THE TERRAIN OF

ETHICS

“What’s Ethics All About?”

PHILOSOPHY“Love of wisdom”

• Pondering …

• Wondering …

• Reflecting …

• Questioning …

• Reasoning …

• Speculating ...

ABOUT LIFE

“Philosophy is everybody’s business. The human being is endowed with the proclivity to philosophize.”

Mortimer Adler 20th Century philosopher

PHILOSOPHY

• Ontology

“What (Who) Am I?”

• Epistemology

“What (How) Can I Know?”

• Ethics

“What Should I Do?”

ETHICS is the branch of the discipline of philosophy that studies morality. It is the “science” of the moral.

MORALITY is that domain of understanding that relates us to our world, and to other humans in our world. Moral behaviors are those actions that can be evaluated as good or right using reasoned, objective criteria.

*The distinction is between the object of study and the study itself.

TWO MAJOR QUESTIONS OF

ETHICS

• What is the good life?that is

What should I value?

“ETHICS OF ASPIRATION”

• What is right?that is

What duty do I have to others?

“ETHICS OF OBLIGATION”

Ethics Is Reflection On the Ultimate Good ... the “Summun Bonum”

• Good and Badness• Rightness and Wrongness• Virtue and Vice• Approval and Disapproval• Oughts and Ought Nots• Ends and Means• Judgments of Value and

Judgments of Obligation• Goals of Living and Methods of

Achieving Those Goals.

“We are all moralists perpetually, geometers (or dentists) only by chance.”

Samuel Johnson English lexiographer

1709-1784

Our Moral Obligation

“To be what on e is potentially …A person in a community of persons.”

Paul Tillich German-American theologian/philosopher

LAW

The Societal Institution of Binding Rules Of Conduct, With Enforcement By That

Authority.

Law Is Public Consensus And Not Infrequently A

Temporary One.

Justice(Ethics)

Rules(Morality)

Laws(Government)

“Ethics is HIGHER than the law, but not

ABOVE the law.”

RELIGION

Literally, a binding together or reuniting.

Religion is a means of overcoming the estrangement or separation man feels from Nature or God

PHILOSOPHY

• Structure of Being

• “What It Means to Be”

• Man’s Quest to Understand Existence

RELIGION

• Structure of Meaning

• “What Being Means”

• Man’s Quest for Meaning in Existence

“Is conduct right because the gods

command it, or do the gods command it

because it is right?”

Socrates

Plato’s Euthyphro

1.God commands us to do what is right, then:

a) The actions are right because God commands them or

b) God commands them because they are right.

2.If a) then, from moral perspective, God’s commands are arbitrary and the doctrine of goodness of God meaningless.

3.If b) then, admit standard of right and wrong independent of God.

4.From religious point of view, undesirable to regard God’s commands as arbitrary, or to give up in goodness of God.

5.THEREFORE, even from religious perspective, a standard of right and wrong independent of God must be accepted.

Theory of Natural Moral LawThomas Acquinas

Christian Scriptures

“It is not by having the law but by doing it that one will be justified (judged) before God. When Gentiles who do not possess the law carry out its precepts by the light of nature, then, although they have no law, they use their own law, for they display the effect of the law inscribed on their hearts.”

Romans 2:13,14,15

HOMO SAPIENS

RELIGION

NATIONALITY

CULTURE

FAMILY

INDIVIDUAL

HIERARCHY OF ETHICAL VIEWS

CONTEMPORARY INTEREST IN

ETHICS

TRANSITIONS

• A TRANSITION driven by technology and information.

• A TRANSITION from an industrial society to an information one.

• A TRANSITION from a society rooted in a Judeo-Christian ethic to a more humanistic and pluralistic one.

• A TRANSITION from the rural to the urban.

• A TRANSITION from dependency to autonomy.

• A TRANSITION from a national economy to a world one.

TRANSITIONS(continued)

• A TRANSITION from an intense nationalism to a “global village.”

• A TRANSITION from a younger society to an older one.

• A TRANSITION from a male-dominated society to a more gender-balanced one.

• A TRANSITION from discrimination to egalitarianism.

SOCIETAL ISSUES

• Role of Government• Capital Punishment• Evolution/Creationism• Hand Guns and Assault Weapons• Equal Rights Amendment• Social Security Benefits• Legalization of Drugs• Widening Income Disparities• Homelessness• Abortion• Integrity of Public Officials

BIOMEDICAL ISSUESPAST AND PRESENT

• Defining Death

• Foregoing/ Withdrawing Treatment

• Permanently Unconscious Patients

• Withholding Food and Fluids

• In Vitro Fertilization

• Surrogate Parenting

• Fetal Tissue Research

• Euthanasia, Active and Passive

• Abortion

• Genetic Engineering

• Assisted Suicide

• Organ Transplantation

• Do Not Resuscitate Orders

• Informed Consent

• Access to Care/ Indigent Care

• Allocation of Scarce Resources

QUESTIONS OF VALUES

• What is important?

• What matters?

• What endures?

• What is meaningful?

• What is worthwhile?

• What is good?

• What is right?

AND . . .

This is what ethics is all about!