Wednesday Wisdom

What is to be ethical? what is it to be moral? is there a difference between the two words?

Morals are personal beliefs about right and wrong. They are shaped by upbringing, culture, religion, and individual conscience for example, believing that lying is wrong in all cases. Ethics are shared rules or principles that guide behavior within a group, profession, or society. They are more formal and often written down. An example would be what are the ethics pertaining to the medical or legal professions. Semantically they seem similar, but ethics are what makes a social construct and a society that’s amenable. Historically, the philosophy behind ethics has been broken into three schools when approaching the question what is it to be a good individual and a productive part of society?

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics may have been the first outline on what it is to be a good citizen, highlighting the importance of the development of human character and practical wisdom. It famously introduces the "Golden Mean," arguing that virtue is the perfect balance between the extremes of deficiency and excess. Rooted in the works of Aristotle, virtue ethics emphasizes character over rules or outcomes. According to virtue ethics, morality is about cultivating virtues like courage, honesty, and compassion to become a morally good person. This theory argues that moral actions naturally arise from a person’s virtuous character, which is developed over time through practice, moral education, and reflection. Virtue ethics focuses on the long-term development of moral character rather than specific acts or results.

Utilitarianism, developed by philosophers like Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), is a consequentialist theory that holds that the morality of an action depends on its outcomes. Specifically, an action is right if it maximizes happiness or reduces suffering, aiming for the "greatest good for the greatest number." Utilitarianism evaluates morality based on the net pleasure or pain caused, emphasizing results rather than intentions.

Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) deontological ethics is based on the principle that actions are morally right or wrong according to rules, duties, or laws. Unlike utilitarianism, deontology is non-consequentialist, Kant argues that the morality of an action is determined by whether it follows a moral rule or duty, regardless of the outcome. Kantian ethics, for example, emphasizes acting according to a “categorical imperative”, a universal moral law that respects the autonomy and dignity of individuals.

It’s difficult to say which school offers the best guideline on how one should live a moral life, each school offers a different insight and approach. However, a great tool in philosophy and logic is a "razor" which is a principle or "rule of thumb" used to eliminate unlikely explanations or unnecessary assumptions to get to one core and simple explanation. One such “razor” that I learned so many years ago in a small class, in a small city located in a small state by the ocean, is to judge an action by “what is humanizing and what is de-humanizing”.

As “Ockham’s razor” states, sometimes the simplest answer is the best one, perhaps a “humanizing razor” is an essential tool for all.

And now you know...

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.