Understanding Morality, Ethics, and Key Philosophies

Understanding Morality and Ethics

Morality: The set of behaviors, norms, and values that govern a society at a given time.

Ethics: The theoretical reflection on the behaviors, norms, and values that shape morality.

Conscious acts mean that the subject must clearly know what they are doing. Voluntary acts mean that the subject must want to do what they do, choose between various options, and choose without fear or coercion.

Aristotle

Property: That by which human beings work, not as a means to get something, but as an end in itself.

Happiness: Involves the exercise of reason.

Moral Understanding: The force that leads human beings to act in ways that achieve the nominated property.

Epicurus

Seek pleasure through reason and prudence.

Nature: Overcoming fear of the gods, fear of death, and the afterlife.

Pleasure: Happiness is the absence of concerns (ataraxia) and pain (aponia), the unique reasons why the soul does not enjoy inner peace.

Understanding: The way to achieve the state of pleasure is peace of mind (maximum pleasure with minimum pain).

Christianity

The Ultimate Goal and Happiness: The final goal for man is God himself, the ultimate goal is an asset, the greatest good to which humans can aspire, whose possession is happiness.

Grace: The possession of God is a divine gift, a grace.

Christian Morality: Commitment to Jesus is the practice of life, which is summarized as loving everyone.

Utilitarianism

Happiness: The maximum happiness for the human being is the attainment of what is useful to the individual and for society.

Utilitarian Principle: Actions are good insofar as they produce well-being and bad as they produce discomfort; pleasure or well-being is the absence of pain.

Kant's Ethics

Formal Ethics vs. Material Ethics

Example:

• The command: Do not engage in politics.
• The condition: If you want to be happy.
• The standard in its entirety: If you want to be happy, do not engage in politics.

Responsibility: Duty is the only truly moral motivation because it is only an expression of goodwill.

The Categorical Imperative: Act in such a way that you want your way of acting to become a universal standard.

Sartre's Existentialism

Indeterminacy of Existence: Existentialists argue that existence is the mode of being characteristic of humans.

Sartre's Radicalism: The only moral standard is that each one imposes upon themselves, knowing that every action is committed to others.

Sartre's Ethics: Each action is worth the use that the individual makes of their freedom, not by submission to law or by a value set in advance.

Rawls

Justice is the hallmark of the basic institutions of society. It is not enough that they should be orderly and efficient; if the basic institutions are unjust, they must be changed.