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Why be ethical?
1) The scream- The experience of personal response
-Something, like a scream, breaks through your reverie, and
forces you to awareness.
-You feel a call to action without having to think about it.
-This almost automatic response is what it means to experience
an ethical response

2) The beggar- The experience of the other
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Comes from French-Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995)
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When encountering another person, we have an ethical experience
because face-to-face encounters remind us of our responsibility for the
“Other”
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For example: When you come across a beggar, you debate with yourself
how to respond...whether you choose to give or not, as you walk away you
defend your decision to yourself, ie. a response has been evoked
-
You cannot look at the “Others” face neutrally, it makes you feel
responsible and through this you have an ethical experience

3) “I have to...” The experience of obligation
-Your ethical sense is turned on when someone orders you to do something
-Example: If your parents tell you to be home by midnight, as time passes you grow
increasingly aware of your need to get going. If you choose to ignore this and stay anyways,
you experience feelings of unrest.
-Your ethical side obliges something in you to follow the law, or do what is
considered the right thing to do
-Your response to an order from someone you consider to have authority
over you, such as your parents, has everything to do with ethics, as you
show yourself to be an ethical being
4) This is intolerable! This isn’t fair!- The experience of
contrast
-An ethical experience occurs when you feel outraged by
something blatantly unjust or unfair happening to yourself or to
others
-Example: Your feelings of indignation towards the abuse of
children is an experience of contrast to what ought to be
-It is an ethical experience to recoil from destruction and the
intolerable
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At a general level, ethics is about the “goodness” of
human life

Ethics seeks answers to questions like “How do we
aim at the good life”

Recognizing that “ the good life is the aim of ethics”
then influences us to ask “who determines what is
’good’”

In answering these questions ethicists begin to
diverge into different camps that each give us a
different perspective on the search for good

Biography:

Aristotle's childhood studies of anatomy and medical
practices influenced his ideas about how we come to
know and understand the world

Following his parents death he went to continue his
education in Plato’s Academy

Him and Plato approached philosophy very differently
 Plato focused on the abstraction and the world of ideas
 Aristotle explored the natural world and human experience

Aristotle tutored Alexander the Great

When he died in 323, there was a great backlash
associated with Macedonian rule and due to his
association with Alexander and his father Philip,
Aristotle found himself in a difficult position

He was charged with not respecting the gods of
the state, and though he fled for his life died
within the year

The pursuit of happiness
-Human life is shaped to its full extent in the context of a
community- it is there the citizen will find happiness
-Happiness is not equated with pleasure, pleasure is only
momentary while happiness is an enduring state of
someone who does well the tasks typical of a human being
-
For Aristotle, ethics aims to discover what is good for us as
human beings, what permits us to reach our potential,
what is our internal compass, or what we are intended to
be

Teleology
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We are intended to be rational and our greatest capacity as
humans is our intelligence
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Humans are rational beings and so we must base our actions on
reasoning
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Therefore: to act ethically is to engage our capacity to reason as
we develop good character, and that is the highest form of
happiness
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The good person is one whose actions are solidly based on
excellent reasoning and who spends a great amount of time
thinking

Human excellence
-When people seek to become who they are
intended to be, they develop habits that
represent the best of what it means to be human
-> these are excellent virtues
-To act virtuously means allowing reason to guide
ones action’s
-Aristotle held that a good person would use
reason to control desire
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The mean
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There is a need to maintain balance in our
actions
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Aristotle’s doctrine: Be moderate in all things
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This applies to moral qualities because they are
destroyed by defect and by excess
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For example: In the case of self control, one who
shuns everything becomes a coward

Biography:
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Kant was born in Prussia and never ventured
more than 100 km from his birthplace
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He worked as a teacher until he was hired as a
professor of logic and metaphysics
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He wrote many books such as “Critique of
Pure Reason”

Theoretical reason
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The area of reasoning by which we come to
know how the laws of nature, or cause and
effect, govern human behaviour
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An area of life where freedom of choice is not an
issue
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Kant tried to clarify how humans come to know
things

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Practical Reason
Using theoretical reason we can only know what
people actually do, while using practical reason we
can come to understand what people ought to do
Example: Using theoretical reason we know the effects
of alcohol consumption upon the body, while using
practical reason we know we ought not to drink and
drive
Kant contributed the concept of moral duty to our
understanding of ethics

Kant’s ethics
-Kant was primarily concerned about the certainty of the
principles of ethical reasoning
-He recognized we cannot arrive at the same type of
certainty we can in physics and mathematics
There are three areas of interest: God, freedom and
immortality
These cannot be proven empirically but we need these
practice principles to be able to pursue and attain the
supreme good
1) God
• Humans cannot
out of their own
power achieve
supreme good
• God exists to
allow us to
achieve the
supreme good
2) Freedom
Immortality
• If supreme good
is to be our
achievement
then what we
ought to do we
Can do
• Therefore: by
nature humans
are free
• Achieving the
supreme good is
an immense
task, it is
impossible to
obtain it
completely in
this life
• That is why there
is a life beyond,
where we can
achieve the
supreme good
The good will
Kants ethics is to be discovered in private life, in the autonomy of
the individual
- For Kant “good will” is the will to do our duty for no other reason
than that it is our duty

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Kant's theory is deontological, and it acknowledges that impulses
and desires can easily draw us away from our duty (contrast to
Aristotle)
Human action is morally good when it is done for the sake of duty ->
doing a good deed for a friend is not a moral act, but being kind to
someone when you don’t feel like it is
For Kant, it is your decision to act in accordance with your good will

Kant’s use of moral maxims
An ethical maxim is one on which every
rational person would necessarily act if
reason were fully in charge of his or her
actions
Kant’s most famous maxim:
“I should act in a way that I would everyone else
in the world to act”

Second maxim: People should never be
treated as only a means, their dignity must be
regarded

For example: it is unethical to take advantage
of workers who are poor

Kant’s concept of the “kingdom of ends’
proposes all participants would act according
to this second maxim
The sameness of things
Levinas perceived the Western philosophical
tradition attempting to overcome all difference
by grouping everything under an all
encompassing unity, “Being”

-everything ultimately carried a stamp of
sameness, and difference is reduced to being
accidental

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The singularity of things
Levinas said the Hebrew tradition glorified in
the singular, and it is the singularity of things
that gives each thing its identity
Nothing holds these singularities together (in
contrast to Western notions)
The experience of the war, his whole family dying in the
Holocaust, heightened Levinas’ awareness of his Jewish
roots

The Good is infinite

The “Good” is the central question of all philosophy,
which Levinas says goes beyond the search of Being
because Being takes away the uniqueness of each
person

To Levinas these unique traits are the persons traces
of the Good or God

We do not encounter God anywhere but only a trace
of God, as the Infinite One is always a step ahead
The face as witness of the Good
We encounter traces of God on the faces of
humans, especially the eyes

- In a face to face experience the eyes of the
“Other” call you to not reduce their face the to
same as any other face “No, I refuse to let you
deny this face in its uniqueness”
-
Levinas goes so far as to translate this to “No!
You shall not murder”
The face as ethical
The face is ethical because the Other is a stranger who is
totally defenceless and pleads you provide it hospitality

The face makes you responsible by making you awate that
you are not as innocent as you thought you were
It suggests there is another order of existence: the order of
an incredible good calling us to be responsible for the
beggar with the mumbling voice
- This is how the divine speaks to us- as a humble God who
refuses to use power, God is the goodness who never
seduces

Made responsible by the face
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For Levinas the face makes us responsible
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This responsibility is our human vocation, and here
the search for the Good ends

God touches us through the face of the other who
begs spare change of us
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Goodness translates into responsibility for the otherhow far should this goodness go?...it sets no limit.
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Aristotle, Kant and Levinas convince us that
the ethical is indispensible for human life
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“The more one does what is good, the freer
one becomes” –Catechism of the Catholic
Church

Teleological- Having to do with the design or
purpose of something. Trying to think of the
“end” as not an endpoint but as completion, as
fullness

Teleological thinking- seeking to understand
the ultimate goal, purpose or end of something.

Empiricism- a theory that says that knowledge
comes from experience, or from evidence that
can be perceived by the senses

Subjective- relating to a person;s own
perception and understanding of a reality;
arising from the individuals own mind,
feelings, perception

Objective- relating to a sensible experience
that is independent of any one’s individual
thought, and that can be perceived by others