INTRODUCTION: ETHICS AND MORAL
1. THE CONCEPTS: ETHICS, MORAL, AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY
1.1. ETHICS, MORAL, AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY
● In our daily life, many people use ethics and moral when they want to refer to the same reality.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Ethics is the study of moral principles. Moral is an adjective. It means: “concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour”.
Very often the expressions Ethics and Moral Philosophy have the same meaning: “Ethics, also known as moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice, etc.” (Wikipedia).
● Etymology: The term moral is essentially equivalent to the term ethics. Moral is derived from the Latin word “mores”, and ethics from the Greek word “ethos”, both referring to customary behaviour.
● There is also a tendency to use “moral” in the religious language and “ethics” in the secular language.
● In a philosophical sense, we can establish an important difference:
We can consider that moral is the study of the practices, beliefs, and conceptual schemes that people use in their live. Some philosophers prefer to call it “descriptive ethics”.
Ethics is the philosophical (theoretical) inquiry in relation with the contents of moral. Albert and al. explain this interpretation:
In dealing with principles which establish standards for action, the ethical theorist “is interested in the examination of underlying assumptions and the critical evaluation of principles”(5).
1.2. AREAS OF ETHICS
In our days, many philosophers consider that ethical theories can be distributed into three areas. Others think that it is necessary to study also the fourth area (or other areas).
● 1. Metaethics (meta-ethics) studies: (a) the meaning of ethical concepts, (b) the meaning of ethical judgment, and (c) the origin of ethical principles. Metaethics studies also how can be determined (or not determined) their truth-values.
a) What is the meaning of concepts like good, bad, right, wrong… ?
b) What is the role of emotions and the role of reason in ethical judgments?
c) Where do ethics come from? (from God, from an abstract world where concepts exist in some way, from agreement between people, from a consideration of duty, from a consideration of virtue, from a consideration of the consequences of various actions?).
Are principles, like “the golden rule” (do to others what you would like that they do to you) universal truths or are they social constructions? “Where do rights come from?” and “What kind of beings have rights?”.
Do we have an ethical system independent of our own opinions that could be applied to any situation at any time or place?
Meta-ethics as a discipline gained attention with G.E. Moore's famous work Principia Ethica (1903).
“The semantics of ethics divides naturally into descriptivism and non- descriptivism. Descriptivism holds that ethical language (including ethical commands and duties) is a subdivision of descriptive language and has meaning in virtue of the same kind of properties as descriptive propositions. Non-descriptivism contends that ethical propositions are irreducible in the sense that their meaning cannot be explicated sufficiently in terms of descriptive truth-conditions”.
● 2. Normative ethics explains how our behavior has to be. It presents “the search for a principle (or principles) that guide or regulate human conduct—that tell us what is right or wrong. A norm is just another way of saying "standard", so normative ethics is the attempt to find a single test or criterion for what constitutes moral behaviour—and what does not”. (Paul Newall, An introduction to ethics, galilean-library.org).
● 3. Applied ethics tries to explain how we must act in different social fields putting in practice normative ethics and metaethics, especially when they are different interpretations.
Applied ethics is “the study of specific problems or issues with the use or application of moral ideas investigated in normative ethics and based on the lessons of metaethics. Applied ethics may sometimes coincide with political or social questions but always involves a moral dimension” (Paul Newall).
We find applied ethics in the different professions (ethics of medicine, ethics of companies, ethics of education…) and in controversial issues such as the right to life: abortion, capital punishment; the rights of nature: environment; the rights of animals…).
● 4. Moral psychology studies the development of the conscience, as moral capacity, in human beings and what is its nature.
1.3. WHERE ARE THE ROOTS OF ETHICS?
Are the roots of Ethics in impersonal rational arguments (descriptivism) or in expressions of preference and feelings (non-descriptivism)?
The answer is in direct relationship with our interpretation about human being and mankind and, in fact, there is a profound disagreement between different people.
According to Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue:6):
“The most striking feature of contemporary moral utterance is that so much of it is used to express disagreement; and the most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character. I do not mean by this just that such debates go on and on –although they do- but also that they apparently can find no terminus” (no ending).
MacIntyre helps us to understand this basic issue with a dialogue (8-9):
- “Do-so-and-so.
- Why should I do do-and-so?”.
Explanation 1: “Because it will give pleasure to a number of people”, or “because it is your duty” (evaluative expression based on impersonal rational criteria).
Explanation 2: “Because I wish it” (I am your superior officer, or I am your friend…) (expressions of personal preference and feelings).
In the Western tradition, the majority of explanations in ethical theory, until the Enlightenment, tried to be based in impersonal rational criteria. The idea of rational Ethics is also present in our days in many philosophers.
During the Enlightenment (especially in eighteenth century) and in our days, we have also a different explanation: emotivism.
Emotivism “is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expression of attitude or feeling, insofar al they are moral or evaluative in character. … Factual judgments are true or false… but moral judgments, being expressions of attitude or feelings, are neither true nor false; and agreement in moral judgment is not to be secured by any rational method, for there are none” (MacIntyre:11-12).
1. VIRTUES IN TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES (IN THE EAST AND IN THE WEST) 1.1. A sociological interpretation: Durkheim. 1.2. The virtues in heroic societies (In the West) (in MacIntyre, pp. 114-122). 1.3. The virtues in India (Vedic Age)
1.1. A SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION: EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917)
Durheim was born in Epinal (France) to a family of rabbis. He enters at the École Normale Supérieure and receives a degree in philosophy and professorships. In 1885-86 he take a leave of absence to study the social sciences in Paris (France) and in Germany. In 1887 he is appointed professor of pedagogy and social science in the University of Bordeaux.
His interpretations of modern societies (in the Western countries, one hundred years ago):
1. Modern society implies an extreme differentiation of jobs and professions.
- How to ensure the necessary intellectual and moral coherence? How can a multiplicity of individuals make up a society? A consensus?
- The answers are: 1. To set up a distinction between two forms of solidarity: mechanical and organic. 2. To understand that there is an evolution in every society (from mechanical to organic solidarity). 3. To promote solidarity, in his time, organic solidarity.
2. Mechanical and organic solidarity
● Mechanical solidarity is solidarity of resemblance. The individuals differ from one another as little as possible. They feel the same emotions, cherish the same values, and hold the same things sacred. The society is coherent because the individuals are not yet differentiated.
● Organic solidarity is one in which the coherent unity of the collectivity results from or is expressed by differentiation. The individuals are different, and precisely for this reason consensus is achieved. It is like the parts of an organism, with different functions.
The two forms of solidarity correspond to two extreme forms of social organization. The primitive or archaic societies, without writing, are characterized by the predominance of mechanical solidarity. The individuals are interchangeable because every individual is very similar to the others. The individual does not come first. In the consciousness of each individual, feelings common to all predominate in number and intensity.
The opposition between these two forms of solidarity is combined with the opposition between segmental societies and societies characterized by modern division of labour. A society with mechanical solidarity is also a segmental society. In his language a segment designates a social group in which the individuals are tightly incorporated. But a segment is also a group locally situated, relatively isolated from others, which leads its own life. The segment is characterized by a mechanical solidarity of resemblance. The segment is self-sufficient. Segmental organization is contradictory with organic solidarity. But, according to Durkheim, in certain societies with advanced forms of economic division of labour, segmental structure may still persist in part (for instance, in the continuance of local autonomies and in the force of tradition).
Differentiation of occupations and multiplication of industrial activities are an expression of the social differentiation. The origin of social differentiation is the disintegration of mechanical solidarity and segmental structure.
3. Collective consciousness
Every society needs a collective consciousness (beliefs and sentiments common to the average of the members of a society). In societies where mechanical solidarity predominates, the collective consciousness embraces the greater part of individual consciousness.
In societies of which differentiation of individuals is a characteristic, everyone is free to believe, to desire, and to act according to his own preferences in a large number of circumstances. There is a greater margin for the individual interpretation of social imperatives.
In primitive societies, collective consciousness embraces the greater part of individual existence. The sentiments experienced in common have an extreme violence, manifested in the severity of punishments inflicted on those who violate the prohibitions. In primitive societies justice means that a given individual receives a given thing. In organic societies that each receives his due. This due can be many possible things.
4. Durkheim sees organic solidarity, with social differentiation (division of labour), as the structural characteristic of modern societies.
The social phenomenon that explain it is a combination of the volume (the number of individuals belonging to a given collectivity), the material density (number of individuals on a given ground surface), and the moral density of the society (the intensity of communication between individuals). The struggle for survival is important: the more individuals are trying to live together, the more intense the struggle for survival. Social differentiation enables a greater number of individuals to survive by differentiation. Each man is only in competition with a few and his occupation could correspond with his aptitudes and desires. The basic principle of modern societies is individualism.
5. The societies with organic differentiation need collective consciousness.
They could not endure if there were not collective imperatives and prohibitions, collective values and things held sacred to bind individuals to the social entity (Aron, V. 1:24). Individualism, desirable in itself, can, also, create problems. In our societies it is not easy to accept social imperatives and, also, we can demand more from society than society can give to us. There must be discipline, which can only be social.
The family group, the religious group, and the political group (specially the State) do not provide a social context that would give the individual enough security while subjecting him to the demands of solidarity.
The functions of the family are declining in modern society. Its economic role decreased. The family cannot be the intermediary between the individual and the collectivity. And the state or a political group are to far from the individual, too abstract to offer the context necessary for integration. Religions have lost the function of social constrain and we need discipline. They appeal to individuals to transcend their passions, to live according spiritual laws, but they are no longer capable of specifying the obligations of rules which man should obey in his secular life. They have little authority over morals in action.
Durkheim thinks that the only social group that might foster the integration of individuals in the collectivity is the professional organization, or to use his own term, the “corporation”. He means professional organizations which could apparently include employers and employees, closed enough to the individual to constitute schools of discipline and far enough above him to enjoy prestige and authority. Being professional organizations, corporations would correspond to the major characteristic of modern societies in which economic activity prevails (41). Socialists and liberals did not accept these corporations.
1.2. THE VIRTUES IN HEROIC SOCIETIES (In the West)
(MacIntyre, pp. 32; 114-122)
a. Identification in traditional (heroic) societies
In many traditional societies the individual identifies himself and his identified by others through his or her membership in a variety of social groups. This person is a brother, a cousin...; he belongs to this household, that village, this tribe.
These characteristics explain, partially at least and sometimes wholly, who he is and his duties. Individuals inherit a particular space made by social relationships. Without that space, they are nobody, or at least a stranger or an outcast.
b. Moral education
In all traditional cultures (and also in Greek, medieval or Renaissance societies), the chief means of moral education is the telling of stories (114).
Where Christians or Judaism or Islam have prevailed biblical stories are as important as any others. Many of the stories derive and tell about the vanished heroic age.
c. Heroic societies and heroic values
In sixth-century Athens the formal recitation of the Homeric poems was established in a public ceremony; the poems were written during or before the seventh century before Jesus Christ, but they speak of a very much earlier time (114).
Such narratives did provide the historical memory, adequate or inadequate, of the societies in which they were finally written down (114). The understanding of heroic society is a necessary part of the understanding of classical society and of its successors.
What are its key features?
1. The basic values of society were given. Every individual has a given role and a status within a well-defined and highly determinate system of roles and statuses. In such a society a man knows who he is by knowing his role in these structures; and, in knowing this, he knows also what he owes and what is owed to him by the occupant of every other role and status. Without such a place in the social order, a man would be incapable of receiving recognition and response from others and he would not know who he was (116).
2. What are required are actions. There is a clear understanding of what actions are required in order to perform his duties and what actions fall short of what is required. A man in a heroic society is what he does (114). To judge a man is to judge his actions. By performing actions of a particular kind in a particular situation we understand his virtues and his vices.
3. Important virtues were: courage, intelligence, friendship, fidelity, the household, honour, and to know how to act in relation with fate, life and death (117).
“Areté” (“virtue”) was used for excellence of any kind. Courage is one of the central virtues. It is a quality of an individual, and also a quality to sustain a household and a community.
United to courage, cunning is important where courage fails or is lacking. Courage is also an important ingredient in friendship. Another ingredient in friendship is fidelity.
Life is the standard of value. If someone kills you (my friend of brother), I owe you their death and when I have paid my debt to you their friend or brother owes them my death. The more extended my system of kinsmen and friends, the more liabilities I shall incur of a kind that may end in my death (117).
Honour is conferred by one’s peer and without honour a man is without worth.
There are powers in the world that no one can control. Human life is invaded by passions, which appear sometimes as impersonal forces, sometimes as gods. Neither willing nor cunning will enable anyone to evade them. Fate is a social reality.
Death is an unmixed evil; the ultimate evil is death followed by desecration of the body. The latter is an evil suffered by the kin ant the household of the dead man as well as by the corpse. Conversely it is through the performance of burial rites that the family and the community restore their integrity after the death of what was part of them.
Prosperity is a by-product of achievement in war and from this we have a paradox: people who pursue that course which entitles them to happiness that is represented by orchards and cornfields, pursue a course whose characteristic end is, very often, death (120).
c. Virtues and social structure
Any adequate account of the virtues would be impossible without their context in its social structure. Morality and social structure are in fact one and the same in heroic societies. The exercise of the heroic virtues requires both a particular kind of human being and a particular kind of social structure (119).
The self of the heroic age lacks that characteristic that some modern philosophers take to be an essential characteristic of human selfhood: the capacity to detach oneself from any particular standpoint, to step backwards, and view and judge that standpoint from the outside. In heroic society there is no “outside” except that of a stranger.
Perhaps, what we have to learn from heroic societies is twofold:
“first that all morality is always to some degree tied to the socially local and particular and that the aspirations of the morality of modernity to a universality freed from all particularity is an illusion; and secondly that there is no way to posses the virtues except as part or a tradition in which we inherit them and our understanding of them from a series of predecessors in which series heroic societies hold first place. If this is so, the contrast between the freedom of choice of values on which modernity prides itself and the absence of such choice in heroic cultures would look very different” (119).
This type of heroic poetry represents a form of society about whose moral structure two central claims are made. The first is that the structure embodies a conceptual scheme which has three central interrelated elements: a conception of what is required by social roles which each individual inhabits; a conception of excellences or virtues as those qualities which enable an individual to do what his or her role requires; and a conception of the human condition as fragile and vulnerable to destiny and death, such that to be virtuous is not avoid vulnerabilities and death, but rather to accord them their due. All three elements can fin their interrelated places in the narrative form of epic or saga, a form embodied in the moral life of individuals and in the collective social structure (121).
“The Iliad puts in question what neither Achilles nor Hector can put in question; the poem lays claim of a form of understanding which it denies to those actions it describes” (121). The Homer of the Iliad transcends the limitations of the society that he portrays (120).
1.3. ETHICS IN INDIA
Bibliography: Neria Harish Hebbar, Ethics of Hinduism, in Internet; Mackenzie, D. A., Myths and legends of India, Senate, Twickenham, 1998 (First ed. 1913); Hindu ethics, Helicon Publishing, Research Machines plc 2009: in Internet.
1.3.1. The religious history of India
According to Mackenzie we can establish 4 periods.
1. The Vedic Age. The religious organization was of patriarchal character; the goddesses remain shadowy and vague. The principal Aryan deities were Indra, Agni, and Varuna. The rise of the goddesses may have been due in part to the influence of Dravidian folk-religion.
Indra, is the king of the gods. He was: the thunder that brought rain to the pasture lands, the god of fertility, the friend of man, the artisan of the universe which was shaped with his hammer, the giant killer, the god of war. He is not a creator, but an artisan god. He battles with the Drought Demons, especially with the demon Vitra, and released the imprisoned cow-clouds, which give nourishment to his human friends. Arjuna is his son.
Agni is the messenger between gods and men; he conducts the deities to the sacrifice and the souls of the cremated dead to Paradise; he is also the twin brother of Indra.
He symbolized the principle of life. He is present in man, in beast, in fish, in plants and trees. He was made manifest in lightning, in the flames of the sun, in the fire of the altar, in homely household fires.
He was the divine priest in contrast with Indra, the divine warrior. Both are consumer of Soma (the drink that gave immortality).
Varuna is a great rival of Indra. He was the “all enveloping one”, the sustainer of the universe, the god of moral rectitude and the sublime sovereign of gods and men (26). Associated with Varuna was the god Mitra.
Yama is the first man, and kind of the dead. In early Vedic times the dead were either buried or cremated.
People were buried or cremated. Some people were buried because their families believed that the dead walked on foot towards the Paradise. On the other hand, when there is a cremation, it signifies that the souls were transferred to a special place “through the medium of fire, which drove away all spirits and demons that threatened mankind” (38).
Yama and his sister Yami are the first human pair. They are the primeval twins. Their father was Vivasvant (the bright sky?).
Yama was also the kind of the death. He explored the hidden regions and discovered what was known as the “path of the fathers” (40).
2. The Brahmanical age. At the end of this age Vishnu and Shiva are deities of growing ascendancy. Two distinct currents of thought characterize this age: the growth of priestly influence, which is the feature of the Brahmanas, and the clear pantheism of the Upanishads.
3.The Buddhist age. This age begins six centuries before Christ. Buddhism became the national religion. Buddha was of the Kshatriya caste. The revolts which gave India Buddhism (and Jainism) originated among the Kshatriyas. The teachers and disciples were chiefly from the aristocratic class. In this period, monastic orders came into existence for men and woman. Missionaries went to other countries.
4. The age of the reform and revival of Brahmanism begins in the tenth century of our era. The principal gods are Vishnu -a dark god with four arms, and from time to time he assumes a human form (the Avatars)…; and Shiva.
3.1.2. From Vedic Age to the revival of Brahmanism
Between 2000 B.C. and 1200 B.C., tribes of pastoral peoples of Aryan speech came through the north-western frontier and settled in the Punjab. The period between migrations and 800 (or 700) B.C. is usually referred to as the Vedic Age.
Social organization
The social organization of the Vedic Aryans was based upon the principle of “father right”, as contrasted with the principle of “mother right” recognized by representative communities of the brown race (XXX) (Dravidian). The Aryans were a people mainly pastoral but with some knowledge of agriculture.
In times of war there was a federation of small clans. The necessity of having to conduct frequent campaigns in a new country tended to create small kingdoms.
In the latter Vedic age a rigid system of castes came into existence. They were the result of distinguishing between Aryans and aborigines, and subsequently between the various degrees of Aryans who had intermarried with aliens. The Aryans were the fairest people; the aborigines were dark-skinned.
Caste (Varna) signifies colour, and its relation to occupation is apparent in the four divisions: Brahmans (priests), Kshatriyas (the military aristocracy), Vaisyas (commoners, workers, and traders, who were free men), and Sudras (slaves and aborigines).
3.1.3. Religion and Ethics
According Neria Harish Hebbar, three documents, namely the Upanishads, Bhagavad-Gita and Brahma Sutra form the basis of Vedanta. From these scriptures are drawn Hindu ethics that help in guiding the Hindu through his daily as well as spiritual journey.
There are six great sayings (Mahavakyas) from the Upanishads that give the basic insight into its philosophy (Neria Harish Hebbar):
1. 'I am Brahman' (Aham Brahmasmi): our own 'Self' is the true Divinity. The Truth is within us, in our own heart. This states the identity of the inner most consciousness of the individual with the supreme Divine.
2. 'The Self is Brahman' (Ayam Atma Brahma): not only individual soul is Divine but all beings are identified with the Absolute Truth.
3. 'That art thou' (Tat Tvam Asi): Whatever we see or think about, we are That. We are the ultimate Thou and I in all.
4. 'Knowledge is Brahman' (Prajnanam Brahma): Supreme intelligence is present inherently within us and is capable of returning us to the Divine. Our understanding of the truth is the Truth itself.
5. 'The whole universe is Brahman' (Sarvam Kalvidam Brahma): Not only the consciousness in you and I but also the 'principle of being' are all Divine. The entire universe is Divine, which includes our Self.
6. 'Here am I' (So 'ham): This identifies the Divinity in our Self in something that happens naturally like breathing. 'So' is inhalation and 'Ham' is the natural sound of exhalation.
These six statements of the identity of individual consciousness with the Divine reality merge into and derive from the word 'Om (Aum)' or the Divine word 'I Am All'. All of these statements point to the fact that whatever or however we worship, be it an image, book, an idea or even a God, it is the knowledge that the Truth is within ourselves that will ultimately lead to self-realization. Self is the true Divinity. This is the essence of Upanishads.
3.1.4. Virtues in India
Hindu ethics are related to reincarnation, that means the need for reciprocity, as one may end up in someone else situation in the next incarnation. Some virtues are for everyone and other virtues that belong to a caste.
General virtues
- Respect and love for nature (the majority of the people works in agriculture).
- The soul within us is the soul shared by all. The greeting namaskar is founded on the principle that one salutes the spark of the divine in the other.
- Kindness and hospitality are key Hindu values.
- Love and respect in the family, especially in relation to elders.
- Solidarity in daily life and in festivals.
- There are four great aims of human life, namely dharma or righteousness, artha or wealth, kama or enjoyment and moksha or spiritual liberation.
- A Hindu is advised to contain and restrain all the emotions that may lead to a sinful existence. Thus he is asked to control such emotions as Kama (lust), Krodha (anger), Mada (ego, pride) and Matsara (jealousy) (Neria Harish Hebbar).
- For Hindus, there are four goals in life: love or pleasure (kama), material wealth (artha), the path (dharma), and release from reincarnation (moksha). Dharma is based on sympathy, fairness, and restraint. Sin is to act selfishly instead of following dharma. Hindus aspire to equanimity and a sense of calmness (shama). Asceticism, the renunciation of physical pleasure, is a path taken by only a very small minority of Hindus (Hindu ethics). |
Family
Interpretations related to family:
- Some of the ancestors are gods or celestials beings.
- The beginning of a family is the marriage. Usually it is an arranged marriage.
- The ideal of the wife is to be a virgin in the moment of the marriage.
- There is love in relation to wife or husband, to their sons, and to the parents. The life of their relatives is more important than their own life.
- In a family everyone protects and aids each other. Personal goals, such as individualism and self-expression, are considered less important than family goals (Hindu ethics).
- Money may be shared communally by all the relatives, and the whole family may help to run the family business.
The Virtues of the Brahmans
The ideals of the Brahmans were of a high order. Their lives were consecrated to the instruction of mankind and the attainment of salvation. The most renowned of early Brahmans were the Rishis, the poets who composed the new songs to the gods (Mackenzie).
A Brahman’s life was divided into four periods. The first was the childhood. The second was the period of probation, when he went to live in a forest hermitage, where he acted as the servant of a revered old sage, his spiritual father, and received instruction in Brahmanic knowledge. During the third period the Brahman lived the worldly life, he married and reared a family and performed the duties of his caste. In the fourth period he divided his possessions between his grown-up sons and daughters and he goes to a forest or among the Himalayan Mountains. In solitude, he performed rigid penances and he dedicated himself to contemplation (state of yoga). The forest hermitages were the universities of old India.
The Brahmans introduced and elaborated alphabetic signs; they compiled the first Sanskrit grammar and studied the art of composition. Among the hermits there were original thinkers. At the same time, the necessity of the exact construction of altars promoted the study of mathematics (especially algebra).
Everything was not in a idealistic way: “The profession of the priesthood had certainly its mercenary aspect; sacrificial fees were fixed as well as sacrificial rites, and an not unimportant part of the ceremony was the offering of generous gifts to the Brahmans, who presided at the altar” (82).
In the third veda, the Yajurveda, the Kshatriyas have controlled the destinies of the people, but now the Brahmans achieve an intellectual conquest and impose their power over kings and nobles. They are no longer the humble servants of generous patrons; they are the human representatives of the deities (84). In this sense, the feeding of the priests consecrates the offerings to the deities.
Even the gods became dependent upon the priests, who provided them by offering sacrifices with the food that they needed, and also with the Soma which gave them length of years. The god Indra is an example. He could not combat against the Asuras without the assistance of the priests who chanted formulas to ensure victory.
Different virtues in the system of castes and in the system of tribes
- Acceptance of the system (in one situation castes; in the other one: clan and tribe).
- There are laws in relation with marriage (“exogamy”, dowry, days of celebration), but they are different.
- The majority believe in life after death, but they are different beliefs about the destination of the soul: transmigration of souls; Brahman and Atman…
- The four principal castes are: the priest-teacher or Brahmin, the warrior or kshatriya, the trader or vaishya and the worker or shudra.
Mahatma Gandhi´s Proposals
Mohandas Gandhi tried to change caste norms these and emphasize traditions shared in all the Indian faiths:
- vegetarianism and an ideology of harms reduction leading ultimately to nonviolence;
- active creation of truth through courage;
- rejection of cowardice and concern with pain or indeed bodily harm.
These views spread widely and influence much modern thinking on ethics today, especially in the peace movement, ecology movement, and those devoted to social activism.
2. THE VIRTUES IN ATHENS
2.1. New situation in Athens: the Sophists and Socrates. 2.2. Plato. 2.3. Aristotle
2.1. THE NEW SITUATION IN ATHENS: THE SOPHISTS AND SOCRATES
The belief that heroic societies had existed was crucial to those classical societies, which understood themselves as having emerged from the conflicts of heroic societies. The heroic literature was a central part in their culture.
At the same time, there is a big change, in relation with virtues, in the new society. Primary moral community is no longer the kinship, but the city-state and the Athenian democracy in particular, but certain forms and claims of kinship survive (MacIntyre:124). In Homer the question of honour is the question of what is due to a king; in Athens what is due to a man that is a citizen of the city-state.
In the Greek tradition, some old virtues are accepted: friendship, courage, self-restrain, wisdom, and justice, but sometimes they have a new meaning (126). Other virtues became important. One good example is sophrosune, the virtue of a man who could but does not abuse his power. Another word related with ethics is dike, the order of the universe.
The theological Christian virtues (faith, hope, charity) and other Christian virtues, like humility, do not appear in Greece or, if they appear, they have a different sense. A modern virtue, consciousness, did not appear has an important virtue in Athens.
The virtues allow a man to question the life of his own community. He can decide if this policy or that practice is just. At the same time, he possesses the understanding of the virtues because he lives in a city-state.
Sophists
We have not received books written by the sophists.
Part of the original impulse behind the sophistic view seems to have being the need to educate the young, particularly the aristocratic young, for success in life (especially political success).
We can find the opinions of some important sophists in the books of Plato. Trasymachus makes success the only goal of action. We will have success if we have the power to do and to get whatever we want; but success must be success in some particular city. Because of this, the ethics of success comes to be combined with a certain kind of relativism (130).
What is considered to be just in democratic Athens may be different in aristocratic Thebes or in military Sparta. The sophistic conclusion is that in each particular city the virtues are what they are taken to be in that city (130). There is not justice as such, but only justice as understood in Athens, in Sparta…
The sophist Callicles is glorifies the man who uses his intelligence to dominate and who uses his domination to satisfy his desires without limit (131).
Other ideas in the sophistic movement (Albert:14ss.) are:
- The weak values justice only because it restrains the strong.
- Every man would take advantage of his neighbours if he were certain that he would not be apprehended and punished.
- Injustice is more profitable than justice, provided it is possible to escape detection.
- Pleasure is the supreme good and injustice is better than justice because it brings more pleasure (in the dialogue Gorgias).
Socrates (469-399 B.C.)
Cf. Albert, E., Denise, Th., and Peterfreund, S., Great traditions in ethics.
Socrates was not an author of books. We know some of his interpretations because Plato, in his first dialogues, presents Socrates’s philosophical points of view.
He used the dialectical method (a discussion with questions and answers) in order to arrive at definitions that explain reality, especially the ethical aspects.
One of his principal ideas is that the life of reason is the happiest and best, because knowledge leads to virtue. There is a necessary connection between knowledge and virtue (Albert:11).
Socrates was condemned to death in the charge of being an evildoer, making the young people corrupt, and being a curious person creating problems.
2.2. PLATO (427-347 B.C.)
Life. Plato was an aristocrat. His birth coincides closely with the death of Pericles, the more important leader of democratic Athens and with the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. His position and wealth enabled him to receive the best education possible for an Athenian youth (Albert:9-10).
When he was 20 years old, he became a disciple of Socrates. The trial and death of the master signifies for him the need to go away during twelve years. When he was 40 years old he returned to Athens and founded a great school of philosophy, the Academy, where he was teaching until his death at the age of eighty. His books are dialogues and Socrates is the protagonist. In the later dialogues he gives his own opinions, he speaks through Socrates (Albert:10).
Ethical theory
Plato’s ethical theory is an attempt to answer the question: What is the good life? He accepts from Socrates that when a man truly knows what is good, he will do what is good.
Two basic philosophical conceptions are especially relevant to ethics: the theory of ideas and the doctrine of teleology.
1. The theory of Ideas. “This theory involves the belief that general conceptions are not derived from experience but are logically prior to it” (Albert: 12). Our soul knew these ideas (for example, what is a perfect circle) in the World of Ideas (of Forms), before being send to this material world.
The idea of the Good is the principal idea in itself and in relation to ethics.
… In the world of knowledge the (Idea of the Good) appears last of all, it is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lords of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed” (Plato, The Republic, bk. VII, 517, in Albert:13).
We need also the knowledge of the idea of justice, in order to judge if a man is just, if an act is just.
The Ideas (or Forms) live in the superior world, in the World of Ideas. The souls were contemplating the Ideas and they were happy. Some souls committed something bad (like a sin) and they descended to earth. In the moment of receiving a body (in the moment of birth) they forgot the majority of the knowledge. Real knowledge, for Plato, is to remember.
In order to be able to return to the World of Ideas, the soul needs the liberation from the body with the help of mathematics and philosophy (the contemplation of the ideas, especially the idea of Good).
2. The doctrine of teleology. According to his explanation, everything in the universe has a purpose (a proper function) and there is a harmonious hierarchy of purposes (Albert:11-12). Every man has to realize his purpose, his function.
Every person in this life has body and a soul, but the soul is more important than the body. The purpose is the liberation of the soul from the body.
Each one of the three elements (parts?) of the soul shall perform its specific function and develop an important virtue.
● 1. Bodily appetites must accept the restraint imposed by reason. The virtue exhibited is sôphrosunê (temperance, to be temperate).
● 2. The virtue, which responds to danger, is andreia (courage).
● 3. Reason disciplined by mathematical and dialectical enquiry, so that it is able to discern justice itself, is Sophia (wisdom).
● 4. These three virtues can only be exhibited when a fourth virtue, dikaiosune (justice) is exhibited. Dikaiosune (justice) is the virtue of allocating each part of the soul its particular function and no other. A man in this situation is a truly happy man.
Plato’s theory links the theory of the soul and its virtues with the theory of an ideal city-state. The ideal is to have 3 social classes: the philosophers (and, if possible, a philosopher-king) governing the city, the warriors defending the city, and the working class producing what is needed for everyone.
2.3. ARISTOTLE (394-322 B.C.)
In relation with ethics, his principal books are Nichomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics. Aristotle takes himself to be articulating an account that is implicit in the thought and action of an educated Athenian. He seeks to be the rational voice of the best citizen of the best city-state; for he holds that the city-state is the unique political form in which alone the virtues of human life can be fully exhibited (MacIntyre:138).
“To define ethics as the study of the conditions for man’s happiness would be an appropriate description of ethics as it was conceived by Aristotle” (Albert:7).
Life. His father was a doctor (a physician) serving Amnytas II, the king of Macedonia. Aristotle was born in the Greek colony of Stagira in Macedonia.
He was a student in the Academy, the philosophical school founded by Plato. In 343 he was nominated tutor of Alexander (the Great), the son of king Philip of Macedonia.
When he was 49 years old he founded, in Athens, the Lyceum. During his life he wrote more than four hundred works. After the death of Alexander he left Athens.
Ethics
1. The Nicomachean Ethics is the first systematic exposition of ethics in the western countries. Its basic structure is teleological: every action and choice seems to aim at some good.
Aristotle explains the big difference between man in his daily life and man as he could be if he realised his essential nature, is telos (his rational goal). Ethics is the science that makes possible the transition from the former state to the latter.
2. Ethics therefore presupposes to understand the essence of man as a rational animal and some explanations about his telos (his true end, his purpose in life).
Human beings, like the members of all other species, have a specific nature. They have certain aims and goals. What is good for them, what will produce happiness, has to be related with their specific characteristics.
The good for man is eudaimonia (happiness, prosperity) (MacIntyre:139). It is the state of being well and doing well in being well. The problem is that different people understand different things by happiness.
In order to have rational happiness, our desires and emotions are to be educated by an appropriate use of reason, “reason instructs us both as to what our true end is and as how to reach it” (Ib.:50). Happiness is essentially activity in accordance with virtue (Copleston:76-77).
What is the relation between knowledge and virtue? For Socrates and for Plato, when a man truly knows what is good, he will do what is good. In this sense, virtue is knowledge. The interpretation of Aristotle seems to be different: if we know what is true, we will have a certain inclination toward it, but we can put in practice the virtue or to act in a different way.
3. The virtues are the qualities that makes possible for an individual to have a happy life.
The exercise of the virtues is a necessary and central part of happy life, not a mere preparatory exercise to secure such life (MacIntyre:140).
Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. It is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues.
Choices demand judgment and the exercise of the virtues requires therefore a capacity to judge and to do the right thing, in the right place, at the right time, and in the right way.
There is relatively little mention of rules in the Ethics of Aristotle.
4. They are two types of virtues: intellectual and moral virtues (virtues of character).
Intellectual virtues are acquired through teaching. Moral virtues are acquired with the habitual exercise, with the choice of actions in accordance with rational principles (Albert:39). “The wise man personifies the intellectual virtues, whereas the continent man typifies the moral virtues” (Ib.:48).
Important moral virtues are: courage, temperance, liberality, and pride.
The intellectual virtues are the virtues that accompany the proper exercise of reason in its various functions. “The primary tasks of man’s intellect are, first, to give us knowledge of invariable and fixed principles, and second, to provide a rational guide for action in daily life. The pursuit and discovery of truth is the aim of philosophical wisdom, while the purpose of practical wisdom is intelligent conduct” (Albert:13).
Two central virtues are phronesis: how to exercise judgment in particular cases, and prudence (practical wisdom).
5. In relation with many virtues, balance (equilibrium, proportion), is important.
In relation to many virtues the notion of a mean between the more and the less gives a general characterization of the virtues.
With regard to feelings of fear and confidence courage is the mean; with regard to pleasures and pains the mean is temperance; with regard to given (prodigality) and taken money (meanness) the mean is liberality (the excess and the defect prodigality and meanness).
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