Ethics: Origin, Scope, and Value
ORIGIN
The oldest sense of ethics (Greek origin) resided in the concept of dwelling or place. This evolved to encompass the people and customs of a land, as highlighted by Heidegger’s definition: “Ethos is the thought that man’s home said.” This signifies not a foreign place, but one’s inherent dwelling. Ethos represents the firm ground of praxis, the root of human actions. It encompasses the character, custom, and morality of human life—”the mode or form of life.” Ethos also means character, not as in mood, but as “acquired by habit.” This implies character is achieved through habit, not nature. Habits arise from “repetition of similar acts,” forming the intrinsic principle of actions. Thus, within ethics, we find a correlation between ethos, habits, and acts. If ethos is character acquired by habit, and habit arises from repeated acts, then ethos is the “source of acts.” Through life, performing acts and repeating them generates habits and attitudes. In this way, man becomes himself. Character and personality are the work of man, his moral task—how he “proves” his moral character through life.
We can understand “moral” (Latin origin) as the acquisition of “how to be,” achieved through levels of ownership encompassing feelings, habits, and character. Moral character or personality, resulting from chosen acts, is what man has done for himself or others. Man is both shaped by himself and by others, positively and negatively.
Ethics (Greek origin) relates to responsible behavior, involving the concepts of good and evil. Our values dictate right and wrong in human acts, especially when affecting others. Morality (Latin origin) shares the meaning of ethics, translating ethos (habit) and ethos (character/mood). It moves beyond the initial sense of “custom” to encompass philosophical and rational approaches. “Moral” is often used in religious contexts. Ethics justifies behavioral rules, while morality refers to specific codes of behavior.
PRINCIPLE HISTORICALLY
Historically, ethics originated as subordinate to politics (individual and social ethics). The ancient Greeks saw ethics as embedded in nature. Aristotle considered morality part of political science, believing individual life is realized only within the polis (the common good sustains the individual good). For him, ethics and politics were identical. Happiness, the “self-good,” is not a commodity but the supreme justification of human life.
Plato believed the polis, not the individual, was the subject of morality. Moral power resides in the state, which should be directed towards moral purposes through persuasion.
Kant’s ethics emphasizes radical individualism, focusing on the duty of self-perfection, not the perfection of others. He replaces moral goodness and happiness with pure moral duty and individual conscience.
For Hegel, the subjective spirit, upon freeing itself from natural life, becomes objective spirit in three stages: Law (freedom realized), Morality (good enacted in the world), and Ethical Life (Family, Society, State). Hegel viewed the State as the supreme subject of morality, the ethical state, the rule of justice.
In summary, ethics originated as subordinate to politics, both individual and social. Social ethics takes precedence, while individual ethics is open to and determined by it.
THE MATERIAL SCOPE OF ETHICS
The material object of ethics are human acts (from the point of view of good ), free and deliberate, because they determine the nature (mode of being acquired by habit and therefore influence our lives.) For these events I refer to the actus hominis and humanist, but not the primitive cousin, since being caused by natural causes unrelated to ethics. Aquinas distinguishes between acts of will on the end-which tend to order as such-and-half compared to those who are the decision of the media, or advice or deliberation, complacency or delight or by reason or will. These acts, however will be valid when the reflective process.
THE HORIZON OF VALUE The value is defined as what is desirable, pleasant, worthy of approval, admiration or useful for a particular purpose. The ethics of neo-Kantian value has a root (the duty as an end in itself) and phenomenological (consider the moral and emotional intuition, experience and material values). As a concept, the value always said regarding the person as is a good for her in regard to the individual as such and society (social value or what the person is related to others) as value gives the adjective moral goodness or badness. The ethical value, that is what is related to the person in relation to itself, in conformity with human beings, right reason, the true fulfillment or with the ultimate goal the person will depend on what the regarded as the supreme value benchmark within ethical thinking, and therefore due to relativity, ethical thinking is divergent and sometimes all. Morality belongs to the realm of human action (praxis), is related to the activity as is caused by man and that human action (as the moral value) defines the individual.The moral value agrees with the determination of which is the supreme value in the moral order and therefore “it is organized from the objective universe of morality”, for example, legal systems, the pursuit of happiness as order, harmony interior, altruism or social utility, or what constitutes the moral value as a Christian charity, and follow the imitation of Christ or the realization of the kingdom of God. theming ETHICS We talk about the formal order referring to the moral good is that acts, habits, ethos ^ as good or bad. The good is what all men crave. Everything we do (Aristotle) we do from one project to an end, ie in each case as the best, even if that order is not made until late in the process. The purposes as the media, starting with being projects being carried out. The project is conceived within a reality or on it. When projecting what you think is going to do stretching as far as possible to reality (or possible). This is gaining entity to the extent that is specifying each “half” step by step. For example, if life is a “lifelong endeavor,” we can project what we do. But the execution of a simple action, although it has provided all the necessary elements to run, even going to think its implementation would have exactly as intended, at which time we face a “chance that can not understand” to find that the reality shows their resistance (or facilities) provided a greater or lesser degree imponderables. It would be unrealistic to pretend to make a whole life exactly according to a plan. The plan of life we want is just a draft that through one to one of the acts, is taking shape, taking shape and we will determine the resistance to overcome or break us opting for less demanding ways otherwise, we discouraged being killed in the defeat. Aristotle distinguishes between ends and means through its classification of goods: those who always look for the sake of other goods which are sought for itself and never for the sake of others, and certain assets even if seek, are also good. All but one property may be taken as means and ends. Aristotle’s ethical system built around the idea of the ultimate goal. Life in behavior is conceived as a pyramid of ends and means. The goods never seek for themselves but others are always on base, they are on, which can be searched by themselves dependent on others, on top of them, that look for themselves and their top is good and only one, which is never taken as a medium, but instead is one for which we have searched all the above. This order would be at the root of all our activity guide and direct. It is the ultimate goal and as such the absolute good or supreme by which all other goods would only be useful to achieve the latter and that is precisely: happiness. And since all morality is where good moral ownership is a source for suitable, that happiness was the appropriation of our last best chance. This conception in order to estimate lifetime in the exclusive function of the end conveys the idea of reducing the value of relationship acts zooming to the ultimate end. Happiness is always a possibility and appropriate and therefore the man is linked to it. There are multiple possibilities and completely different to be happy. These possibilities are the goods (ie appropriate possibilities.)For Kant’s ethics is not acceptable happiness because happiness is the natural man will and therefore is not a duty but otherwise it is a natural inclination (which is done for love is out of duty). Kant not only rejects the idea of happiness but in general the idea of good ethics and replaces it with the ethics of duty. It provides that “no concept of right is what determines the moral law and makes it possible, but rather, is the moral law which determines the concept of good and makes it possible.” In his view, the good is what to do, where moral law is what determines the concept of good and makes it possible.