Ethics, Morality, and Citizenship: A Deep Dive
What is Ethics?
The word ethos comes from Greek and originally meant “abode” or “dwelling place.” Aristotle refined its meaning to “character.” This concept leads us to assert that ethics is learned. Morality is a set of values of good and evil that control the conduct of human beings. Ethics is a reflection on the various moral codes of people.
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Kohlberg’s moral stages comprise three levels:
- Preconventional Level: Rules are an external reality, respected only due to consequences or the power of those who establish them.
- Conventional Level: One wants to respond positively to others’ expectations, identifying good or bad with what society considers such.
- Postconventional Level: General moral principles underlying the rules are understood and accepted, or questioned.
Citizenship
Citizenship, derived from the Latin civis (meaning citizen), is the set of qualities that enable men and women to live in the city, to live in community while respecting rules of peaceful coexistence, and accepting the rules of democracy, fundamental rights, and constitutional values.
Mythical Thought
Mythical thought is one of the salient features of this culture. A myth is a fabulous story of something that supposedly happened in a remote past. Its features are:
- It is straightforward: It neither shows nor analyzes its own methodology.
- It’s an emotionally committed thought: This means all phenomena are familiar, without objectivity. Important aspects of experience are not discussed as concepts that can be defined, but are personalized, created with human personalities—gods and heroes with divine personalities.
The first approach to the world that man made was the elaboration of myths. The desire to know the future led to the use of divinatory techniques. These and other cultural forms share some common traits that make up the main features of culture: it is social, plural, symbolic, and historical, and it is learned.
The Relativity of Good (The Sophists)
Relativism in ethics refers to the way of thinking that asserts that good and evil depend on circumstances. Relativism believes that human actions can be considered good or bad depending on the circumstances in which each action develops, and not through generalization (i.e., that an action is always good) or absolutism. Absolutism defines what is right and what is wrong according to certain commandments supposedly revealed by God.
Sophist thinkers operate in this context of moral mistrust. They are teachers who teach the skill that allows one to advance their views against others. In a democratic society, what is considered good is decided by consensus.
The Value of Diversity
The different are often ostracized by society and discriminated against as a people, without having the actual right of citizenship. Monoculturalism calls for the identification of all the different identities into a single, stifling equivalence. Assimilation involves a certain degree of tolerance of difference; it suggests a character inspired by the fear that causes us to wonder, and fear of losing national unity and sociocultural cohesion.
Philosophical Currents
- Rationalism: Its only source of knowledge is reason and it rejects faith.
- Vitalism: Proposed by Nietzsche, it sees reason as the source of all problems of Western culture.
The program of the social contract is based on the establishment of a form of partnership whereby each, joining the others, does not comply, however, with anyone but himself and remains as free as before. Marxism presents the history of mankind as a process of exploitation of some social classes over others.
Individualism
The features of individualism are:
- Independence as a value and personal quality.
- View of economics as essentially private.
- Little or no interest in public affairs.
Theocentricism vs. Anthropocentrism
- Theocentricism: God was the center of the world.
- Anthropocentrism: Man is now at the center of the universe.
Segregation and Assimilation
Segregation: The different are ostracized by society and discriminated against as a people, without having the real right of citizenship.
Monoculturalism: Calls for the identification of all the diverse identities into a single equivalence and stifling.
Assimilation: Involves a certain degree of tolerance of difference, suggests a character inspired reagent that causes us fear the stranger and the fear of losing national unity and socio-cultural cohesion.