Morality in modern society. Morality and morality in modern society

Entrepreneurial ethics is a part of economic ethics and should be considered taking into account its premises and foundations. Insofar as

modern economic ethics realizes itself as the ethics of the framework order, then the entrepreneurial ethics is based on the framework order. But here it is necessary to take into account one fundamental circumstance. In practice, the framework order cannot be specified in an ideal form. It has its drawbacks, which primarily affect business ethics. As already noted, the difference between economic and entrepreneurial ethics lies in the fact that the subject of moral requirements in economic ethics are mainly state institutions, while in entrepreneurial ethics - individual enterprises. The imperfection of the framework order affects primarily economic activity individual enterprises forced to make additional efforts and take on "responsibility, which is normally at the level of order, in order to fill the vacuum of responsibility that has arisen. The task of business ethics is to identify this need for the moral responsibility of enterprises based on their own economic values and to identify the ability of the enterprise to comply such expectations.Entrepreneurial ethics themes the relationship of morality and profit in the management of enterprises and deals with the question of what moral norms and principles can be implemented by enterprises in conditions modern economy.

Due to the prevailing cultural tradition, such concepts as "economic ethics" or "business ethics" refer us to the problem of choice - either ethics or economics - rather than denote something that really exists in reality. It turns out that everyone requires ethics from economics precisely because there is no ethics there.

Our inherited doubts that morality can become a significant factor in economic decision-making are indeed great. Aristotle advised the "economist" ("head of the family" - approx. Lane), who does not want to betray his true human nature, to engage in philosophy and politics, but in no case entrepreneurship. The Bible turns the same advice into an image that symbolizes the physical impossibility of combining wealth and righteousness: they say, it is more likely that a camel will crawl through the eye of a needle than a rich man will go to heaven. Cicero confines himself to the laconic assertion that a great profit is made by a great deceit. It took Thomas Aquinas many pages to explain how trade could be turned from a vice into a virtue. Martin Luther, who was always quite straightforward, simply identified housekeeping with greed, coming from the Old Testament Adam. We are indebted to Karl Marx for the apodictic theory, according to which the entrepreneur is only a mask that hides the inherently immoral movement of capital, and therefore is forced to obey the laws of this movement, otherwise he will simply be ruined. Max Weber, although he held rather bourgeois views, also did not believe that the cruel laws of the market leave the individual the possibility of ethical behavior. And finally, the Nobel Prize winner in 1973, economist Milton Friedman, came up with a lapidary formula: The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.

Against this background, apparently, one should admit that the declared intentions of entrepreneurial structures (concerns or firms), the entrepreneurs themselves and their managers to be guided by moral values in economic decisions look no more convincing than the promises of a vampire to come to a donor site to donate his own blood.

As a variant of business ethics related to the direction designated as the ethics of preferences, consider the concept of business ethics. We proceed from the premise that, for all its independence and significance, business ethics remains a kind of variant of the "individualistic" direction of entrepreneurial ethics, because "in most cases, in an individual ethical perspective, they are guided by the situation of decision-making by individual entrepreneurs/managers, without taking into account the structure of the dilemma caused by competition."

Business ethics, as a predominantly American version of entrepreneurial ethics, occupies one of the central places within the framework of the concepts of entrepreneurial ethics. Its appearance can be attributed to the 1970s. At this time, a certain agreement was established between the scientific community and the business world about the need to increase the "ethical consciousness" of professional businessmen in their business operations, as well as the responsibility of corporations to society. By the beginning of the 1980s. business ethics has become one of the main subjects of study for specialists, and most business schools in the United States have included it in their programs. In general, business ethics can be defined as a scientific discipline that studies the application of ethical principles to business situations.

The most relevant in business ethics are questions about the relationship between corporate and universal ethics, social responsibility business, applying general ethical principles to specific decision-making situations, raising the ethical level of an organization, the influence of religious and cultural values on economic behavior. In business ethics, some dilemmas are especially acute, characterizing the value inconsistency of the interaction between traditional morality and modern economics. Among the most significant are the "informing" dilemmas, the "profitable connections" dilemma, and the "sexual harassment" dilemma.

· The dilemma of "official informing". The criterion of ethical justification for informing higher authorities about violations in the organization is the motive for committing an act. If the appeal is used not to solve one's own career problems or revenge on any specific person, but for the interests of the cause, and if this act does not pursue personal gain, but is dictated by concern for the welfare of other people, then such behavior can be considered justified from an ethical point of view. Before proceeding to the analysis of real situations, it is necessary to clarify that some people are psychologically inclined to play the role of "fighters for the truth", although in reality they pursue completely different goals. Therefore, it is important not to succumb to the description and interpretation of the situation by the parties involved and interested, but to analyze impartially, on the basis of facts, what happened and take appropriate measures. What can be said about the specific motives of persons going for official information? The desire to make a business message, rather than an anonymous denunciation, is usually based on a firm belief in personal responsibility, backed up by a sense of professional honor, religious considerations and loyalty to society.

· The dilemma of "beneficial ties". Solving business and personal problems that goes against existing economic, legal and moral norms through the use of position individual people having privileged access to goods or services is a very common phenomenon in the business world. The use of profitable connections can be both personal and corporate in nature. In the event that a person with certain powers (i.e. "using official position") intends to do us a personal favor, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1) whether this person has legal rights on the products or services he provides to you, or is he actually stealing them? What allows him to behave like this in this case? Who actually owns these products or services?

2) Do other people, besides you, have a similar opportunity? Is the service or opportunity fairly distributed and does everyone in the organization have equal access to it?

The situation with illegal or immoral obtaining of some goods or services becomes more complicated if it is not about personal interests, but about the interests of the organization. Is it acceptable to break the rules in order to make a profitable and useful deal, for example, register an organization, open a new business, get what you are entitled to by law? The moral justification in this case is often that the interests of other people are behind all this: employees of the enterprise, your future customers, consumers of your future product or service, etc. One of the most well-known manifestations of the "ethics of profitable relations" is a bribe. From a moral point of view, it is especially important to draw a line between a hidden form of a bribe and a gift. Is, for example, a hidden form of bribe an invitation to a banquet, a ticket to a sanatorium, payment for a joint tourist trip, or, finally, a small gift from a company that would like to conclude a lucrative contract with you?

Ethical recommendations on this issue should first of all take into account the moral and cultural traditions of a particular country. There are at least three kinds of cultural traditions that underlie modern business operations:

1) "vicious circle" (mutual responsibility),

2) system mutual services and 3) gift exchange.

In countries with underdeveloped economies and low culture business relations most people believe that belonging to a certain "closed circle" of relatives, friends, and closest associates implies mutual protection and mutual prosperity. Any person outside this circle is an "outsider" whose intentions must be questioned. That is why businessmen (like government officials) prefer to deal with people they know and trust.

In a system of reciprocal favors, a gift or favor obliges the recipient to return it sometime in the future, but with "interest". And when the service is returned, the donor is obliged to repay it with an even greater favor. Thus, the system of mutual obligations and exchange of services provides access to a closed circle of trusted persons, becoming the basis for conducting business transactions. A cultural tradition closely associated with the system of mutual services involves, first of all, the offering of gifts. Giving or receiving a gift in a business relationship means more than friendship. This is a sign of corporate identity that makes a businessman "one of his own" and opens up the prospect of profitable deals for him. By engaging in the traditional exchange of gifts and favors and entering a "vicious circle", a businessman can gain trust, facilitate access to the local market for goods and technologies, and minimize risk in a foreign environment.

The difficulty involved in participating in a traditional gift exchange is learning to distinguish gifts from bribes. By asking you for a loan, is your business partner extorting or pushing you into the system of mutual favors? The criteria may be: a) the size of the amount (the smaller the amount, the less it looks like a bribe); b) the purpose of the money (if the money is supposed to be transferred to a third party, especially one with power, then this is most likely a bribe). In such cases, it is usually advised to give money not to private individuals, but to transfer grants for the construction of hospitals and schools, providing technical and expert assistance In the organisation public works. The most reliable moral criterion for the permissibility of mutual services is their openness, which allows the best way to dispel extraneous suspicions about the motives and actions of companies and individuals and create trust between business and society.

· The "sexual harassment" dilemma. Women working in business often face the problem of sexual harassment. One of the reasons for this lies in the special intimate and confidential nature of business transactions, as well as in the practice of mutual favors, which to some extent is transferred to sexual relations. At the same time, sexual harassment is often presented as a particularly careful, caring and refined form of attitude towards a woman, as a kind of justified courtship that introduces elements of feminist ethics into traditional relations between the sexes. According to the American Commission for the provision equal opportunities employment, sexual harassment is unprovoked sexual advances, attempts to solicit favors and other verbal and physical acts of a sexual nature directed at an employee that affect his (her) activities and further career. Studies show that most often sexual harassment is directed from the boss to the subordinate.

Origin professional ethics

Subject, tasks, structure of business ethics

The science of ethics has a number of sections. For example, a distinction is made between general (or universal) and professional (or special) ethics. The first two lectures of our course were devoted to the provisions of universal ethics, and now let's turn to special ethics.

To find out the origin of professional ethics is to trace the relationship of moral requirements with the division of social labor and the emergence of a profession. Aristotle paid attention to these questions many years ago, then O. Comte, E. Durkheim. They talked about the relationship between the division of social labor and the moral principles of society. For the first time the materialistic substantiation of these problems was given by K. Marx and F. Engels.

The emergence of the first professional and ethical codes dates back to the period of the division of labor in the conditions of the formation of medieval workshops in the 11th-12th centuries. It was then that for the first time they state the presence in the shop charters of a number of moral requirements in relation to the profession, the nature of work, and partners in work.

However, a number of professions that are of vital importance for all members of society arose in ancient times, and therefore, such professional and ethical codes as the Hippocratic Oath, the moral regulations of priests who performed judicial functions, are known much earlier.

The emergence of professional ethics in time preceded the creation of scientific ethical teachings, theories about it. Everyday experience, the need to regulate the relationship of people of a particular profession led to the realization and formalization of certain requirements of professional ethics.

Professional ethics, having arisen as a manifestation of everyday moral consciousness, then developed on the basis of a generalized practice of the behavior of representatives of each professional group. These generalizations were contained both in written and unwritten codes of conduct and in the form of theoretical conclusions.

Thus, this testifies to the transition from ordinary consciousness to theoretical consciousness in the sphere of professional morality. Public opinion plays an important role in the formation and assimilation of the norms of professional ethics. The norms of professional morality do not immediately become universally recognized, this is sometimes associated with a struggle of opinions.

Above, we indicated that human activity is very diverse, and universal moral standards are often insufficient to regulate human behavior in specific, specific areas of activity. There is, for example, the universal ethical commandment "Thou shalt not kill." But are not, in this case, military service, defending the Fatherland with arms in hand, immoral? Of course not.

However, this does not mean that any acts committed in war cannot be condemned. How should an officer and a soldier behave so that their actions can be recognized as correct from an ethical point of view? For a reasoned answer to such questions, there is the concept of "military ethics", in which universal ethical standards are consistent with the specifics of this type of activity, some additional moral requirements characteristic of such activity are taken into account.

Professional(functionally differentiated, role-playing, special) ethics is an implied or specifically defined set of norms or codes of conduct that guide decision makers in various professional roles.

Role ethics contribute to the resolution of ethically controversial issues that arise in the course of professional activity (for example, should a doctor tell a patient that he is hopelessly ill?). Most of the ethical dilemmas associated with various types professional ethics ( medical ethics, journalistic ethics, business ethics, etc.) include a kind of contradiction between functionally differentiated and universal ethics.

Universal ethics refers to the norms of behavior that are binding on all people, regardless of their professional affiliation or social functions. There is no inevitable conflict between role ethics and universal ethics. However, when such a conflict occurs, it creates a serious ethical problem for the decision maker.

So, for example, journalists are obliged to show the details of what happened as objectively as possible. However, there are situations when the very presence of journalists affects the nature of events. For example, some photojournalists have observed that low-level military personnel in developing countries with repressive regimes often increase the intensity of interrogation of prisoners when the camera is on them, because the interrogator has an audience and this makes him feel like a strong man. How should a photojournalist react to situations like this? On the one hand, as a journalist, he has a professional obligation to perceive the story as it is. On the other hand, a photojournalist cannot ignore the universal duty to protect human life.

What obligations - functionally differentiated or universal - should the ethical decision maker follow? Significantly, some photojournalists reacted to this kind of situation by sheathing their cameras and leaving the place of interrogation.

In this section, the moral rules of modern man are briefly formulated - rules that are already followed by millions of people around the world.

Basic principles

The morality of modern society is based on simple principles:

1) Everything is allowed that does not directly violate the rights of other people.

2) The rights of all people are equal.

These principles stem from the tendencies described in the Progress in Morals section. Since the main slogan of Modern society is “maximum happiness for the maximum number of people”, then moral norms should not be an obstacle to the realization of the desires of this or that person - even if someone does not like these desires. But only as long as they do not harm other people.

It should be noted that from these two principles a third follows: "Be energetic, achieve success on your own." After all, each person strives for personal success, and the greatest freedom gives the maximum opportunity for this (see the subsection “The Commandments of Modern Society”).

It is obvious that the need for decency follows from these principles. For example, deceiving another person is, as a rule, causing damage to him, which means it is condemned by Modern morality.

The morality of modern society in a light and cheerful tone was described by Alexander Nikonov in the corresponding chapter of the book “Monkey Upgrade”:

From all today's morality tomorrow there will be one single rule: you can do whatever you like without directly infringing on the interests of others. The key word here is "directly".

If a person walks naked down the street or has sex in public place, then, from the point of view of modernity, it is immoral. And from the point of view of tomorrow, the one who sticks to him with the requirement to "behave decently" is immoral. A naked person does not directly encroach on anyone's interests, he simply goes about his business, that is, he is in his own right. Now, if he forcibly undressed others, he would directly encroach on their interests. And the fact that it is unpleasant for you to see a naked person on the street is the problem of your complexes, fight them. He does not order you to undress, why do you pester him with a demand to get dressed?

You can not directly encroach on strangers: life, health, property, freedom - these are the minimum requirements.

Live as you know, and don't poke your nose into someone else's life if they don't ask - that's the main moral rule of tomorrow. It can also be formulated as follows: “You cannot decide for others. Decide for yourself." This is largely working in the most progressive countries already now. Somewhere this rule of extreme individualism works more (Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden), somewhere less. In advanced countries, “immoral” marriages between homosexuals are allowed, prostitution, marijuana smoking, etc. are legalized. There, a person has the right to manage his own life as he pleases. Jurisprudence is developing in the same direction. Laws are drifting in the direction that the thesis "no victims - no crime" indicates.

... You know, I'm not a fool at all, I understand perfectly well that by applying cunning theoretical reasoning and bringing to the point of absurdity this already implemented principle of relationships between adults, one can probably find a number of controversial boundary situations. (“And when smoke is blown in your face, is it a direct or indirect effect?”)

I admit that some questions may also arise in state-citizen relations. (“And if I exceeded the speed limit and did not run over anyone, there are no victims, so there is no offense?”)

But the principles I declare are not the ultimate goal, but a trend, a direction for the movement of social morality and legal practice.

Lawyers reading this book are sure to hit on the key word "directly." Lawyers generally like to cling to words, forgetting about Gödel's theorem, according to which all words cannot be defined anyway. And, therefore, there will always be a legal uncertainty inherent in the language system.

“And if a person walks naked down the street, violating public morality, he directly affects my eyes, and I don’t like it!”

Very instructive explains the question of what is directly and what is indirectly, Nikolai Kozlov - the author of numerous books on practical psychology. Kozlov is considered the third greatest psychologist in the world after Freud and Jung by the current first-year students of the Faculty of Psychology. And not without reason. Nikolai Kozlov created a new trend in practical psychology and a whole network of psychological clubs throughout the country. These clubs are good and correct, which can be judged, if only because the Russian Orthodox Church is actively fighting them ... So, when Kozlov is asked at workshops how direct influence differs from indirect, he answers with a nursery rhyme:
"The cat is crying in the hallway,
She has great grief
Evil people poor pussy
Don't let them steal sausages."

People influence the unfortunate pussy? Undoubtedly! Pussy can even assume that they are affected directly. But actually people just have their sausages. Just having sausages is not an invasion of someone else's privacy, is it? As well as…

just to have property (or not to have);

just live (or not live);

just walk the streets (naked or clothed).

Do not poke your nose into someone else's personal life, gentlemen, even if you actively dislike it. And don't do to others what you don't want for yourself. And if you suddenly want to do something that, in your opinion, will improve a person’s life, first ask him if your opinions about life and its improvements coincide. And never appeal to morality in your reasoning: everyone has their own ideas about morality.

If you open the "Big Encyclopedic Dictionary" and look at the article "Morality", we will see following description: "Morality - see morality." The time has come to separate these concepts. Separate the wheat from the chaff.

Morality is the sum of unwritten norms of behavior established in society, a collection of social prejudices. Morality is closer to the word "decency". Morality is harder to define. It is closer to such a concept of biology as empathy; to such a concept of religion as forgiveness; to such a concept of social life as conformism; to such a concept of psychology as non-conflict. Simply put, if a person internally sympathizes, empathizes with another person and, in this regard, tries not to do to another what he would not like himself, if a person is internally non-aggressive, wise and therefore understanding - we can say that this is a moral person.

The main difference between morality and morality is that morality always involves an external evaluating object: social morality - society, crowd, neighbors; religious morality - God. And morality is internal self-control. A moral person is deeper and more complex than a moral person. Just as an automatically working unit is more complicated than a manual machine, which is put into action by someone else's will.

Walking naked on the streets is immoral. Splashing saliva, yelling at a naked man that he is a scoundrel is immoral. Feel the difference.

The world is moving towards immorality, it's true. But he goes in the direction of morality.

Morality is a subtle, situational thing. The moral is more formal. It can be reduced to certain rules and prohibitions.

About negative consequences

All the above reasoning is actually aimed at expanding the individual choice of people, but does not take into account the possible negative social consequences of such a choice.

For example, if society recognizes a homosexual family as normal, then some people who now hide their sexual orientation and have heterosexual families will stop doing this, which can negatively affect fertility. If we stop condemning drug use, then the number of drug addicts may increase at the expense of those who now avoid drugs for fear of punishment. Etc. This site is about how to provide maximum freedom and at the same time minimize negative consequences possible wrong choice.

The freedom of people to choose their own sexual partners, to create and dissolve marriages can also lead to negative consequences, for example, the increase in women's independence negatively affects fertility. These trends are analyzed in the sections "Family" and "Demography".

The concept of the Modern Society proceeds from the fact that in such matters it is necessary to prevent injustice and discrimination. For example, if we want to fight low birth rates, then all childless people, not just homosexuals, should be censured and punished. (Issues of fertility are discussed in the section "Demography").

Freedom of speech leads to the fact that pornography and scenes of cruelty begin to be published. Many people believe that this, in turn, negatively affects family values and encourages violence. On the other hand, according to Chris Evans, founder of Internet Freedom, "60 years of research on the impact of the media on society has found no link between violent images and violent actions." In 1969, Denmark lifted all restrictions on pornography, and the number of sexual crimes immediately went down. Thus, from 1965 to 1982, the number of such crimes against children decreased from 30 per 100,000 inhabitants to 5 per 100,000. A similar situation is observed with regard to rape.

There is reason to believe that hazing in the army instills in a person a habit of violence to a much greater extent than the bloodiest action movies.

(If you feel the strength to write sections on freedom of speech and the problem of crime for this site - write to me at [email protected] truemoral.ru and grateful humanity will not forget you. :)

Balance of positive and negative

Should negative phenomena be combated by imposing prohibitions and using violence if they are violated? As historical experience shows, it is pointless to fight against the objective laws of the development of society. As a rule, negative and positive results of development are interconnected and it is impossible to deal with the negative without destroying the positive. Therefore, in those cases when such a struggle is successful, society pays for it with a lag in development - and the negative trends are simply transferred to the future.

A different approach seems to be more constructive. It is necessary to study the patterns of social changes without emotions and understand what positive and negative consequences they lead to. After that, society must take actions aimed at strengthening the positive aspects of existing trends and weakening the negative ones. Actually, this site is dedicated to this.

The increase in freedom always leads to the fact that some people use it to their own detriment. For example, the ability to purchase vodka leads to the appearance of alcoholics, the freedom to choose a lifestyle leads to the appearance of homeless people, sexual freedom increases the number of people with venereal diseases. Therefore, freer societies are always accused of "decay", "moral decay" and so on. However, most people are quite rational and use freedom for their own good. As a result, society becomes more efficient and develops faster.

When people talk about the "health" and "illness" of society, they forget that the state of society cannot be described in terms of healthy / unhealthy / there is no third way. Non-free societies are much more “healthy” in the sense of the absence of marginals (for example, in fascist Germany, even the mentally ill were destroyed). But they are much less healthy in the sense of the absence of people aimed at development. Therefore, unfree, excessively regulated societies (including those regulated by too rigid moral norms) inevitably lose. Yes, and bans, as a rule, are not very effective - dry law, for example, does not fight alcoholism so much as it creates a mafia. The best choice is a maximum of freedom with a strict suppression of aggressive outcasts (including the destruction of criminals).

Modern morality is also making its way in Russia. The new generation is much more individualistic and freer. I have heard from acquaintances of entrepreneurs that hiring young people is profitable - young people are more honest, more energetic and steal less often. At the same time, during the transition period, crisis phenomena are observed, incl. and in the realm of morality. So it was, for example, during the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society, in particular, England in the early to mid-19th century experienced a serious crisis, accompanied by an increase in alcoholism, family breakdown, homelessness, etc. (suffice it to recall Dickens; more about this can be found in F. Fukuyama's book "The Great Divide").

Here, by the way, one common myth should be mentioned. Ancient Rome collapsed not as a result of "moral decay", but because it ceased to develop. The main advantage of Rome was the presence rule of law and effective civil society. With the transition from a republic to an imperial dictatorship, these social institutions were gradually undermined, development ceased, and as a result, Rome turned into a typical unstable empire that did not have fundamental social advantages compared to its barbarian environment. From that moment on, his death was only a matter of time.

But society is waiting for destruction even if freedom oversteps certain limits and some people have unpunished freedom to harm others. In fact, this means that the freedom of some is curtailed by increasing the rights of others, i.e. freedom is destroyed. That is why the morality of Modern society is complete freedom, with the exception of the right to cause direct harm to another person. Moreover, Modern society should be intolerant of any attempt to cause such damage, i.e. restrict someone's freedom. In this, Modern society must be uncompromising and even cruel: as experience shows, the main problems of the most modern countries lie precisely in excessive humanism in relation to intolerant and aggressive people.

Questions about how Modern society limits intolerance are discussed in the section "Intolerance for intolerance" .

It is often objected to the arguments presented here that “permissiveness cannot be allowed!”. And this thesis is absolutely true. Permissiveness is the permission of one person to harm another. For example, safe premarital sex is not permissive because each of the participants does not see any damage to himself in this. But “highly moral” Iran is a state of permissiveness: the criminal code of this country, based on Sharia norms, provides for the execution of women by stoning for some “sexual crimes”. Moreover, it is specifically stipulated that the stones should not be too large so that the victim does not die immediately. Such a sadistic murder is certainly permissive.

The morality of modern society (as opposed to religious morality) is a morality based on reason. Such a morality is more effective than morality based on emotions: emotions work automatically, while the mind allows you to act more subtly depending on the situation (provided, of course, that the mind is present). Just like human behavior based on emotional morality is more effective than animal behavior based on innate instincts.

About "moral decay"

A person in transition (transition from an industrial society to a post-industrial, modern one) unconsciously feels guilty because of the continuing action of traditional moral attitudes. Religious figures still have high moral authority and they condemn modern society (for example, the new Pope Benedict XVI stated that "the modern emerging culture opposes not only Christianity, but faith in God in general, all traditional religions"; similar statements are made by Orthodox hierarchs and Islamic authorities).

Religious figures, condemning the morality of modern society, usually argue as follows: a departure from religious morality leads to the abolition of moral principles in general, as a result of which people will begin to steal, kill, and so on. They do not want to notice that morality modern people moves in the exact opposite direction: towards the condemnation of violence and aggression in any form (and, for example, towards the condemnation of theft, because Modern people are, as a rule, a wealthy middle class).

As studies show, the lowest degree of both religiosity and crime is observed among highly educated people. Those. the departure from traditional morality does not at all lead to a decline in morality in general. But for a traditional, poorly educated person, the reasoning of religious figures is fully justified. For these people, a "punishing club" in the form of hell is needed; however, on the other hand, they easily resort to violence "in the name of God."

The morality prevailing in a transitional society is uncomfortable for a person, because it is contradictory, and therefore does not give him strength. It tries to reconcile the incompatible: the liberal human right to choose and the traditional roots that denied such a right. Solving this contradiction, some go into fundamentalism, others rush into the egoistic "life for fun." Both that, and another does not promote development and, therefore, is futile.

Therefore, a consistent morality is needed, the observance of which ensures success both for an individual and for the whole society.

"Commandments" of Modern Society

The moral values of modern society differ markedly from traditional ones. For example, out of 10 biblical commandments, five do not work: three dedicated to God (because they conflict with freedom of conscience), about the Sabbath (contradiction with freedom to manage your time), and “do not commit adultery” (contradiction with freedom of personal life) . Conversely, some essential commandments are missing from religion. A similar picture is not only with the Bible, but also with the attitudes of other religions.

Modern society has its own most important values, which were far from being in the first place in traditional societies (and even considered as negative):

- "do not be lazy, be energetic, always strive for more";

- "self-develop, learn, become smarter - thereby you contribute to the progress of mankind";

- "achieve personal success, achieve wealth, live in abundance - thereby you contribute to the prosperity and development of society";

- "do not cause inconvenience to others, do not interfere in someone else's life, respect the personality of another and private property."

The main emphasis is on self-development, which leads, on the one hand, to the achievement of personal goals (for example, career growth), and on the other hand, to a “non-consumer” attitude towards other people (because the main resource, one’s own abilities, is the score of others cannot be increased).

Of course, all classical moral imperatives are preserved (or rather, strengthened): “don't kill”, “don't steal”, “don't lie”, “sympathize and help other people”. And these basic attitudes will no longer be violated in the name of God, which is the sin of most religions (especially in relation to "gentiles").

Moreover, the most problematic commandment - “do not lie” - will be strengthened to the greatest extent, which will radically increase the level of trust in society, and hence the effectiveness of social mechanisms, including the elimination of corruption (on the role of trust, see F. Fukuyama's book "Trust"). After all, a person who constantly develops himself is always confident in own forces and he doesn't have to lie. Lying is not beneficial to him - it can undermine his reputation as a professional. Moreover, lies are not needed, because many things cease to be "shameful" and do not need to be hidden. In addition, the attitude towards self-development means that a person sees his main resource within himself and there is no need for him to exploit others.

If we talk about the priority of values, then the main thing for modern society is human freedom and the condemnation of violence and intolerance. Unlike religion, where it is possible to justify violence in the name of God, modern morality rejects any violence and intolerance (although it can use state violence in response to violence, see the section "Intolerance for intolerance"). From the point of view of Modern morality, the traditional society is simply overwhelmed with immorality and lack of spirituality, including harsh violence against women and children (when they refuse to obey), against all dissidents and "violators of traditions" (often ridiculous), a high degree of intolerance towards non-believers etc.

An important moral imperative of modern society is respect for law and law, because only the law can protect human freedom, ensure equality and security of people. And, on the contrary, the desire to subjugate another, to humiliate someone's dignity are the most shameful things.

A society where all these values are fully operational would be perhaps the most efficient, complex, fastest growing and richest in history. It would also be the happiest, because. would provide a person with maximum opportunities for self-realization.

It should be noted that all of the above is not an invented, artificial construction. This is just a description of what millions of people are already following - Modern people, who are becoming more and more. This is the morality of a man who studied hard, who through his own efforts became a professional who values his freedom and is tolerant of other people. We are the majority in developed countries, soon we will be the majority in Russia.

Modern morality is not an indulgence of selfishness and "lower instincts".

Modern morality makes more demands on man than ever before in human history. Traditional morality gave a person clear rules of life, but did not require anything more from him. The life of a person in a traditional society was regulated, it was enough just to live according to the established order for centuries. It did not require soul effort, it was simple and primitive.

Modern morality requires a person to develop and achieve success by his own efforts. But she does not say how to do this, only stimulating a person to constant search, overcoming himself and exerting his strength. Instead, modern morality gives a person the feeling that he is not a cog in a meaningless machine invented for no reason, but the creator of the future and one of the builders of himself and the whole world (see the section "The Meaning of Life"). In addition, self-development, increasing professionalism leads to the acquisition of material wealth, gives prosperity and prosperity already "in this life."

Without a doubt, modern morality destroys many meaningless rules and prohibitions (for example, in the field of sex) and in this sense makes life easier and more enjoyable. But at the same time, modern morality strictly demands that a person be a person, and not go on about his own animal instincts or herd feeling. This morality requires manifestations of reason, and not primitive emotions like aggression, revenge, the desire to subjugate other people or obey an authority that “arranges and decides everything for us.” And it is far from easy to become tolerant, to overcome personal and social complexes in oneself.

But the main thing is that Modern morality focuses not on “pleasuring oneself beloved” and not on selfless (more precisely, self-deprecating) achievement of “great goals”, but on self-improvement and improvement of everything that surrounds Modern man.

As a result, people have nothing to share - no one needs to take anything from others in order to concentrate more resources on themselves (it does not matter - for the sake of "great goals" or their own whims, which is often the same thing in reality). After all, it is impossible to develop yourself at the expense of others - this can be done only as a result of your own efforts. Therefore, there is no need to harm others in any form, in particular, to lie, etc.

If you look in the "Big Encyclopedic Dictionary", we will see that there the definition of the words "morality" and "morality" mean the same thing. It's hard to agree with this. Even in ancient antiquity, morality was understood as the rise of a person above himself, it was an indicator of how a person is responsible for his behavior and actions. Morality is closely connected with the character and temperament of a person, his spiritual qualities, the ability to moderate and suppress his egoism. Morality, on the other hand, presupposes certain norms and laws of behavior in society.

Moral in modern society It is based on the principles of not creating obstacles for another person. That is, you can do whatever you want, as long as you do not harm others. If, for example, you deceive another person and it harmed him, then what if it didn't? Then it is not condemned. This is the moral of our current behavior.

The concepts of "morality and morality" of tomorrow will go even further. Live as you like, the main thing is not to poke your head in other people's affairs and someone else's life, if you are not asked. Decide for yourself, not for others, and if you want to help someone, then first ask him if he needs it? Perhaps your views about what is good and what is bad do not coincide at all. And remember: everyone has their own morality. Combine only a few general rules: do not touch someone else's, do not encroach on the life of another person, his freedom and property - everything is quite simple.

As if delimiting the concepts of morality and morality, we can give such definitions. Morality can also be called the word "decency", that is, it is the sum of some norms of behavior and prejudices adopted in a given society. Morality is a deeper concept. A moral person can be called one who is wise, non-aggressive, does not wish harm to a person, sympathizes and empathizes with him, and is ready to help another. And if morality is more formal and comes down to certain permitted and forbidding actions, then morality is a more subtle and situational thing.

The main difference between the concepts of "morality" and "morality" is that morality involves evaluation by society, neighbors, God, leadership, parents, and so on. While morality is such an internal self-control, an internal assessment of one's thoughts and desires. It does not depend on external factors, these are the inner beliefs of a person.

Morality depends on a social group (religious, national, social, and so on), which prescribes certain norms of behavior in this society, its prohibitions and prescriptions. All human actions correspond to these codes. For the appropriate adherence to these laws, encouragement from society is expected in the form of respect, fame, awards, and even wealth. Therefore, moral norms are closely related to the charters of a particular group and depend on the place of their use and time.

Morality, unlike morality, has a more universal character. It is aimed not at achieving some benefits and rewards, but at other people. A moral person sees in another person not himself, but his personality, he is able to see his problems, help and sympathize. This is the fundamental difference between these concepts, and morality is most expressed in religion, where love for one's neighbor is preached.

From all of the above, it becomes clear that the concept of morality and morality are different things and how they actually differ.

Already at the beginning of the twentieth century, the question was raised about the need to rethink the tasks of ethics, finding new ways and methods, in comparison with the previous traditional ethics. J. E. Moore Moore J. Principles of Ethics. - M., 1984. was the first to criticize all traditional areas of ethics. He analyzed in detail the shortcomings and errors of metaphysical, most vividly represented by I. Kant, naturalistic ethics, in its most diverse varieties, utilitarian, emotivist, and showed that none of the directions that existed in it were able to solve any of its fundamental issues. - what is good, ideal, right behavior, happiness.

From this critical attitude began the development of Western ethics in our century. And this negative-critical attitude turned out to be very constructive. J. Moore laid the foundation for a whole special period in the existence of ethics, which received the general name of metaethics. In line with metaethics, all the most important ethical concepts were subjected to strict logical analysis: good, ideal, duty, right and wrong, etc. The results of the analysis in a number of cases were very disappointing for ethics. Subsequent criticism of metaethics ended with an almost unanimous determination to turn from dry logic to the vital facts of moral, social and psychological empiricism.

The next period after metaethics - the second period in the development of Western ethics - was marked by just such a search for a breakthrough to real life- to the sociology and psychology of morality. This second - let's call it descriptive (empirical) - period does not last too long, only two or three decades. Studies of empirical facts from the field of sociology and the psychology of morality have convincingly shown that here, too, ethics does not yet acquire its main subject: a specific person who, throughout his life, is faced with real moral problems. After all, both sociology and the psychology of morality still deal with the same averaged, and therefore abstract individual, the object of moral norms and their translator. It is here that man already becomes the main subject of study, and science begins to be interested in all the details, all the specific details of his behavior from a moral point of view, i.e. specific situations where not only money and the well-being of people are at stake, but often life itself.

The third period - the latest, the current one - in the development of Western ethics, as we believe, is the period of applied ethics. “Before our eyes, ethics during the current century has gone from a purely theoretical, abstract-logical, methodological analysis in the form of metaethics - to, perhaps, its highest achievement - to solving the most urgent, acute, sick, directly and directly related to a living person problems - to bioethics and applied ethics in general. This is one of the most plausible hypotheses regarding the causes of the emergence of applied ethics: the impasse of metaethics was successfully overcome due to the emergence of first descriptive and then applied ethics. As L.V. Konovalova L.V. Konovalova Applied Ethics. - M., 1998., “The very term “applied” science arose within natural science, within fundamental science. From it, he was soon transferred to the humanities, including philosophy and ethics. It is only important to emphasize that for such a distinction between the theoretical and applied varieties of one and the same science, only one condition is necessary: that its theoretical part develop sufficiently well and, as it were, go far enough away from practice. In ethics, such a role was played by metaethics, which proclaimed itself fundamentally different from normative ethics, and therefore, from ethics that turned to practice, to life.

The most interesting thing is that it is Kant, speaking in modern terms, that can be considered the first “applied”. Even the types of applied ethics Kant outlined are precisely those that, after 200 years, became the main types of modern applied ethics: anthropological, pedagogical, political, and other problems.

I. Kant was also interested in those problems that, it would seem, are already completely dependent on the situation at the end of the 20th century - the problems of bioethics - speaking, for example, about euthanasia, the moral status of the embryo, etc. The emergence and rapid development of applied ethics in the last quarter of the 20th century came to almost everyone complete surprise. We agree with the statement of L. Konovalova that “applied ethics is a special kind of ethics, not because it is superimposed on new problematic material, but because it gives a new understanding of the problems of morality, is the new kind ethics, a new approach to the problems of ethics itself. It presented new requirements for the development of ethics, formulates its subject in a new way, and poses new tasks for ethics. It represents a new kind of ethics because it gives a new understanding of ethics. Our understanding of the essence of applied ethics, it is important to emphasize, also proceeds from the fact that in modern Western ethics Applied ethics literally before our eyes is transformed from a separate part within the structure of ethics into an almost independent ethical science. It develops in many respects in parallel with ethics, but, as it were, gradually replaces it, more and more predominating in volume and level.

The main reason for the emergence of applied ethics was the logic of the general civilizational process - the humanization of the entire life of a person and society, the understanding of the values of an individual-personal nature, and each of the three versions separately and the totality of all of them taken together expressed only those specific conditions and forms in which this process resulted. in the field of ethics at the end of the twentieth century of its existence. So, E. Fromm in his work “Man for himself” believes that it is humanistic ethics that helps a person overcome extremes: on the one hand, religion with its dogmas of faith, and on the other hand, relativism, which does not see anything stable in the moral ideas of a person. Humanistic ethics holds that value judgments can be developed on the basis of reason. Reasonably knowing himself, a person can be "himself" and "for himself." In this ethics, good is the disclosure of human essential forces, and virtue is responsibility in relation to one's own existence. Evil is any hindrance to the development of human abilities, and vice - irresponsibility towards oneself. This ethics is considered by him as "the applied science of the art of living."

Consider modern problems of ethics .

Applied ethics arose (and some of its areas and varieties will arise) where and when there was or will be a threat to the life and existence of man and mankind, the danger of infringement of his inalienable rights and interests - be it the sphere of biological experiment, medical care or ecological survival, where attempts were made once again to "do without ethics", to put in the first place some considerations of momentary profit, economic necessity or someone's interests, to push ethical considerations into the background, where there was a new danger to life and fear of death. The subject of applied normative ethics should be special varieties of moral problems - those that bear the historical name " moral dilemmas". Dilemmas are such problems that do not have a simple and unambiguous solution, which contain contradictions that are not amenable to formal analysis.

Moral dilemmas fall into two categories. The first is when a person is obliged to do two opposite actions, since both of them are correct. The second is when a person both must and must not commit the same act (for example, the intentional termination of life-sustaining treatment in the case of a permanent and irreversible coma).

Internal problems exist precisely in morality itself, more precisely, in how it is applied to life, to practice, they make it possible to study it as a sphere of dilemmas. That is why morality is the sphere of dilemmas, and solving them every day, throughout life, is the destiny and vocation of a person. From the solution of moral dilemmas, from thinking about them, from reasoning in the process of their analysis, in fact, ethics has grown. And modern applied ethics has grown out of the need to solve the moral dilemmas of our time, the sources of which are very diverse - from the situation of a fatal disease to pollution. environment. Therefore, applied ethics is a solution to contemporary moral dilemmas. They are not generated by it, but they are recognized and resolved by it, and thanks to it they become the topics of broad public debates (for example, the debate about abortion in American society), the topics of political movements. Modern reality has given rise to many moral dilemmas, they really exist, and applied ethics shows what are the possibilities for solving them. However, in modern world there are thousands of moral dilemmas, so it is impossible to list and name everything, and even more so to analyze it.

It might be useful to read: