by Henry Piper (all rights reserved)
The Issues of Ethics
Ethics is essentially about values; more precisely, it is the study of right and wrong, or good and evil, and addresses the question of how human beings should or ought to act, rather than how we typically or actually do act. We are fortunate today to enjoy an extraordinary mix and interrelation of cultures; however, cultural diversity, as much as we might enjoy and appreciate it, has brought with it a sense of relativism in our assessment of moral values. The anthropological acceptance of “cultural relativism,” which reveals that no one set of cultural practices is necessarily “normal,” or “superior” to any other, has tended to produce in our society a tacit acceptance of “ethical relativism,” whereby no one set of ethical standards is authoritative, which has in turn produced the widespread notion that there is no absolute right or wrong and further that it is impossible and perhaps even unethical to discuss ethics. In short, matters of culture—like language, religion, cuisine, dress, and art—are indeed “relative”—that is, there is none that are intrinsically superior to any other, in fact we celebrate and cherish and share in the world’s wide variety of cultural practices; by contrast, matters of ethics involve values upon which the very possibility of our living together depends. To the extent that one might personally prefer one particular cultural practice over another—starting with but not limited to the one in which a person is raised—this is clearly not a matter of ethics but simply a matter of personal “taste”; thus, my preference for spicy food rather than bland is clearly not an ethical issue, nor is my choice of a particular religion or no religion at all. In short, one of the challenges of ethics is to exclude from consideration maters of personal taste and to limit genuine ethical consideration to matters that implicate fundamental values that we all share and that form the foundation of society itself.
Indeed, we all live together and we are forced to accept some standards of right and wrong even if we don’t give it much thought, and our failure to give it much thought is an indication that, in our anxiety to appreciate each other’s individuality and differences, we have lost touch with what brings us together—our common humanity. Fundamental to humanity is the faculty of reason, which, together with imagination, enables us not only to determine how things are but to speculate and make ethical judgments on how they ought to be; moreover, the faculty of reason that all humans share permits the development of complex forms of communication, and the faculty of imagination also permits us to empathize with one another and so inclines us to communal activity and judgment, all of which lead us to form societies based on a set of ethical judgments we make in concert with others. Thus the study of ethics, on its most fundamental level, consists in the recognition by each of us individually of these common human faculties and the communal recognition of each other in our shared enjoyment of them.
A Foundational Value: Human Life, Human Freedom, Human Dignity
I suggest that there is a basic value that all of us share, in fact a value that not one of us can rationally fail to acknowledge. My argument is as follows. Each of us values our own selves: life might present us with great joys—friendship, love, pleasure and health—but it also entails profound struggles—anxiety, pain, heartbreak, pain, grief and disease. Regardless, we persist; and the only reason why we persist must be that we value our own lives, and it is notable that we clearly can value them—that is, we are conscious that we are alive and aware that our lives are tentative and time-limited; and so we persist. Moreover, clearly we also cherish our own freedom: when enslaved or restricted we resist and resent, and even though we might indenture ourselves and so sacrifice our personal liberty in all manner of ways, for a job, for example, precisely in doing so we cannot help but admit that we do so of our own free will and retain to ourselves the natural “right” to do otherwise. Finally, we all clearly value the regard of others and thus respect and personal dignity—that others acknowledge our value and freedom. If we observe various desperate people in dire straits of poverty and addiction, for example, who might seem to have “given up on life” we must note that they too persist); moreover, we naturally feel the impulse of pity and gratitude that that is not our lot, and the most noble among us might strive to lift such people up. But even if we lack the noble inclination to assist the desperate among us, as as we consider other humans generally we cannot fail to acknowledge, upon sincere reflection, that they are all quite like us in that they clearly are conscious of their own existences and value them quite as we do our own. In short, we must concede—unless we are utterly sociopathic and incapable of perceiving any value but our own—that there is no reason that other people’s lives, freedom and dignity is not of equal value to our own. We surely also value the lives and existences of other things as well, thus we can agree that it is wrong to gratuitously mistreat a dog or even a tree or the grand canyon, and a few animal rights advocates might even consider the value of an animal to be equal to that of humans, though most of us would consider that the killing of a dog would never deserve the same punishment as the killing of a human, which indicates that the value of humans has a unique status; regardless, all this goes to show that none of us can rationally fail to concede that the value of human life, freedom and dignity is a supreme value for us all—“supreme,” I suggest, because it is the single value that none of us can rationally fail to support. Again, given that I consciously value my own life, and given that I must acknowledge that other humans consciously value theirs, I can offer no cognizable reason why the lives of others should not be afforded the same value as my own, and so I must acknowledge the general and universal value of human life, freedom and dignity. And it is upon this bedrock that our study of ethics can, and must, be built.
It must be added that this is only the beginning of our consideration of value, since there is great room for disagreement on what “human life” precisely is, and the meaning of “freedom.” Moreover, as “supreme” as the value of human life might be to us all, almost no one, on sincere consideration, would claim that its value is absolute since there are at least several troubling cases where we might sacrifice it—many of us would claim that it is moral to kill a person whom one reasonably believes poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury, i.e. the “right” of self defense; many would claim that killing in war might in some cases be just; some would claim that capital punishment might be just. But these exceptions, we might say, “prove the rule,” since all these cases represent tragic failures of precisely that “supreme” value that all of us share—the value of human life, freedom and dignity.
The Meaning of Judgment
By its nature, the subject of ethics is not about how things are but about how things ought to be; in more technical terms, ethics is not descriptive but prescriptive or normative. Taking due account of the truths of reason and the facts of experience, ethics establishes norms and criteria for determining what is right; it is essentially concerned with justice—“rightness.” As Socrates, the first ethical thinker in Western philosophy, puts it, “the unexamined life is not worth living,” by which he means that I can’t really claim to be human unless I use my free, rational capacity of reflection and thought to become aware of myself and my ability to seek “the good.” As a human being, I am blessed with the consciousness and intelligence to be able to do this, and ethics is the practice of doing so. In short, ethics is all about the realization of human freedom, since human beings are uniquely able to decide their own existence. Of all creatures we alone are not limited by the mere repetitions of the cycles of life and death, generation and destruction, for we have the ability, which we might choose to exercise, not merely to live (passively) but to act (deliberately). If we decide to choose freedom then we do not merely take things for granted as they are given to us by nature and culture and tradition or as dictated by “the invisible hand” of free-market economics; rather, to be free is to acknowledge the power to make things the way we decide that they ought to be. In order to do this, we must use our powers of observation and a careful attention to history to see how things are and have been, then we must invoke our imagination to see how things could and should be.
Ethics v. Morality
Technically the terms “morality” and “ethics” are synonymous, but the connotations of these terms might at times differ. Whereas morality is often associated with strictly personal decisions and perhaps based on personal religious faith and dogma, ethics is more likely associated with practical affairs or law. Thus one may hear a lawyer or businessperson or doctor say of a certain act or decision that it is immoral but not unethical, which means, if true, that the action is actually wrong but it does not strictly violate any law or professional code or custom. Such a view, at the outset, clearly signals that there is more to morality than simply law or custom—that something can be wrong even if not prohibited by law (and conversely that something can be right even if it is against the law, thus for example the civil disobedience of Gandhi or King). We might wonder on what basis, if not by law, do we make determinations of right or wrong, but this gets things backwards, for it is not the law that determines what is right, but our communal judgment of what is right that determines the law; thus, murder is not wrong because it’s illegal, rather we make it illegal because we have judged that it is wrong, and we make this judgment because we clearly share that “supreme,” foundational value I have noted above—that of human life, freedom and dignity.
Whether we use the term “ethics” or “morality,” it is vital to recall that we can, we must and we do make judgments about right and wrong, as our agreement on the wrongness of murder attests. If we become confused about the relationship between “personal morality” and “ethics” we run the risk of falling into the idea that all ethics is relative, but we have already seen that this is not true since we do in fact share a common foundation of value. Where a person’s actions are strictly personal, perhaps in line with religious faith and dogma, we can safely leave them to individual choice as long as the basic values of others are not affected; however, we cannot permit the personal views of one person or group—whether based on religion or anything else—to impose themselves on the society as a whole. In other words, we must maintain the distinction between personal morality, on the one hand, and ethics or law on the other, and recognize that where the basic value of human life, freedom and dignity are involved, we cannot permit religious views, for example, to determine public policy, since religious views are based on faith, which only certain people accept, and not on the basic human faculty of reason, and the shared value of human life, freedom and dignity, that we all share.
As an example of how personal morality can interfere in reasoned deliberation on public issues, let’s take a moment briefly to consider the abortion issue from a philosophical point of view. Our culture places the value of human life in a class by itself, above all other values; however, it is not always clear what we mean by “human life,” or what about human being we consider to be important, thus the concrete ways in which this singular devotion manifests itself are various. Both the "pro-life" and "pro-choice" political creeds are founded on this same value, but their respective interpretations are very different: the “pro-life” position demands the protection of the bare physical existence of the fetus based presumably on some possible future, whereas the “pro-choice” position defends the dignity and freedom—the autonomy and right to privacy and self-determination—of the individual pregnant woman. Even if their positions are antagonistic and perhaps mutually exclusive, both are devoted in principle to the ultimate value of the human being. Their political antagonism results from the fact that they have different understandings of what that value really means—physical existence of the fetus or personal freedom of a woman? And the antagonism is deep, often making dialogue between “pro-lifers” and “pro-choicers” impossible and reducing both sides to shouting at each other.
I believe that both sides should recognize the genuine ethical value and sincerity of the other side’s position; then perhaps both sides can come together to deal with the problems of unwanted pregnancy, of sexism against women, of the unavailability or unaffordable cost of medical care, child care and parental leave, and the significant and at times life-threatening medical exigencies of pregnancy. No one likes abortion, so there must be room for us to come together to prevent unwanted pregnancies and thus at least to make abortion rare and to respect the rights of women and provide hope and opportunities for all families and children, however poor and of whatever religious persuasion. Here is one example of where private morality might properly diverge from law: just because one might be personally opposed to something, however reasonably and sincerely, does not imply that others should be denied it, and, whatever one’s view of abortion, it is a separate question whether, for example, the law should be used to enforce it by jailing doctors and pregnant women who choose to participate in abortion decisions, or whether a child who is pregnant by rape should be forced to carry a child to term.
It would seem that there is no absolutely right resolution to the abortion issue, which is ironic since each side claims unique recourse to precisely such an absolute. The pro-life side appeals to the absolute right to life of the fetus and the pro-choice side appeals to the absolute right of personal autonomy, privacy and integrity of the individual woman; yet, as we have noted above, even so basic a value as human life is not necessarily absolute. Religion itself might offer an explanation of this, which may help us to understand the problem: the fact that no position on abortion can be absolutely right reminds us perhaps that we are not God, that we are flawed (i.e. we “miss the mark” of perfection and so “sin.”). By accepting this, both sides of the abortion issue might be willing to accept that its own position cannot be absolutely right, and so we all must, as human beings who value the society of others and who celebrate the diversity of human beings and the plurality of their creeds, learn to live together in mutual love and respect by achieving some peaceful compromise.
Such compromise might begin with the recognition that there is a vast quantity of pain and suffering—due to famine, political and religious warfare and the inability or unwillingness of the world’s wealthy, developed nations to put aside their quest for economic and political domination—by countless billions of living men, women and children throughout the world. In our own country, the richest and most powerful the world has ever known, millions are without adequate medical care or other bare necessities of life and millions more daily face the loss of those necessities due to layoffs for down-sizing or out-sourcing or economic downturn; and there are thousands of neglected, abused and otherwise unwanted children and elderly people. If we are at all serious about valuing human life, we cannot reasonably fail to agree that all these people do now deserve full rights as citizens and human beings, and we have a long way to go before these rights are secure, so let us not permit our disagreements to prevent progress on the far greater range of issues, affecting literally billions of people worldwide and millions here in the United States, on which we agree.
Confronting Ethical Relativism
What Is “Ethical Relativism”?
“Ethical Relativism” is a philosophical point of view that asserts that all ethical issues are relative, that is, that there is no absolute basis for a distinction between right and wrong. The most extreme version of this point of view is sometimes referred to as “egotism,” which claims that morality is relative to what each individual person says it is, so that everyone has his or her own morality—what’s right for you is right for you and what’s right for me is right for me and there is no basis for any universal or objective or standard of ethics―in other words that all ethics is purely subjective. If it’s raining and I’m without an umbrella, it’s “good” for me to steal yours, though you of course would call that “evil.” Egotism asserts that there is no “right” or “wrong”—that “good” and “evil” are strictly relative to each person’s subjective perspective.
According to this point of view, even truth itself, of any kind, might be deemed to be relative, such that just as it may be asserted that there is no right or wrong, it may equally be asserted that there is no true or false. But these are not the same thing. We can all agree that “everyone has a right to her own opinion” as a matter of freedom of speech and expression (note that this is an ethical claim, to which the egotist would presumably deny universal validity); however, just because I have a right to my own opinion does not mean that my opinion is as true as yours: my right to my opinion does not confer the value of truth upon it. Thus, under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution I have a right to express my opinion that 2+3=6, but that clearly does not make my opinion “right” in the sense of “correct,” indeed my opinion clearly is absolutely wrong―it is an opinion utterly without value. Thus we can see how tenuous the position of relativism is, in general. Moreover, as we have already seen, it is also true in ethics that our shared commitment to human life, freedom and dignity clearly means that ethics is not strictly relative, even though there may be great room for personal disagreement and we must consider further just how far relativism goes, and whether there might indeed be things, some genuine values, that are not relative, things on which we can come to some agreement or at least reasonable compromise.
The problem remains that, accustomed as we are not to judge each others’ cultural practices and tastes, we might be tempted to be equally reticent to judge any kind of behavior; indeed, the acknowledgement of cultural relativism might lead us to assume that ethical values and decisions are as relative as cultural norms—that there is no real basis for distinguishing between right and wrong. This state of affairs is exacerbated by the often self-serving and duplicitous activities of powerful interests in our world like nations at war or corporations seeking profit maximization, who seem willing and able to justify any activity that they can get away with; this is essentially egotism at work, understood as “might makes right,” which is today much in evidence (and perhaps always has been). The point is that our spirit of mutual tolerance is admirable and noble to a point, but if we are not thoughtful it can lead to nihilism—the point of view that there are no genuine values in the world, that there is nothing that we can agree on, even where human life, freedom and dignity are concerned. This is where the unwillingness to engage in ethical judgment, which ethical relativism will lead us to, will ultimately take us.
Four Refutations of Ethical Relativism
Fortunately, there are good reasons to suggest that ethical relativism is fundamentally mistaken if not certainly wrong. I divide these reasons into four parts.
First, as suggested above, there are some things, namely mathematical and geometrical truths, which really are objectively, universally and absolutely true—which are not, in other words, merely relative to one’s point of view, feelings, social background or historical period. It is clearly false to go so far as to assert “there is no truth.” Two and three are five, they always have been, will be and no reasonable person can disagree; the Pythagorean Theorem is true always, everywhere and for everyone (for more on this, please see my chapter on Plato, “How Do We Know that 2+3=5…”). To be sure, serious questions of ethics are clearly not reducible to mathematical certainty; but we can at least put aside ethical relativism’s sweeping implication that nothing is genuinely “true,” since there clearly are absolutes in nature.
Second, the position of relativism is itself, ironically, an absolute position, ironic because it is an absolute position that denies the validity of absolute positions. In other words, relativism effectively contradicts itself: one who proposes that relativism is true—that “everything is relative”—is essentially saying that “it is true that there truth,” which is absurd on its face. This does not of itself establish that ethical relativism is false, but it does mean that we must allow for the possibility that there is some absolute truth in ethics, or at least that there is some basis for establishing some standard of value among competing points of view such that some choices might reasonably be deemed better or more ethical than others
Thus third, as we have already established, consider that some things do at least seem undeniably to be wrong, such as murder: could anyone claim reasonably that murder is good or right or just? Admittedly, this immediately forces us to define “murder,” which is not as easy as it might first appear. Thus, as we have noted, it is routinely claimed that killing another human being might sometimes be right—lots of people in positions of great power today claim that certain acts of war are justified even when innocent civilians are killed, for example, and there are capital punishment and self defense to consider. But these are presumably not technically murder, which is precisely the killing of another human being without justification or excuse: can anyone reasonably claim that it could be justifiable to kill another person for personal profit, for example, or for no reason at all? If that is not reasonable, then ethical relativism is wrong, at least to that extent, and thus that we must acknowledge that there are at least some ethical matters, matters of right or wrong, that we can, at least in principle, agree on.
Finally, fourth, ethical relativism may be self-defeating or of no practical use, even if it were correct, because as a practical matter we must, if only for the sake of public harmony and order and security, come to some agreement on some basic rules. Just as traffic could not flow if we didn’t have some arbitrary system of traffic signals and regulations, so society cannot survive without some basic rules, even if these rules are not based on any absolute, objective or universal truths.
Conclusion: Why Ethics is Important
So the study of ethics begins with the conviction that there is value in the world—starting at least with the universal value of human life, freedom and dignity—that we can reasonably discuss and concerning which we can and must come to some degree of agreement, however fluid and evolving such agreement might sometimes be. Thus we must learn and commit ourselves to distinguishing between matters of personal taste and cultural diversity, on the one hand, and matters, on the other, that demand vital ethical decisions; indeed, half the battle of ethics may well be simply a matter of distinguishing between matters that require ethical consideration and those that do not. And we must consider how to discuss and decide these matters, which is what ethical theories are all about.
Ultimately, the study of ethics rests on and serves to promote the understanding of human life and human freedom and the nature of humanity itself. It is in ethical discussion and decision that we as human beings discover and assert our freedom. It is in the free activity that results from ethical deliberation that we assert and establish the values for which we are willing to live and to die. In short, it is in the practice of ethics that human life, individual and collective, becomes worth something.
In what follows, we shall consider two ethical theories—two “methods” or “formulas”—that can guide us in making ethical decisions. Just as we must have some justifiable basis of what reality is before reasonably claiming that something is “real” (metaphysics), and some justifiable basis of what knowledge is before we can reasonably claim to know something (epistemology), we must have some justifiable basis for distinguishing between right and wrong before we can make ethical judgments. The theories of Mill and Kant each offer valuable guidance, and though they are very different in method, we should be able to see, as we study them, that each of them in isolation, or the two of them together, will be of enormous help in determining how we might decide between right and wrong.
As we proceed, however, we must recall that we will always be dealing with ethical “issues” (or “questions” or “problems”). Though we must see that ethical relativism must be avoided, this does not mean that there will ever be easy, indisputable answers to ethical issues. We are clearly able to agree on certain fundamental principles, such as the essential value of human life, human freedom and human dignity; however, we will often see that there are different, rationally plausible ways to honor those principles (such that, for example, both supporting and opposing abortion rights can in various ways be reasonably argued to promote human life, freedom and dignity).
Thus, here is a vital point to keep in mind throughout the consideration of ethical questions and we must avoid categorical, conclusory claims that some point of view is clearly “right” or “wrong,” and instead be able to explain why such a claim might be right and why it also might be wrong, which is precisely what ethical theories are designed to do. The challenge of ethics is to be able to explain the reasoning that will permit us to consider and discuss ethical issues so as to make the best decisions we can, recognizing that in real life typically there is no perfect decision, and that any decision will involve balancing various values and feelings against each other. In short, the questions of ethics become “issues” precisely because there is not an obviously “right” answer, and we must be able to explain the various competing sides of these issues if we are truly to understand them.
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