to duties that you are willing to honor? How willing are you to share the credit when the team succeeds? How willing are you to accept the blame when the team looses? Under what conditions would you break with the team?
All of the above are questions asked by communitarians. If Ross is correct (and I suspect he is to a greater extent than most of us are willing to admit) that duties come from relationships, paying attention to the "company we keep" may be more than a social obligation. It is perhaps our ethical duty.