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“Mapping the Ethical Experience”
EXAMINING THE DIFFERENCEEthics / Morality
§ Having to do with good character
§ Discipline that deals with the nature of the good, the nature of human persons, and the criteria we use to make right judgments
§ The “good” that humans tend towards.
§ Ethics guides morality (ex. understanding musical theory and technique, knowing how to read music)
§ Ethics takes priority over morality; when faced with a situation, it is the higher good or good intent that should be examined. The act is not the final word.
§ Relate to questions such as: How and when does human life reflect what is good? How do we aim at the good life? Who determines what is good? What is the good life? e / § Having to do with the customs, habits, and manners shaping human life
§ The ways in which humans can attain “good” (rules, laws, commandments)
§ Morality is putting ethics into action (ex. practicing musical skills, hitting the right notes, performing)
The Ethical Experience
§ Ethics and morality become a series of do’s and don’ts imposed on you on outside authority
§ You may feel like theses obligations are imposing on your personal freedom
§ Ethics/ Morality may not seem personal and “your own”
#1: The Scream (The Experience of Personal Response)
§ Imagine being in a place of tranquility and peace. You are relaxed and calm until the silence is interrupted by a loud scream. How do you react?
§ It is a sound that touched you deeper than intellect. It urges you to not think, but act. It is deeply felt, and you feel the inner tension to respond. It is not a decision you make, it is automatic
§ This is what it means to experience an ethical response. It is a uniquely human experience.
#2: The Beggar (The Experience of the Other)
§ Originated from French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas
§ All face-to-face encounters remind us of our responsibilities to the “Other”.
§ When confronted with a homeless man on the street, there are many emotions that you feel before you decide whether or not you will give the man some loose change. He or she is inside of you in your decision. It is an internal experience.
§ In other words, the “Other” has taken you hostage and made you responsible. The other person has evoked a response from you
#3: “I Have to…” (The Experience of Obligation)
§ Your ethical sense is turned on when someone orders you to do something (i.e. Your parents asking you to be careful at night)
§ The experience of feeling obliged to obey rule or law has everything to do with your ethical side
§ It is a debate of right or wrong
§ Authority has the ability to convince you to act a certain way; you cannot ignore it. The order or wish invades your conciseness and demands a response.
#4: “This is Intolerable! This isn’t fair!” (The Experience of Contrast)
§ Occurs when you feel outraged by something blatantly unjust or unfair happening to yourself or others
§ Generally humans act with anger and rage
§ When you feel strongly about an injustice occurring in your world, you have empathy for the others around you and are able to see the world the way it should be
§ It is natural for one to retreat from the destruction they have faced
§ This ethical experience is based on contrast; you are shocked by terrible events when you expect so much more from fellow humans
Aristotle: 384-322 BC
· Greek Philosopher, born in Stagira, a northern Greek town
· His father, a physician was friends with the King (Amyntas II), Aristotle became friends with the King’s son Phillip
· After his parents deaths, at the age of 17, went to Athens to study at Plato’s academy, where Plato himself took Aristotle under his wing
· Aristotle learned greatly from Plato, despite being more focused on hands on philosophy, whereas Plato was more focused on contemplation
· Aristotle was invited by his old friend Phillip (who was now king) to tutor his son Alexander, who would go on to become Alexander the Great
· Aristotle wrote over 360 works, most of which were lost in the destruction of the library in Alexandria
· Aristotle created ‘Teleological Ethics’
Teleological Ethics
The Pursuit of Happiness:
· Focuses on community, not individual, human life is shaped in community
· Happiness is not the same thing as pleasure, pleasure is a momentary feeling, happiness is a condition of the mind
· Asks questions such as “what is good for us as humans?” and “what permits us to reach our potential?”
· Name comes from Greek word “telos” which means finality
Teleology
· Humans are intended to be rational
· Intelligence is our greatest capacity
· To act ethically, therefore, is to engage our capacity to reason as we develop good character
· The good person is one whose actions are based on excellent reasoning.
Human Excellence
· People develop habits as they seek their purpose
· Aristotle coined these habits, “virtues”
· We choose to deliberately fulfill that which is the most appropriate for us as humans, according to our virtues
The Means
· We should avoid excess
· Be moderate in all things
· To be courageous is to avoid some but not all dangers
· Try to stay in the middle, but a middle that suits you, according to your virtues
Immanuel Kant: 1724-1804
· Born into a poor, strict, religious family
· Worked as a tutor, then a private University teacher, paid directly by students
· Lived a poor life until the age of 46, when he was hired to teach logic and metaphysics at the local University
· Had great difficulty putting his theories into writing, but still had a profound affect on western philosophy
Theoretical Reason: clarifying how we as humans come to know things
Practical Reasoning
· Moves beyond scientific knowledge, investigates the moral dimension guiding human behaviour
· Humans act not only out of instinct, but also out of conscious choice, based on principles
· Helps us understand what we SHOULD do
· Example: we know the effects of drinking; we know we shouldn’t drink and drive. Therefore it is our MORAL DUTY to not drink and drive.
Kant’s Ethics
· Primarily concerned with the certainty of principles
· Ethics presents us not with rational, cognitive certainty, but with practical certainty
· 3 practical principles: GOD, FREEDOM, IMMORTALITY
· Humans are in pursuit of the supreme good
· GOD: humans cannot achieve the supreme good without God.
· FREEDOM: we must be able to do what we ought to do
· IMMORTALITY: it is impossible to achieve the supreme good in just this life
The Good Will
· Kant proposes how individuals attain the good
· A good will should be prized above else
· The “good will” is the will to do our moral duty, for no selfish motive
· Kant’s ethics are commonly referred to as “Deontological Ethics”
· Deontological, from the Greek word “Deon”, meaning buty
· Due to impulses and desires, we are easily drawn away from our duty
· Moral worth is not measured by the results of moral actions, but by the motive behind them.
Kant’s Moral Maxims
· Maxims are very similar to Aristotle’s virtues
· A person’s duty is determined by their maxims
· Encourages people to live by the rule, “I should act in a way that I want other people to act”
· Everyone has certain obligations to fulfill that come before personal desires
The Person as an ends, not a means
· Kant DOESN’T say we should NEVER treat people as a means, i.e, a worker is a means of production
· He says people shouldn’t be treated only as a means
· It would be unethical to take advantage of a worker with little power. For example, it is unethical for a coach to take on 12 players, while only intending to pay 6 of them
· Kant was a utopian dreamer, he came up with a world in which people would live according to his 2nd maxim
Emmanuel Levinas: 1905-1995
§ Was born in 1905 in Kaunas Lithuania to Jewish parents
§ At 17, he moved to France to study philosophy at the University of Strasbourg
§ Levinas had begun to experience a profound contrast between Western philosophy and his own which is much more deeply rooted in Jewish faith
The Sameness of Things
§ Perceived the Western philosophical tradition attempting to overcome all difference and diversity by grouping everything under an all-encompassing unity which it called ‘Being’
§ Everything carried a stamp of sameness
§ Westerners think out of a unified totality
§ It thinks away difference
The Singularity of Things
§ The Hebrew tradition gloried in the singular
§ It gives things its identity
§ He contrasted the Western notion of ‘totality’ with the Hebrew notion of ‘infinity’
§ During WWII he was mobilized in the French army
§ He was captured by Germans
§ His family died in the Holocaust
§ He later learned the ways of the Jewish Talmud through his teacher Mordachai Chouchani
§ At 55, he completed his doctoral thesis, ‘Totality and Infinity’
§ Offered a chair in philosophy at the University of Poitiers and was later named professor of philosophy at the Paris school named the Sorbonne
§ He never forgot his Jewish roots and even when he was supposed to lecture on the Sabbath he did not show up
§ He continued to write until illness prevented him
§ Pope John Paul II holds great respect for Levinas and uses similar ideas
The Good is Infinite
§ Levinas’s philosophy is ethical
§ He is in search of the good
§ He went against Western philosophies of the ‘Being’
§ Believed that ‘Being’ is dangerous because it takes away from reality what is its most fascinating quality that each person or thing is incredibly unique
§ The ‘Good’ is interested not in what is common among things but in what is absolutely unique about each person or thing
§ Unique things and persons are ‘traces’ of the Good or God
§ Everything we encounter is finite
§ A trace says that God was there but is no longer there, God has gone ahead. The Infinite One is always one step ahead of us
The Face as Witness of the Good
§ Levinas says that the face is the most naked part of the body. He lashes out against make-up
§ He sees it as hiding
§ The eyes can never be made up. They penetrate every mask. In others eyes we make direct contact
§ In the eyes of the other you meet a stranger, one whom cannot be reduced to being you
§ She or he is ‘Other’. The ‘Other’ calls you not to reduce his or her face to being the same as any other. This persons face is a ‘No’: a refusal to let you reduce it of uniqueness
The Face as Ethical
§ The superiority of the face comes from elsewhere: the Other is a stranger who is defenseless and uprooted
§ Levinas refers to the Book of Deuteronomy (10.18), where the Israelites are told to love the stranger as themselves because God watches over the stranger
§ Other’s depth of misery or humility is what makes the command or appeal of the face ethical.
§ The face of the stranger demands that you recognize it and provide it with hospitality
Made Responsible by the Face
§ This responsibly is our human vocation, our calling
§ The search for Good ends
§ God touches us through the face of the Other who begs spare change of us
§ God leaves only the trace in the face of the Other.
§ Goodness, The Infinite One, translates into responsibility for the Other and sets no limit
The Human is Ethical
§ Aristotle, Kant and Levinas will help point us towards an understanding in what it means to be ethical
§ They convince us that the ethical is indispensable for humanity
RECAP OF ETHICAL THINKERS
Aristotle / Kant / Levinas1. Humans find happiness in communities
2. To be happy humans must live well and do well
3. Human activity aims at achieving the good
4. Since the highest capacity of humans is to be rational, the highest form of happiness is based on rational behaviour
5. Be moderate in all things / 1. Ethics is matter of ones inner conviction and autonomy
2. A human act is good when it is done for the sake of moral duty
3. The use of reason is central to moral life- duty is determined by principals
4. Humans must act in such a way that the principles according to which they act should become universal law / 1. The central question in philosophy is: where is the good?
2. Each person is a unique expression of the good
3. The face of another calls me to respond
4. Goodness translates into responsibility for the other
Remaining Key Terms
Autonomy: the freedom to be able to decide for yourself what you will believe in by using your own reasoning abilities
Obligation: what one is bound to duty or contract to do.
Responsibility: Being morally accountable for ones actions.
Revelation: The way God reveals himself to mankind. God reveals himself through Jesus Christ, the scriptures, and through creation