ETHICAL THEORIES. Review week 6 session 11. Ethics Ethical Theories Review. Socrates. Socrate s theory of virtue. Socrate s chain of injustices

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1 Socrates ETHICAL THEORIES Review week 6 session 11 Greece (470 to 400 bc) Was Plato s teacher Didn t write anything Died accused of corrupting the youth and not believing in the gods of the city Creator of the mayueutic method of teaching He is considered as the father of Ethics 2 Socrate s theory of virtue Virtue relates to the science of good. Evil or bad actions are a result of ignorance, because people would do good actions if they knew what is right and how much good they can do. Mankind with free will always have the possibility to choose between several different goods. Knowing good is not enough. The righteous use of freedom is needed to pick the correct good under some given circumstances. 3 Socrate s chain of injustices It is better to suffer an injustice than to commit one. High moral value. Is not against self defense, but against committing a new injustice to defend yourself. There s no way to cut a chain of injustices but with this principle. Only with the use of free will in the opposite way of injustice will we be able to rise human relations to an essentially human level. 4 Sophism and moral relativism Sophists are capable to defend the pro and the con of any proposition, and often propose the fake as true. Main representatives: Protagoras and Calicles. Protagoras considers that every truth and every value depend on each person and his/her own criterion, and that values change according to places and epochs. Calicles considers that authority corresponds to the one that oversteps the others, either by a force that is physical, thought, influence, etc. 5 Sophism and moral relativism The positive side or this moral relativism is the fact that conscience is a subjective norm of morality, so each man must be guided by his own conscience. On the negative side, it denies that there is a criterion and an absolute value (objective norms) to which every human and every conscience judgment must abide. Moral relativism overvalues humans abilities, knowledge and criterion. One quality defines authority: to know how to capture and promote the common good. 6 1

2 Plato s idealism Plato s values and virtues Greece. ( bc) Socrates' disciple, he wrote his famous dialogues. Each person exists since before he is born in this world. Spiritual souls live in the world of Ideas. The gods punished men and gave them a material body. With this new body, men forgot the Ideas. The objective of this life is to purify the material body, several times (reincarnation) until men remember the ideas after being perfectly purified. 7 The main value is the spiritual Idea. The top of all ideas is the idea of goodness. Virtues are the perfection of the soul. The four main virtues are: prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance. Prudence is about reason, fortitude is the virtue of will, temperance is the virtue for desire, and justice is the harmony between all the parts of the soul. 8 AristotlE s eudaemonism AristotlE s eudaemonism Greece ( bc) His specialty is in Biology. All beings are made of material and shape. Human beings are made of these two parts (body and soul) Both parts are intimately joined together. Men are born without knowledge. Everything must go by through the senses. Our senses let us be in contact with the material and to create ideas and universal concepts. 9 The man looks for his own good. That is the ultimate goal: his happiness, his own perfection Eudemonism means happiness in Greek. Reason allows man to act according to his own nature, and to achieve the development of all his potential. For Aristotle is the same to be happy, to be perfect, to develop owns potential and to act with moral value. 10 Aristotle's virtues Stoicism and hedonism A virtue is a perfection of a human faculty. A virtue is like a good habit, so is a stable and acquired disposition that makes it easier to act right. There are moral and intellectual virtues. Right actions produce happiness, specially in a life governed by reason rather than pleasure. 11 Stoic is a person who governs himself exclusively by his reason, not letting impulses or passions influence him. Reason leads the man to an adequacy of his own nature, and with the nature of the cosmos. Hedonism have the pleasure as the supreme value. To produce the greater pleasure with the minimum pain. Virtues are subordinated to pleasure. 12 2

3 christianity Is a conceptual system based on the life of Christ. God is love. Men have free will to correspond to the love of God. Men s talents belong to God and were given by Him. All the pain, death, sadness, failure, contradictions, humiliation, poverty, etc., help to elevate humans to transcendental values. Forgiveness is an essential part. Unification of all human beings in only one body. 13 Thomism St. Thomas Aquinas ( ) Men come from God, and their end is also God. God is all good, objective, absolute and perfect. God is the operative objective of men, and in Him men find happiness. A human act should be: it must be voluntary, and be free. The sources of morality are: the object, the purpose and the circumstances. 14 Thomism s righteous reason The norm of morality is the righteous reason. It is faithful to its own essence, works according to its own laws, its own objective, instead of adapting to strange laws and ends. Reason is the immediate measure of all human actions, and it is regulated or guided by the natural laws. Also considers the conscience as a subjective norm of morality. Each person has his/her own conscience, which must be molded to judge righteously. 15 Kant A man should place a moral norm upon himself and obey it. This is his duty. An action is morally right if it is in agreement with moral rules/norms. Goodness is subordinated to duty. The universality of a law flows from the intrinsic goodness of the law. Autonomy, a core concept, means that a man should, on his own, be able to determine through reasoning what is morally correct. Ethics is a priori, so it is independent of any empiric goods known a posteriori. 16 Marx Marx s ethics His doctrine is the base of communism. According to Marxism, the matter part creates the spirit, and not the other way around. Material is the objective being that exists independent from the conscience. Conscience and thought, as they are immaterial, are a property, a function and a product of the matter. There aren t any spiritual beings (no God) 17 God doesn t exist. The foundation or base to distinguish right from wrong is loyalty to communism. Burgesses and capitalists are the moral stain of humanity. The ideal and mystic of the party is the social justice. Moral is a form of social conscience, thus it depends of the economic social relations of the time. 18 3

4 Sartre s existentialism Man is freedom. He transcends the material order. His freedom precedes the essence. What you already lived, is in the past, and is called the essence. But what is essentially human is his existence or freedom. Values are created by human freedom. The man creates the value when he acts with freedom, with absolute autonomy. Each person s worth depends on his/her free actions, and not in the submission to a hierarchy of values already made. 19 sartre In practice, the use of freedom leads to a state of anxiety: the one of the responsibility that brings a completely free choice. Men who are authentic, ti live an anguished ihd life. The rest of them, seek for refugee in already made rules and regulations, not using their freedom and avoiding their responsibility. Human relations are like a fight for the other s freedom. 20 Pragmatism and sociologism Freud s psychoanalysis Pragmatism considers as truthful that which produces success in practice. It is only good if it leads efficiently to the achievement of a goal or objective. Sociologism is the exaggeration of the role of sociology in sciences. It considers that our moral conscience is molded by the society and is the society s way of expressing. Society is the only source of moral authority. 21 His great discovery is the subconscious. Freud s Super ego relates to Ethics. The Super ego is the set of rules and conduct guidelines that the kid receives (passively) from his parents and other authorities. He considers that moral conscience of every man has its origin in the Super ego and all the norms learned by the child. 22 Scheller s axiology Scheller s values Values are independent of the experience. They are known with the intuition, and are not accessible from the reason. There are two kinds of intuition: eidetic and emotional. Eidetic intuition is rational and deals with logical essences like math and axioms. Emotional intuition deal with values. 23 Values are: Ideal qualities. Not logical. Known a priori i Objective Transcendent Material Distinguish from the goods, that are de ones which have the value. 24 4

5 utilitarianism The moral worth of an action is determined by the happiness it provides. It is a form of consequentialism, because the worth is determined by the outcome of an action. The greatest food for the greatest number of people : either pleasure (hedonistic utilitarianism), pluralistic goods (friendship, knowledge, beauty), or preference utilitarianism. Majority vs. minority interests Natural laws The law of nature is one whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere. Natural laws refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Some principles are: There are certain natural tendencies or purposes in things. What is natural is, in general, to be followed. Natural goals are to be achieved Finnis Personal values Based not on the natural purposes of our human organs and faculties, but on the basic values of the human person. Human persons have deep seated inclinations towards a whole range of goods and values, which are judged to be both desirable and humanly fulfilling. Our potential, then, for personal growth and integral human fulfilment is realised by participation in these personal goods and values 27 Basic Values: 1. Life (including bodily and sexual integrity, health, procreation and nurturing of children) 2. Play 3. Aesthetic experience 4. Knowledge of the truth in all its forms 5. Conformity of action to practical reason (including self determination and authenticity) 6. Friendship with other human persons (including various kinds of love and community) 7. Friendship with God (religion). 28 5