Features of modern ethics. The Significance of Ethical Teachings for Contemporary Ethics

Modern ethics is faced with a rather difficult situation in which many traditional moral values have been revised. Traditions that had previously seen much of the foundation of moral principles have often been destroyed. They have lost their significance due to global processes developing in society and the rapid pace of changes in production, its reorientation towards mass consumption. As a result of this, a situation arose in which opposing moral principles appeared as equally justified, equally deducible from reason. This, according to A. Makintair, led to the fact that rational arguments in morality began to be mainly used to prove theses that those who had given these arguments had previously already had.

This, on the one hand, led to an anti-normative turn in ethics, expressed in the desire to proclaim an individual a full-fledged and self-sufficient subject of moral requirements, to impose on him the entire burden of responsibility for independently made decisions. The anti-normative tendency is represented in the ideas of F. Nietzsche, in existentialism, in postmodern philosophy. On the other hand, a desire arose to limit the area of ethics to a rather narrow range of issues related to the formulation of such rules of behavior that can be accepted by people with different life orientations, with different understanding of the goals of human existence, the ideals of self-improvement. As a result, the traditional category of good for ethics was, as it were, taken out of the bounds of morality, and the latter began to develop mainly as an ethics of rules. In line with this trend, the topic of human rights is being further developed, new attempts are made to build ethics as a theory of justice. One of such attempts is presented in the book by J. Rawls "The Theory of Justice".

New scientific discoveries and new technologies have given a powerful surge in the development of applied ethics. In the XX century. many new professional codes of morality were developed, business ethics, bioethics, the ethics of a lawyer, a media worker, etc. were developed. Scientists, doctors, philosophers began to discuss such problems as organ transplantation, euthanasia, the creation of transgenic animals, and human cloning.

Man, to a much greater extent than before, felt his responsibility for the development of all life on Earth and began to discuss these problems not only from the point of view of his own interests of survival, but also from the point of view of recognizing the intrinsic value of the fact of life, the fact of existence as such (Schweitzer, moral realism).

An important step representing the reaction to the current situation in the development of society, there was an attempt to understand morality in a constructive sense, to present it as an endless discourse in its continuation, aimed at developing solutions acceptable to all its participants. This is developed in the works of K.O. Apel, Y. Habermas, R. Aleksi and others. The ethics of discourse is directed against anti-normativism, it tries to develop common guidelines that can unite people in the fight against global threats facing humanity.

An undeniable achievement of modern ethics was the identification of the weaknesses of the utilitarian theory, the formulation of the thesis that some basic human rights should be understood precisely in the absolute sense as values that are not directly related to the issue of the public good. They must be respected even when it does not lead to an increase in public goods.

One of the problems that remains in modern ethics as relevant as in the ethics of past years is the problem of substantiating the initial moral principle, the search for an answer to the question of what can be the basis of morality, can moral judgments be considered in as true or false, respectively - is it possible to indicate any value criterion to determine this? A sufficiently influential group of philosophers denies the possibility of considering normative judgments as those that can be considered true or false. These are, first of all, philosophers who develop the approach of logical positivism in ethics. They believe that so-called descriptive (descriptive) judgments have nothing to do with normative (prescriptive) judgments. The latter express, from their point of view, only the will of the speaker and therefore, unlike judgments of the first type, they cannot be evaluated in terms of logical truth or falsehood. One of the classic versions of this approach was the so-called emotivism (A. Iyer). Emotivists believe that moral judgments do not possess any truth, but simply convey the speaker's emotions. These emotions affect the listener in terms of the formation of his desire to side with the speaker, caused by emotional resonance. Other philosophers of this group generally abandon the task of searching for the original meaning of moral judgments and put forward as the goal of theoretical ethics only a logical analysis of the connection between individual judgments, aimed at achieving their consistency (R. Hear, R. Bandt). Nevertheless, even analytical philosophers, who declared the analysis of the logical connection of moral judgments as the main task of theoretical ethics, still usually proceed from the fact that the judgments themselves have some basis. They can be based on historical intuitions, on the rational desires of individual individuals, but this is already beyond the competence of theoretical ethics as a science.

A number of authors note the formalism of this position and try to somehow soften it. So V. Franken, R. Holmes say that it will depend on our very initial understandings of morality whether some judgments contradict others or not. R. Holmes believes that the introduction of a specific value position in the definition of morality is inappropriate. However, it does allow for "the possibility of including some real content (eg, a reference to a public good) and insight into the sources of morality." Such a position presupposes going beyond the limits of logical analysis of moral statements, but despite the desire to overcome formalism (Holmes himself calls his position and V. Francken's position substantialist), it still remains too abstract. Explaining why the individual still behaves like a moral subject, R. Holmes says: "The very interest that prompts the individual to adhere to a normal and orderly life should also induce him to create and maintain the conditions under which such a life is possible." Probably no one will object that such a definition (and at the same time the justification of morality) is reasonable. But it leaves a lot of questions: for example, about what, after all, a normal and orderly life consists (which desires can and should be encouraged and which ones should be limited), to what extent the individual is really interested in maintaining the general conditions of a normal life, why, let's say, sacrifice your life for the sake of your homeland, if you yourself still don't see its prosperity (the question that Lorenzo Valla asked)? Apparently, such questions give rise to the desire of some thinkers not only to point out the limited possibilities of ethical theory, but also to abandon the procedure for substantiating morality altogether. A. Schopenhauer was the first to express the idea that the rational foundation of morality undermines the fundamental nature of its principles. This position has some support in contemporary Russian ethics.

Other philosophers believe that the procedure for substantiating morality still has a positive meaning, the foundations of morality can be found in the reasonable self-limitation of interests, in the historical tradition, common sense, corrected by scientific thinking.

In order to positively answer the question about the prospects for substantiating morality, it is necessary, first of all, to distinguish between the principles of ethics of duty and ethics of virtues. Christian ethics, which can be called the ethics of duty, certainly contains the concept of morality as the highest absolute value. The priority of the moral motive presupposes the same attitude towards to different people regardless of their achievements in practical life. It is an ethic of strict limits and universal love. One of the ways to justify it is an attempt to deduce morality from a person's ability to universalize his behavior, the idea of what would happen if everyone did the same as I am going to do. This attempt received the greatest development in Kantian ethics and is continued in modern ethical discussions. However, unlike Kant's approach, in modern ethics, personal interest is not rigidly opposed to moral ability, and universalization is viewed not as something that creates moral ability from the mind itself, but simply as a control procedure used to test various appropriate rules of behavior for their common acceptability.

However, such a concept of morality, in which it is considered, first of all, as a means of controlling behavior, carried out from the point of view of not allowing violation of the dignity of other people, not grossly trampling on their interests, that is, not using another person only as a means for realizing one's own interests (which in a rough form can be expressed in extreme forms of exploitation, slavery, zombie in someone's political interests through the use of dirty political technologies) is not enough. There is a need to consider morality more broadly, in connection with its influence on the quality of performance of all those types social activities in which the person is actually involved. In this case, the need arises again to talk about virtues in the ancient tradition, that is, in connection with the sign of perfection in the performance of a certain social function. The difference between the ethics of duty and the ethics of virtues is very important, since the principles on the basis of which these types of moral theory are based turn out to be contradictory to a certain extent, and they have varying degrees of categorization. The ethics of duty tends to be an absolute form of expression of its principles. In it, a person is always viewed as the highest value, all people are equal in their dignity, regardless of their practical achievements.

These achievements themselves turn out to be insignificant when compared with eternity, with God, and that is why a person necessarily takes the position of a "slave" in such ethics. If all are slaves before God, the real difference between slave and master turns out to be insignificant. Such a statement looks like a form of asserting human dignity, despite the fact that a person seems to voluntarily assume the role of a slave here, the role of a lower being, relying in everything on the mercy of the deity. But, as already mentioned, such an assertion of the equal dignity of all people in the absolute sense is not enough to morally encourage their practical social activity. In the ethics of virtues, man, as it were, claims to be divine. Already with Aristotle, in his highest intellectual virtues, he becomes like a deity.

This means that the ethics of virtues allows for different degrees of perfection, and not just perfection in the ability to manage one's thoughts, overcoming the craving for sin (a task that is also posed in the ethics of duty), but also perfection in the ability to perform the social function that a person undertakes to carry out. ... This introduces relativity into the moral assessment of what a person is as a person, i.e., in the ethics of virtues, a different moral attitude towards different people is allowed, because their dignity in this type of ethics depends on the specific character traits of people and their achievements in practical life ... Moral qualities are correlated here with various social abilities and appear as very differentiated.

The ethics of duty and the ethics of virtue are fundamentally related to different types moral motivation.

In those cases when the moral motive manifests itself most clearly, when it does not merge with other social motives of activity, the external situation serves as an incentive for the beginning of moral activity. At the same time, behavior is fundamentally different from the one that develops on the basis of the usual sequence: need-interest-goal. For example, if a person rushes to save a drowning man, he does this not because he experienced some emotional stress in advance, similar, say, to the feeling of hunger, but simply because he understands or intuitively feels what the subsequent life with the consciousness of an unfulfilled duty will represent for torment him. Thus, the behavior is based here on the anticipation of strong negative emotions associated with the idea of violation of the moral requirement and the desire to avoid them. However, it is relatively rare to undertake such selfless acts, which are the most manifest of the ethics of duty. Revealing the essence of the moral motive, it is necessary to explain not only the fear of torment due to unfulfilled duty or remorse, but also the positive direction of the long-term activity of behavior, which inevitably manifests itself when it comes to one's own good. It is clear that the justification of the need for such behavior is carried out not in some extraordinary circumstances, and its determination requires not an episodic, but a long-term goal. Such a goal can be realized only in connection with the general ideas of the individual about the happiness of life, about the whole nature of her relationship with other people.

Is it possible to reduce morality only to the restrictions that follow from the rule of universalization, to behavior based on reason, freed from emotions that interfere with sober reasoning? Of course not. Since the time of Aristotle, it has been known that without emotion there is no moral action.

But if in the ethics of duty strictly defined emotions of compassion, love, remorse are manifested, in the ethics of virtues the realization of moral qualities is accompanied by numerous positive emotions of a non-moral nature. This happens because there is a combination of moral and other pragmatic motives of being. A person, performing positive moral actions in accordance with his virtues of character, experiences positive emotional states. But in this case, positive motivation is introduced into the morally approved action not from the side of some special moral, but from all the higher social needs of the individual. At the same time, the orientation of behavior towards moral values enhances emotional self-awareness in the process of meeting extramoral needs. For example, the joy of creativity in socially significant activity is higher than the joy of creativity in a simple game, because in the first case, a person sees in the moral criteria of society a confirmation of the real complexity, sometimes even the uniqueness of the tasks he is solving. This means the enrichment of some motives of activity with others. Considering such a combination and enrichment of some motives of behavior with others, it is quite possible to explain why a person has a personal interest in being moral, that is, to be moral not only for society, but also for himself.

In ethics of debt, the issue is more complicated. Due to the fact that a person is taken here regardless of his social functions, good acquires an absolute character and arouses the theorist's desire to present it as an initial and rationally indefinable category for the construction of the entire ethical system.

The absolute, indeed, cannot be excluded from the sphere of morality and cannot be ignored by a theoretical thought that wants to free a person from the burden of phenomena that are incomprehensible to him and not always pleasant for him. In practical terms, proper behavior presupposes a mechanism of conscience, which is cultivated as a reaction imposed by society on an individual to a violation of moral requirements. In the manifestation of a strong negative reaction of the subconscious to the assumption of violation of the requirements of morality, in essence, something absolute has already been concluded. But at critical periods in the development of society, when mass sacrificial behavior is required, the automatic reactions of the subconscious and the pangs of conscience alone are not enough. From point of view common sense and the theory based on it is very difficult to explain why it is necessary to give your life for others. But then it is very difficult to give a personal meaning to such a sacrificial act only on the basis of a scientific explanation that it is necessary, say, for the survival of the race. However, the practice of public life requires such actions, and, in this sense, generates the need to strengthen moral motives aimed at this kind of behavior, say, at the expense of the idea of God, hope for posthumous retribution, etc.

Thus, a fairly popular absolutist approach in ethics is largely an expression of the practical need to strengthen the moral motives of behavior and a reflection of the fact that morality really exists, despite the fact that, from the point of view of common sense, a person seems to be unable to act against his interest. But the prevalence of absolutist ideas in ethics, the assertion that the first principle of morality cannot be substantiated, rather testify not to the powerlessness of theory, but to the imperfection of the society in which we live. The creation of a political organization that excludes war and the solution of nutritional problems based on new energy and technology as seen, for example, by Vernadsky (the transition to autotrophic humanity associated with the production of artificial protein), will make it possible to humanize social life to such an extent that the ethics of duty, with its universalism and strict prohibitions on the use of a person as a means, will actually be unnecessary due to specific political and legal guarantees of the existence of man and all other living beings. In the ethics of virtues, the need to orient personal motives of activity towards moral values can be justified without appeal to abstract metaphysical entities, without the illusory doubling of the world necessary to give moral motives the status of being of absolute significance. This is one of the manifestations of real humanism, since it removes the alienation caused by the fact that external, incomprehensible rational thinking principles of behavior.

This does not mean, however, that the ethics of duty is no longer needed as such. It's just that its scope is shrinking, and the moral principles developed within the theoretical approaches of the ethics of duty become important for the development of the rule of law, in particular, in substantiating the concept of human rights. In modern ethics, the approaches developed in the ethics of duty, attempts to deduce morality from a person's ability to mentally universalize his behavior are most of all used to defend the ideas of liberalism, the basis of the reasoning of which is the desire to create a society in which an individual could most qualitatively satisfy his interest, not conflicting with the interests of others.

The ethics of virtues correlates with communitarian approaches, in which it is believed that personal happiness is impossible without making caring for society an object of your own aspirations, your personal desires. The ethics of duty, on the contrary, serves as the basis for the development of liberal thought, the development of general rules acceptable to all, independent of individual life orientations. Communitarians say that the subject of morality should be not only general rules behavior, but also the standards of excellence of each in the kind of activity that he actually performs. They pay attention to the connection of morality with a certain local cultural tradition, arguing that without such a connection, morality will simply disappear, and human society will disintegrate.

It seems that in order to solve urgent problems of modern ethics, it is necessary to combine different principles, including - to look for ways to combine the absolute principles of the ethics of duty and the relative principles of the ethics of virtues, the ideology of liberalism and communitarianism. Reasoning from the standpoint of the priority of an individual individual, it would be very difficult, for example, to explain the duty to future generations, to understand the natural desire of every person to preserve a good memory of himself among his descendants.

Twentieth-century ethics can be called an intellectual response to the social catastrophes that have occurred in this century. Two world wars and regional conflicts, totalitarian regimes and terrorism prompt us to think about the very possibility of ethics in a world so openly alien to good. Of the great variety of ethical teachings created in the twentieth century, we will consider only two. Their representatives not only constructed theoretical models of morality, but also made practical normative conclusions from them.

Another very significant kind of ethical teaching that had a huge impact on the development of Western culture is ethics of existentialism (philosophy of existence). Existentialism is represented by French philosophers J.P. Sartre (1905-1980), G. Marseille (1889-1973), A. Camus (1913-1960), German philosophers M. Heidegger (1889-1976), K. Jaspers (1883-1969). Existentialism took shape in Western Europe between the two world wars. Its representatives tried to comprehend the position of a person in crisis situations and develop certain values that allow him to get out of the crisis with dignity.

The starting position of existentialism is that existence precedes essence, the reason that determines it. Man first exists, appears, acts, and only then is he determined, i.e. gets characteristics and definitions. Openness to the future, inner incompleteness and initial readiness for free self-determination from oneself is true existence, existence.

Existentialist ethics considers freedom as the basis of human moral behavior. Man is freedom... Freedom is the most fundamental characteristic of a person. Freedom in existentialism - This is, first of all, freedom of consciousness, freedom of choice of the spiritual and moral position of the individual. All causes and factors acting on a person are necessarily mediated by his free choice... A person must constantly choose one or another line of his behavior, be guided by certain values and ideals. By posing the problem of freedom, the existentialists reflected the main foundation of morality. Existentialists rightly emphasize that people's activities are directed mainly not by external circumstances, but by internal motives, that each person mentally reacts in different circumstances in the same way. A lot depends on each person, and one should not refer to "circumstances" in the event of a negative development of events. People have considerable freedom in determining the goals of their activities. At each concrete historical moment, there is not one, but several possibilities. In the presence of real opportunities for the development of events, it is equally important that people are free to choose the means to achieve their goals. And the ends and means, embodied in actions, already create a certain situation, which itself begins to exert influence.

Human responsibility is closely related to freedom.... Without freedom, there is no responsibility. If a person is not free, if he is constantly determined in his actions, determined by some spiritual or material factors, then, from the point of view of existentialists, he is not responsible for his actions, which means that he is not a subject of moral relations either. Moreover, an individual who does not exercise a free choice, renounced freedom, thereby loses the main quality of a person and turns into a simple material object. In other words, such an individual can no longer be considered a person in the true sense of the word, for he has lost the quality of true existence.

However, real life shows that for many people, genuine existence is an overwhelming burden. After all, freedom requires independence and courage from a person, it presupposes responsibility for a choice that gives one or another meaning to the future, which determines what the distant world will be like. It is these circumstances that cause those unpleasant experiences of metaphysical fear and anxiety, constant anxiety, which push a person and the sphere of "inauthentic existence."

Existentialist ethics calls for opposing all forms of collectivism. You must openly realize your loneliness and abandonment, freedom and responsibility, the meaninglessness and tragedy of your own existence, gain strength and courage to live in the most unfavorable situations of hopelessness and hopelessness.

Existentialist ethics develops in the mainstream of stoicism: the moral confusion and despair of a person, his loss of his dignity and strength of spirit is not so much the result of the collision of our reason and morality with the meaninglessness of human life and the inability to achieve prosperity in it, as the result of disappointment in these our hopes. As long as a person desires and hopes for a successful outcome of his undertakings, he will fail and fall into despair, because the course of life is not in his power. It does not depend on a person what situations he can get into, but it entirely depends on him how he will get out of them.

Among the theories of morality XX century. should pay attention to "Ethics of nonviolence". All ethics consider the rejection of violence necessary. Because violence generates retaliatory violence, it is notoriously ineffective. method of solving any problems. Nonviolence is not passivity, but special nonviolent actions (sit-ins, marches, hunger strikes, distribution of leaflets and appearances in the media to popularize their position - supporters of non-violence have developed dozens of such methods). Only morally strong and courageous people are capable of carrying out such actions; The motive for nonviolence is love for enemies and faith in their best moral qualities. Enemies should be convinced of wrong, inefficiency and immorality forceful methods and reach a compromise with them. The Ethics of Non-Violence considers morality not to be weakness, but as a person's strength, the ability to achieve goals.

In the XX century. was developed the ethic of reverence for life, the founder of which was the modern humanist A. Schweitzer. It equalizes the moral value of all existing forms of life. However, he admits a situation of moral choice. If a person is guided by the ethics of reverence for life, then he harms life and destroys it only under the pressure of necessity and never does it mindlessly. But where he is free to choose, a person seeks a position in which he could help life and avert from it the threat of suffering and destruction. Schweitzer rejects evil.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

The history of ethics

Already 2500 years ago, the great philosophers identified the main traits of a person's character, his temperament and spiritual qualities, which they called ethical virtues. Cicero, having familiarized himself with the works of Aristotle, introduced a new term "morality", which he attached the same meaning.

The subsequent development of philosophy led to the fact that a separate discipline was distinguished in it - ethics. The subject (definition) studied by this science is morality and ethics. For quite a long time, these categories were given the same meanings, but some philosophers distinguished them. For example, Hegel believed that morality is the subjective perception of actions, and morality is the actions themselves and their objective nature.

Depending on the historical processes taking place in the world and changes in social development society, the subject of ethics constantly changed its meaning and content. What was inherent in primitive people became unusual for the inhabitants of the ancient period, and their ethical standards were criticized by medieval philosophers.

Pre-antique ethics

Long before the subject of ethics as a science was formed, there was a long period that is commonly called "pre-ethics."

One of the brightest representatives of that time can be called Homer, whose heroes possessed a set of positive and negative qualities. But the general concept of which actions belong to virtue and which are not, he has not yet formed. Neither the Odyssey nor the Iliad have an instructive character, but are simply a narrative about events, people, heroes and gods who lived at that time.

For the first time, basic human values as a measure of ethical virtue were voiced in the works of Hesiod, who lived at the beginning of the class division of society. He considered the main qualities of a person to be honest work, fairness and legality of actions as the basis for what leads to the preservation and augmentation of property.

The first postulates of morality and ethics were the statements of the five sages of antiquity:

respect the elders (Chilo);
avoid falsehood (Cleobulus);
glory to the gods, and honor to parents (Solon);
observe the measure (Thales);
pacify anger (Chilo);
licentiousness is a flaw (Thales).

These criteria demanded certain behavior from people, and therefore became the first for people of that time. Ethics, as well as the task of which is the study of a person and his qualities, was only in its infancy during this period.

Sophists and ancient sages

From the 5th century BC in many countries, the rapid development of sciences, arts and architecture began. Never before had such a large number of philosophers been born, various schools and movements were formed that paid great attention to the problems of man, his spiritual and moral qualities.

The most significant at that time was philosophy Ancient Greece presented in two directions:

Immoralists and sophists who denied the creation of binding moral requirements for all. For example, the sophist Protagoras believed that the subject and object of ethics is morality, a fickle category that changes under the influence of time. It belongs to the category of relative, since each nation at a certain period of time has its own moral principles.
They were opposed by such great minds as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, who created the subject of ethics as a science of morality, and Epicurus. They believed that virtue was based on harmony between reason and emotion. In their opinion, it was not given by the gods, which means that it is a tool that allows you to separate good deeds from evil.

It was Aristotle in his work "Ethics" who divided the moral qualities of a person into 2 types:

ethical, that is, associated with disposition and temperament;
dianoetic - related to the mental development of a person and the ability to influence passions with the help of reason.

According to Aristotle, the subject of ethics is 3 teachings - about the highest good, about virtues in general and in particular, and the object of study is a person. It was he who introduced into the rim that morality (ethics) is the acquired properties of the soul. He developed the concept of a virtuous person.

Epicurus and the Stoics

In contrast to Aristotle, Epicurus put forward his moral hypothesis, according to which only that life is happy and virtuous, which leads to the satisfaction of basic needs and desires, for they are easily achieved, which means that they make a person serene and happy with everything.

The Stoics left the deepest mark after Aristotle in the development of ethics. They believed that all virtues (good and evil) are inherent in a person as well as in the world around him. The goal of people is to develop qualities in themselves that are related to good, and to eliminate the evil inclination. The most prominent representatives of the Stoics were Zeno in Greece, Seneca and Rome.

Medieval ethics

During this period, the subject of ethics is the promotion of Christian dogmas, since religious morality began to rule the world. The highest goal of man in the medieval era is serving God, which was interpreted through the teaching of Christ about love for him.

If ancient philosophers believed that virtues are a property of any person and his task is to multiply them on the side of good in order to be in harmony with himself and the world, then with the development of Christianity they became divine grace, which the Creator endows people with or not.

The most famous philosophers of that time are Augustine the Blessed and Thomas Aquinas. According to the first, the commandments are initially perfect, since they came from God. The one who lives by them and glorifies the Creator will go to Heaven, and the rest will be in hell. Also, Augustine the Blessed argued that such a category as evil does not exist in nature. It is performed by people and angels who turned away from the Creator for the sake of their own existence.

Thomas Aquinas went even further, declaring that bliss is impossible during life - it is the basis of the afterlife. Thus, the subject of ethics in the Middle Ages lost its connection with man and his qualities, giving way to church ideas about the world and the place of people in it.

New ethics

A new round in the development of philosophy and ethics begins with the denial of morality as a divine will given to man in the Ten Commandments. For example, Spinoza argued that the Creator is nature, the cause of all that exists, acting according to its own laws. He believed that in the world around him there is no absolute good and evil, there are only situations in which a person acts in one way or another. It is the understanding of what is useful and what is harmful for the preservation of life that determines the nature of people and their moral qualities.

According to Spinoza, the subject and tasks of ethics are the study of human flaws and virtues in the search for happiness, and they are based on the desire for self-preservation.

On the contrary, he believed that the core of everything is free will, which is part of moral duty. His first law of morality reads: "Act in such a way that you always recognize in yourself and others a rational will not as a means to achieve, but as an end."

Evil (egoism) initially inherent in a person is the center of all actions and goals. To rise above him, people must show complete respect for both their own and others' personality. It was Kant who revealed the subject of ethics in a concise and accessible way as a philosophical science that stood apart from its other types, creating formulas for ethical views of the world, state and politics.

Contemporary ethics

In the 20th century, the subject of ethics as a science is morality based on non-violence and reverence for life. The manifestation of good began to be viewed from the position of non-multiplication of evil. Leo Tolstoy revealed this side of the ethical perception of the world through the prism of good especially well.

Violence breeds violence and increases suffering and pain - this is the main motive of this ethic. It was also adhered to by M. Gandhi, who strove to make India free without the use of violence. In his opinion, love is the most powerful weapon, acting with the same strength and accuracy as the basic laws of nature, for example, gravity.

In our time, many countries have come to understand that the ethics of nonviolence gives more effective results in resolving conflicts, although it cannot be called passive. She has two forms of protest: non-cooperation and civil disobedience.

Ethical values

One of the foundations of modern moral values is the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer - the founder of the ethics of reverence for life. His concept was to respect any life without dividing it into useful, higher or lower, valuable or worthless.

At the same time, he admitted that, due to circumstances, people can save their lives by taking someone else's. At the heart of his philosophy is the conscious choice of a person in the direction of protecting life, if the situation allows it, and not mindlessly taking it away. Schweitzer considered self-denial, forgiveness and service to people to be the main criteria for preventing evil.

V modern world ethics as a science does not dictate the rules of behavior, but studies and systematizes common ideals and norms, a general understanding of morality and its significance in the life of both an individual and society as a whole.

The concept of morality

Morality (morality) is a socio-cultural phenomenon that forms the fundamental essence of humanity. All human activities are based on ethical standards recognized in the society in which they live.

Knowledge of moral rules and ethics of behavior helps individuals to adapt among others. Morality is also an indicator of the degree of a person's responsibility for their actions.

Ethical and spiritual qualities are brought up from childhood. From theory, thanks to the right actions in relation to others, they become the practical and everyday side of human life, and their violation is condemned by the public.

Ethics objectives

Since ethics also studies its place in the life of society, it solves the following tasks:

describes morality from the history of formation in antiquity to the principles and norms inherent in modern society;
gives a characterization of morality from the standpoint of its “proper” and “existing” version;
teaches people the basics, gives knowledge about good and evil, helps to improve themselves when choosing their own understanding of the "right life."

Thanks to this science, the ethical assessment of the actions of people and their relationships is built with an orientation towards understanding whether good or evil is achieved.

Types of ethics

V modern society the activities of people in numerous spheres of life are very closely related, therefore, the subject of ethics examines and studies its various types:

family ethics deals with the relationship of people in marriage;
business ethics - norms and rules of doing business;
corporate studies relationships in a team;
trains and studies the behavior of people in their workplace.

Today, many countries are implementing ethical laws regarding the death penalty, euthanasia and organ transplants. As human society continues to develop, ethics changes along with it.

Modern ethics is faced with a rather difficult situation in which many traditional moral values have been revised. Traditions that had previously seen much of the foundation of moral principles have often been destroyed. They have lost their significance due to global processes developing in society and the rapid pace of changes in production, its reorientation towards mass consumption. As a result of this, a situation arose in which opposing moral principles appeared as equally justified, equally deducible from reason. This, according to A. Makintair, led to the fact that rational arguments in morality began to be mainly used to prove theses that were previously already available to those who cited these arguments.

On the one hand, this led to an anti-normative turn in ethics, expressed in the desire to proclaim an individual person a full-fledged and self-sufficient subject of moral requirements, to impose on him the entire burden of responsibility for independently made decisions. The anti-normative tendency is represented in the ideas of F. Nietzsche, in existentialism, in postmodern philosophy. On the other hand, a desire arose to limit the area of ethics to a rather narrow range of issues related to the formulation of such rules of behavior that can be accepted by people with different life orientations, with different understanding of the goals of human existence, the ideals of self-improvement. As a result, the category of the good, traditional for ethics, was, as it were, taken out of the bounds of morality, and the latter began to develop mainly as the ethics of rules. In line with this trend, the topic of human rights is being further developed, new attempts are made to build ethics as a theory of justice. One of such attempts is presented in the book by J. Rawls "The Theory of Justice".

New scientific discoveries and new technologies have given a powerful surge in the development of applied ethics. In the XX century. many new professional codes of ethics have been developed, business ethics, bioethics, the ethics of a lawyer, a media worker, etc. have been developed. Scientists, doctors, philosophers began to discuss such problems as organ transplantation, euthanasia, the creation of transgenic animals, and human cloning. Man, to a much greater extent than before, felt his responsibility for the development of all life on Earth and began to discuss these problems not only from the point of view of his own interests of survival, but also from the point of view of recognizing the intrinsic value of the fact of life, the fact of existence as such (Schweitzer, moral realism).

Professional ethics acts as an ethics of rules and works at the level of creating deontological principles of behavior for those who belong to this profession. It constitutes a significant area of applied ethics. But there are other areas as well. This corporate ethics, in which codes and organizations that enforce them are created for the members of certain corporations. The field of applied ethics also includes what is associated with public threats of a global nature. To prevent these threats, humanitarian examinations are carried out, mechanisms of democratic procedures for making important public decisions are being worked out.

An important step, representing a reaction to the current situation in the development of society, was an attempt to understand morality as an endless discourse in its continuation - a conversation of humanity aimed at working out decisions acceptable to all its participants. This is developed in the works of K.O. Apel, Y. Habermas, R. Aleksi and others. The ethics of discourse is directed against anti-normativism, it tries to develop common guidelines that can unite people in the fight against global threats facing humanity. Discursive ethics assumes that all decisions in the future development of society should become communicative. These are decisions that people agree to voluntarily make because they are convinced of their expediency, and not because they are promised something, or intimidated by something (strategic decisions). Communicative decisions mean that the interests of people are not suppressed, are not eliminated in the name of other interests, and those who become the object of planned management agree to manipulations made with their interests.

One more characteristic modern morality this is an incredible expansion of the public sphere, i.e. areas where the interests of large groups of people are represented, where actions are evaluated in terms of the perfection of performing certain public functions... In this area, we are faced with the activities of politicians, leaders of political parties, economic leaders, with a mechanism for making global decisions. It turned out that traditional ethics are largely not applicable to this area, because it is clear that, say, a lawyer cannot treat a prosecutor as himself. During court session they act as adversaries.

Therefore, theorists raise the question of developing new ethics related to the adoption of fair rules of a certain game, a new understanding of justice, including the inclusion in this concept of issues of international justice, attitudes towards future generations, attitudes towards animals, attitudes towards persons with disabilities from birth, etc.

Questions:

1. What is the origin of the term ethics?

2. What is motivation?

3. How does the “golden rule” differ from the “talion”?

4. What is the rationale for morality?

5. What was specific to ancient ethics?

6. What is the specificity of the ethics of the New Time

7. What are good and evil, can these categories be opposed in an absolute sense?

8. How can morality be defined?

9. How is morality different from other means of social regulation?

10. What is the situation in modern ethics?

11. What is discourse ethics?

Abstract topics:

1. The emergence of morality

2. Golden Rule morality

3. Ethics of Aristotle

5. Justification of morality: possibilities and limits

7. Love as a principle of moral relationships

8. Ethics of Discourse

Literature:

1. Aristotle, Nicomachean ethics // Aristotle. Works in four volumes. T.4. M .: Myso 1984.

2. I. Kant Foundations of the metaphysics of morals // Kant I. Sobr. Op. in 8 vols. T. 4.M .: CHORO, 1994.

3. Apel K.-O. Transformation of philosophy. M .: Logos, 2001.

4. Guseinov A.A. Great prophets and thinkers. Moral teachings from Moses to the present day. M .: Veche, 2009.

5. Guseinov A.A. Apresyan R.G. Ethics. M .: Gardariki, 2000.

6. Makintair A. After virtue. M .: Academic project; Yekaterinburg: Business book, 2000.

7. Razin A.V. Ethics. M .: INFRA-M, 2012.

8. Habermas J. Moral consciousness and communicative action. Per with him. SPb .: Nauka, 2000.

It might be helpful to read: