What is Ethics?

James P. Sterba

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781509531042
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Ethics is a field of study that we all need. This is because we all make choices, and ethics is about the general norms that govern how we should make those choices. Not surprisingly, there is disagreement over what the "norms" are, but by working through such disagreement, we can learn how to make better choices. James P. Sterba presents a general overview of ethics, using relevant examples andaccessible arguments. He takes up the question of why we should be ethical or moral, discusses competing ethical theories and proposes a way to reconcile them, and considers the relationship between ethics and religion. Ultimately, he reveals how the material discussed in the book can be used to make better ethical choices in our day-to-day lives. What is Ethics? is a book you can rely on to improve your ability to make ethical choices.

1
Introduction

At first glance, ethics appears to be unlike other areas of inquiry. After all, we cannot find contemporary defenders of Ptolemy (100–70 CE), Copernicus (1473–1543), or Isaac Newton (1642–1727), all claiming to have the best theory of the physics of celestial motion. Nor are there contemporary mercantilists or physiocrats, as there were in the 18th century, all claiming to have the best theory of macroeconomics. However, we can find contemporary defenders of Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and John Stuart Mill (1806–73), for example, all claiming to have the best theory of ethics. While significant disagreements remain in other areas of inquiry, the extent of disagreement appears to be much greater in ethics.

Of course, one explanation for this seemingly greater disagreement is that there is little or nothing that can really be established in ethics. This would explain why so many of the ethical theories that have been proposed in the past continue to have their contemporary defenders. On this account, ethics simply lacks the resources to defeat any of the contending theories, and so they all remain live options. Obviously, this explanation does not put ethics in a very favorable light.

Fortunately, a better explanation is that traditional theories of ethics, whether they justify actions simply in terms of their consequences or not, have come to be revised and reformed in such a way as to make them quite different from the original theories of the philosophers after whom they are still named. While Aristotle endorsed slavery and the subordination of women, and Kant advocated racism as well as the subordination of women, and Mill supported colonialism, it would be difficult to find any contemporary defenders of these philosophers who still endorse these particular views. Contemporary defenders all claim to be defending revised and reformed versions of Aristotle’s, Kant’s, and Mill’s original ethical theories. So this would allow for progress to be made in ethics similar to the progress that has been made in other areas of knowledge. In this regard, then, ethics would be like physics and economics.

The challenge of ethical relativism

Still, it could be argued that ethics is unlike physics and economics in that its requirements are simply the product of a particular culture and therefore are relative to and applicable to just the members of that culture. This is the thesis of ethical or moral relativism.

In support of this view, Herodotus the ancient Greek historian tells a story about Darius the Great, King of Persia (550–486 BCE). In the story, Darius

summoned the Greeks who happened to be present at his court, and asked them what they would take to eat the dead bodies of their fathers. They replied that they would not do it for any money in the world. Later, in the presence of the Greeks, and through an interpreter, so they could understand what was said, he asked some Indians, of the tribe called Callatiae, who do in fact eat their parents’ dead bodies, what they would take to burn them. They uttered a cry of horror and forbade him to mention such a dreadful thing.¹

Clearly, the Greeks and the Callatiae of Darius’s time approved of their own particular way of showing respect for dead parents and disapproved of the other’s way of doing the same as a course of action for themselves.

There are other examples of this sort. Danish explorer Peter Freucher reports on the following practices of the Eskimos or Inuit of the North in the early 20th century:

When an old man sees the young men go out hunting and cannot himself go along, he is sorry. When he has to ask other people for skins for his clothing, when he cannot ever again be the one to invite the neighbors to eat his game, life is of no value to him. Rheumatism and other ills may plague him and he wants to die. This has been done in different ways in different tribes, but everywhere it is held that if a man feels himself to be a nuisance, his love for his kin, coupled with the sorrow of not being able to take part in the things which are worthwhile, impels him to die. In some tribes, an old man wants his oldest son or favorite daughter to be the one to put the string around his neck and women may sometimes prefer to be stabbed with a dagger into the heart – a thing which is also done by a son or a daughter or whoever [sic] is available for the deed.²

Surely, such practices toward the old are quite different from those that prevail in most societies today, and even different from the practices that now prevail among the Inuit. These are the sort of examples that are offered in support of the thesis of ethical relativism.

Yet notice that if we accept the thesis of ethical relativism, we could never justifiably say that the cultural practices of other societies are ethically inferior to our own. The authority of each society’s ethical code would extend no further than its own members.

For instance, we could not condemn Nazi Germany for the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed. Nor could we blame the North American colonists and, later, the citizens of the United States and Canada for the American Holocaust, which by 1890, together with the impact of European diseases, had reduced the North American Indian population by about 98 percent, to 381,000.³ We also could not blame the Turks for the million Armenians they massacred from 1914 to 1918 or the Khmer Rouge for the million Cambodians who were massacred from 1975 to 1979 under Pol Pot’s regime.⁴ Obviously, our inability to justifiably condemn any of these acts in the past or present is an undesirable consequence of accepting the thesis of ethical relativism.

In accepting the thesis of ethical relativism, there is also the problem of determining exactly what the requirements of morality are supposed to be relative to. It is said that they are relative to and a product of a particular cultural group. Yet must that group be a society as a whole, or could it be a subgroup of a society? And why can’t morality be relative to just each individual? Why can’t moral requirements be determined just by each individual’s own personal reflection and thereby be relative to and applicable to that individual alone? If we allow all of these possibilities, then, any act (e.g., contract killing) could be wrong from the point of view of some particular society (e.g., U.S. society), right from the point of view of some subgroup of that society (e.g., the Mafia), and wrong again from the point of view of some particular member of that society or other subgroup (e.g., law enforcement officers). But if this were the case, then obviously it would be extremely difficult for us to know what we should do, all things considered.

But is it true?

Yet despite all the difficulties that come with accepting the thesis of ethical relativism, the thesis might still be true.⁵ So is there any way to reasonably determine whether the thesis is true?

Consider the practice in the United Kingdom of driving on the left side of the road along with the opposite practice in China of driving on the right side of the road. What does justify these alternative practices? Well, in both countries, traffic must be regulated in some uniform manner to avoid accidents, and each country adopted different practices to achieve that end. Accordingly, citizens of each country can recognize the justification of the other country’s rule of the road, even though it differs from their own country’s rule. Accordingly, citizens of each country are normally willing to follow the other country’s rule when they happen to be driving in that other country – “when in Rome do as the Romans do.”

But are the different rules of the road in the United Kingdom and China an example of ethical relativism? It is difficult to see how this could be the case. Surely, ethical relativists must be maintaining that the requirements of morality are a product of the cultural practices of particular societies in some stronger sense than is displayed by our different rules-of-the-road example. There is too much moral agreement here about the justification of each country’s rule of the road and about what should be done in practice for this case to count as an example of ethical relativism.

So let’s consider the example of the ancient Greeks and the Callatiae we considered earlier. Here both groups wanted to treat their dead respectfully, but they differed about how that should be done. But why did they differ? Most likely they had different religious beliefs about how to show that respect. Religious belief is assumed to be grounded in special revelations and so is not rationally accessible to everyone. Accordingly, if the Greeks had realized this, they would have also realized that they should not have expected the Callatiae to accept their preferred religiously based way of caring for the dead. And the same would hold for the Callatiae. They, too, should not have expected the Greeks to accept their preferred religiously based way of caring for the dead. Since there is no necessity that they all care for their dead in exactly the same way, what both groups should have wanted is for each to be free to respectfully care for their dead in whatever way they prefer. This is because the moral requirement to respectfully care for the dead leaves open the means by which that requirement is to be satisfied, thus making it possible for different religious beliefs to enter into the determination of how to meet it. So here, too, the relativity exhibited in this example is not the right sort needed to show that the thesis of ethical relativism is true. The example is too similar to the different rules-of-the-road example for it to support ethical relativism.

What about the example drawn from the practices of the Inuit of the early 20th century? At first glance, it does seem like we today hold different moral views about how the elderly should behave. Nevertheless, in various cultural traditions, we find many examples of individuals who have become a burden to the group showing a willingness to sacrifice themselves to increase the chances that others will survive. In the early 20th century, in a similar environment, such behavior was displayed by members of the British expedition attempting to reach the South Pole led by Sir Ernest Shackleton,⁶ and even more generally, such behavior can be found throughout the history of warfare. We also find that among the Inuit of today, with better means of survival, the elderly no longer utilize their earlier practice. So instead of viewing this case as one where different moral beliefs are simply the product of different cultures, it is better interpreted as a case where the same moral requirement is instantiated differently because of the presence of different opportunities and different material conditions.

In sum, in none of these cases are the moral requirements at issue simply the product of the particular culture. Rather, they are cases in which ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Author’s Note
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Why be Moral?
• 3 Consequentialism
• 4 Nonconsequentialism
• 5 Reconciliation
• 6 Morality and Religion
• 7 Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• End User License Agreement