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Mini Courses of GS IV: The Nature of Ethics
Mini Courses of Ethics, Integrity, Attitude, Aptitude and case studies for IAS Mains Examination
THE NATURE OF ETHICS
PROVISIONAL DEFINITION
In ordinary conversation we often hear such statements as: ‘He ought not to have done this’, ‘It is a good thing to help one’s neighbours’, ‘He is a thoroughly good man’, ‘His character is bad’, ‘He was is only doing his duty’, or ‘It is always right to speak the truth.’ When such statements are made they are frequently contradicted by someone hearing them, and this by itself suggests that they are not. It simple as at first sight they appear to be. If a friend disagrees with my statement that Smith is a thoroughly good man, he may do so for one of two reasons, (a) He may know facts about Smith’s haviour which are unknown to me; and if he tells me these fact and convinces me that they are true, I shall then be ready to admit that Smith is in some respects not a good man.
MORAL SCIENCES
An attempt has been made in the last section to give a definition of ethics, and to explain the various words used in that definition. In the case of a subject like ethics, about the subject-matter of which most people have some ideas, it is even more helpful to distinguish ethics from the other sciences dealing with human conduct with which it may be confused. There are certain sciences in which we describe human conduct without expressing any opinion about its value or making any judgement about it. At present, the most scientific description of human conduct is probably that given by psychology, and one school of modern psychology, the behaviourist school, holds that the sole subject-matter of a really scientific psychology is conduct or behaviour. Most psychologists, however, hold the principal part of their field to be not so much the resulting conduct as the inward processes, like intention and decision, which lead to outward conduct. One branch of psychology, now called social psychology, describes among other things conduct in its social relations, and this is the kind of conduct with which ethics is chiefly concerned. Human conduct is also described in sociology, which may be defined as the science of human society, and while the study of individual conduct has now become the sphere of social psychology rather than sociology, sociology still has for its subject matter the social institutions and customs which form the background of all human conduct and especially the conduct directed towards other human beings which is the special concern of ethics. Anthropology in its widest sense as the science of man includes human conduct in its sphere, and a great deal of the work of anthropologists has been the description of the conduct and customs of primitive peoples. Indeed, the anthropologist has given so much attention to primitive peoples that we are apt to forget that anthropology deals properly with all mankind and not merely with savage peoples. And anthropology deals with more than conduct; it deals with the physical and mental characteristics of people which only affect their conduct indirectly. These three sciences, psychology, sociology and anthropology, all provide us with facts about human conduct; and a general knowledge of such facts is a necessary preliminary to making true judgements about human conduct. Even in such a brief survey of ethics as that contained in this book, it will be necessary to make a restatement of certain psychological and sociological facts in the second, third, and fourth chapters. Yet just because these sciences are positive sciences which avoid judgements of value of any kind, we are not very likely to confuse them with ethics.
The knowledge of ethics does have some value for the moralizer; it gives him knowledge of the nature of moral principles which can be applied in the particular cases in which he gives counsel, and a width of outlook which may help him to avoid bias and prejudice. It may indeed be the duty of the student of ethics to use his knowledge of ethical principles to engage in the ‘time-honoured task of moralists at present very largely neglected, to preach and to edify, to inculcate new duties and devotions, or to make men profoundly conscious of old ones’.1 Yet the student of ethics may admit that he lacks the more necessary qualifications for the task of moralizer such as the necessary gift of insight or the long experience of the ways of men with one another. The preacher and the educationist have certainly much to learn from ethics, but theirs is a different subject; we may call it practical ethics or moralizing, and it is a subject the aim of which is to affect and improve practical conduct. There still remains to be considered the practice of doing right actions or what we may call the art of living the good life. Mackenzie thought that it was not correct to speak of conduct as an art,2 but there are actually resemblances between good conduct and such fine arts as painting or music to which the phrase ‘the art of conduct draws attention.
THE DATA AND METHODS ETHICS
The English philosopher, Locke, said in a famous passage: ‘But God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely twolegged creatures and left it to Aristotle to make them rational.... He has given them a mind that can reason without being instructed in methods of syllogizing.’1 A similar remark might be made about man’s powers of distinguishing right and wrong; God has not left it to the professors of ethics to make men discover the difference. It is not the business of the moralist to create moral standards out of nothing; he lives himself in a social environment where certain moral standards, however vaguely expressed and imperfect they may be, are accepted and these standards serve as his data or material. The value of the work of students of the positive science of morals, like Westermarck, is that they describe the standards that do exist now or have existed in the past accurately and systematically, and not with the inaccuracies and the bias that have been the common characteristics of travellers’ tales. There certainly appear to be inconsistencies and contradictions in these established moral standards, although modern sociologists are of the opinion that these have been exaggerated by those who have failed to understand or describe them properly. It is the first business of the student of ethics to reveal these inconsistencies between generally accepted standards and to show how these can be removed without making more than necessary alterations in the accepted standards.
It may be suggested that the analysis, which is used in the physical sciences, and which many moralists try to use in discovering the meanings of ethical terms, is not an appropriate method for ethical study at all. The goodness of a noble action, like the beauty of a great picture, depends so much on the action as a whole, that the picking out by analysis of qualities which are good simply ignores the real nature of the action’s moral goodness. It may be argued in reply that such analysis leads in ethics as in other sciences to a fuller understanding, and that the essential thing is only that our final moral judgement should be made on the whole action and not on its analysed elements. Such a final judgement must be intuitive, but it is an intuition modified by analysis and comparison.
WHEN WE HAVE ARRIVED AT A CONSISTENT SYSTEM OF MORAL PRINCIPLES THAT APPEAR TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, AND MOST MORALISTS WOULD ADMIT THAT THEY ARE NOT FULLY SATISFIED WITH THEIR OWN SYSTEMS, WE MAY PROCEED IN TWO DIRECTIONS. WE MAY GO IN THE DIRECTION OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND SHOW THE VALIDITY OF OUR PRINCIPLES BY DEMONSTRATING THEIR PLACE IN THE NATURE OF REALITY AS A WHOLE; OR WE MAY GO IN THE DIRECTION OF CASUISTRY AND SHOW HOW THESE PRINCIPLES WILL BE APPLIED IN THE PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES AND CONDITIONS OF OUR OWN LIVES.
THE USES OF ETHICS
Ethics is primarily a part of the quest for truth and the motive for studying it is the desire for knowledge. In this respect it is more akin to philosophical subjects than the natural sciences where the practical applications are many and attractive. We naturally want to know the truth about things, and ethics aims at finding out the truth about something that is both interesting and important - the Tightness and wrongness of human conduct. There is no guarantee that the man who understands by means of ethical study the difference between right and wrong will necessarily follow the right.