Feminism

The question of Ethics The question of Ethics Submitted to: Prof. Franson Manjali Submitted by: Payal Sharotri M. A. , 2ND SEMESTER. ABSTRACT If you ask a certain group of people ‘What does ethics means to you? ’, the reply will be varied. Some of the expected replies can be as follows: “Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong. ” “Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs. ” “Being ethical is doing what the law requires. ” “Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts. ” “I don’t know what the word means. These replies might be typical of our own. What this tells us is that the meaning of “ethics” is hard to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky. Some influential philosophers have claimed that ethics is nothing more than the codification of political ideology. That is, ethical beliefs function to express and perpetuate a particular power structure. Popular ethical beliefs are either the beliefs actually held by the dominant class; or they are the beliefs that the dominant class enforces on the less dominant classes.

In either case, the assumption is that popular ethical beliefs are those which, if followed by the majority of people, are in the interests of the dominant class. The paper is an attempt to figure out the true essence of ‘ethics’, if not a meaningful definition of it. The paper begins with an assessment of the different meanings of ‘ethics’ over the course of time. It ten moves on to discuss Levinas’ views on the topic, ending with what Nietzche thinks about ethics and morality. DEFINING ETHICS

According to Tomas Paul and Linda Elder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, “most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law”, and don’t treat ethics as a stand-alone concept. Paul and Elder define ethics as “a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures”. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy states that the word ethics is “commonly used interchangeably with ‘morality’ … nd sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual. ” The general meaning of ethics: rational, optimal (regarded as the best solution of the given options) and appropriate decision brought on the basis of common sense. This does not exclude the possibility of destruction if it is necessary and if it does not take place as the result of intentional malice. If, for example, there is the threat of physical conflict and one has no other solution, it is acceptable to cause the necessary extent of injury, out of self-defence.

Thus ethics does not provide rules like morals but it can be used as a means to determine moral values (attitudes or behaviors giving priority to social values, e. g. ethics or morals). Many people tend to equate ethics with their feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one’s feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical. Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical standards.

Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the devout religious person. Religion can set high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion. Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical.

Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the old apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from what is ethical. Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing “whatever society accepts. ” In any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society. Moreover, if being ethical were doing “whatever society accepts,” then to find out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts.

To decide what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts. But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist. What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things.

First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy.

Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons. Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one’s ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one’s standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

ETHICS IN LEVINAS Emmanuel Levinas (January 12, 1906 – December 25, 1995), the enigmatic philosopher who relied heavily on the Bible for his moral philosophy, developed a philosophical idea in which the “I” (anyone) is wholly responsible to the “Other” (another human being). Moreover, Levinas understood his idea to move beyond general moral formulations and to work on the most basic level of being responsible for any person simply because they are another human being. As compelling and difficult as his idea is, it focuses only on human beings and does not take into account a responsibility to the world or non-human beings.

Levinas’ Theory on Responsibility for The Other: In a passage from “Ethics as First Philosophy,” Levinas insists that, “This summons to responsibility [for the Other] destroys the formulas of generality by which knowledge or acquaintance of the other man re-presents him to me as my fellow man. In the face of the other man I am inescapably responsible and consequently the unique and chosen one. ” Levinas believes that an ethical “responsibility” to and for the Other requires that one always thinks and acts for the Other before one acts for himself.

In other words, when person A is confronted with person B, i. e. “in the face of the other man,” person A is bound to consider the interests of the Other, person B, before considering his own interests. This claim is made based on the idea that the “responsibility…destroys the formulas of generality by which knowledge or acquaintance of the other man re-presents him to me as my fellow man. ” 1 What this means is, a primary ethical responsibility to other people as human beings shatters the generality of moral/ethical theories.

Or more precisely, no matter the depth of knowledge of “generalities” used to understand the Other, the Other remains more than just conceptual knowledge. Levinas also argues that any moral theory is so thoroughly wrought with vague and general ideas that they overlook the most basic desire to help another person. Theories “re-present” in words what one already feels emotionally or psychologically when “in the face of” another person. Moreover, re-presentation fails the Other, for it inherently tries to circumscribe the moral feeling that exists prior to conceptualization (moral theories).

Critiquing the Responsibility for The Other: As important as the idea to be ethically responsible to the Other at all times is, Levinas misses an important fact that: humans beings must also be responsible for the world they live. For example, in Ethics and Infinity Levinas proclaims that “pure philosophy” is possible only by “going to the ‘social problem’”. This makes sense in the context of his ethical philosophy since the social problem is obviously a human problem. But what one cannot forget is that “social problems” exist within an environment, namely, the world.

Sociality and its problems stem from the interactions of humanity with the world, not separate from it. The problems of hunger, biological genocide, the ability to provide shelter with materials, these do not come about within an empty vacuum. And so, in order to live in a relationship with other human beings in the way Levnias prescribes, humans cannot forget that their ability to be social creatures is fundamentally possible by way of their dependence on the world/environment. Thus, only solving human interactions does not solve all the problems of existence.

After all, humans live in a relationship with other human beings and with the world, so their problems are more than just human problems. And without the Other-as-world, human beings and their problems could not exist. In short, the critique of Levnias’ ethical philosophy rests on its basic anthropocentric foundation. If Levinas wants all people to be fully committed to other human beings at all times, as well as to the “social problem,” people must remember that human beings and their “social problems” exist because the world exists.

So if human beings disregard the world they disregard what makes them g the problems involved with human interactions does not solve all the problems of existence. After all, humans live in a relationship with other human beings and with the possible. Ethics In Heidegger From early in his thinking, Heidegger subordinated the question of ethics to the question of Being. Like other ontical matters, ethics could not be addressed adequately until the ontological question of Dasein’s general mode of Being was given priority.

Heidegger often indicated that this should not be taken to mean a rejection of, or indifference toward, ethics; rather, ethics, again like other ontic regions, has concealed within its mode of thinking a primordial dimension that can open up the way in which Dasein is in the world. My reading of this ontic-ontological differentiation is as follows: Ethics is rich in its analysis of normative topics but poor in attention to our being-ethical-in-the-world, in the fullest sense that Heidegger would give to such a phrase.

This coordination of ethics and ontology suggests the possibility of taking up ethics anew once we have clarified the overall existential constitution of Dasein. Nietzsche identifies two types of morality — master and slave morality. Master morality is the morality of the superior people, while slave morality is the morality of the inferior people. Modern systems such as Christianity and utilitarianism are examples of slave or “herd” morality. Master “morality” isn’t really morality in any traditional sense.

The superior person makes his/her own rules; superior people are “beyond good and evil”. “The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, “what is injurious to me is injurious in itself”; it knows itself to be that which first accords honor to things; it is value-creating. ” For the noble soul, “good” means power-enhancing, tending to the full development of natural ability; while “bad” means contemptible, power-diminishing, tending to the artificial limitation of natural ability.

Because the noble soul defines good and bad in terms of power or lack of power, to fulfill full human potential, the noble soul lives in accordance with the primary law of nature, the will to power. A person who chooses powerlessness — in the form of anxiety, pettiness, suspicion, deceit, flattery, etc. — is contemptible (i. e. , bad). The superior person strives for nobility, pride, honor, self-mastery, and integrity, i. e. , staying true to one’s best self. And “against beings of lower rank, [a superior person] may behave as one pleases or “as the heart desires,” and in any case “beyond good and evil. ” The superior person looks with profound suspicion on values such as compassion, pity, and selflessness, as well as on the ideal of equality of all persons. Superior people, in expressing the will to power, embody completely natural human functioning; they live the most completely actualized human lives, and as such, are happy, energetic, and optimistic about the human condition. Slave morality, by contrast, is pessimistic and fearful. Slaves are victims (the “abused, oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, the weary and those uncertain of themselves” (SS, 70)); but according to Nietzsche, most slaves hoose to be victims. Slave morality is timid, and favors a limited existence; it “makes the best of a bad situation. ” It promotes the virtues that “serve to ease existence for those who suffer: here pity, the complaisant and obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility, and friendliness are honored — for here these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence. Slave morality is essentially a morality of utility,”(SS, 71), i. e. , a morality that values the mediocre group over the superior individual.

And “against beings of lower rank, [a superior person] may behave as one pleases or “as the heart desires,” and in any case “beyond good and evil. ””(SS, 70) The superior person looks with profound suspicion on values such as compassion, pity, and selflessness, as well as on the ideal of equality of all persons. Superior people, in expressing the will to power, embody completely natural human functioning; they live the most completely actualized human lives, and as such, are happy, energetic, and optimistic about the human condition. Slave morality, by contrast, is pessimistic and fearful.

Slaves are victims (the “abused, oppressed, suffering, unemancipated, the weary and those uncertain of themselves” (SS, 70)); but according to Nietzsche, most slaves choose to be victims. Slave morality is timid, and favors a limited existence; it “makes the best of a bad situation. ” It promotes the virtues that “serve to ease existence for those who suffer: here pity, the complaisant and obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility, and friendliness are honored — for here these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence.

Slave morality is essentially a morality of utility,”(SS, 71), i. e. , a morality that values the mediocre group over the superior individual. Nietzsche thinks slave moralities have pretty much taken over as the official moralities of the Western world (the ones people pay lip service to). But Nietzsche thinks the triumph of ideals of equality and democracy in modern times is a great tragedy for humanity. Equality and democracy are for Nietzsche the worst, not the best, values; they are the exact opposite of hat humans in their hearts actually value, the opposite of what it is natural to value. Inferior people naturally see the superiority of their “natural” masters; hence by nature, they fear them and feel uncomfortable with them. When slave morality takes hold, the inferior ones are suddenly given “moral” license to brainwash and persecute those who try to express the will to power. (Such persons are not “friendly,” “not team players. ”) Thus when the ideal of equality rules, the best specimens of humanity are at risk.

Nietzsche would like to revert to an ancient “classical” time when the “natural aristocrats” (those who expressed the will to power) actually ruled. ` It is not difficult to read Nietzsche as a thinker who does not fit into the history of moral philosophy: he rejects all conventional morality, general principles, and anything that is unconditional; in his way of thinking there are no moral principles that are universally true and applicable. Moreover, he characterizes himself as an ‘immoralist’ and his way of doing philosophy as ‘extra-moral’ as though he were entirely outside the framework of moral thinking.