What Is Ethics? It's Not Obvious To Most.

Copyright © 2007, Barry L. Linetsky, All Rights Reserved

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that studies and defines a code of values to guide human choices and actions in the pursuit of life. It begins by asking the question as to why man needs values, defines a standard of value, and then defines a code of values or ethical principles to guide the action of individuals in pursuit of their own life.

As such, ethics is a requirement for living a successful life. To live the kind of life proper to Man, one must pursue values that support one’s life and well-being. It is the role of ethics to provide rational guidance in this realm, so that each person can achieve, fulfill and enjoy that ultimate value, that end in itself, which is his own life.

In her 1961 essay “The Objectivist Ethics,” American philosopher Ayn Rand defined ethics this way: “What is morality or ethics? It is a code of values to guide man’s choices and actions – the choices and actions that determine the purpose and course of his life. Ethics, as a science, deals with discovering and defining such a code.”

For Rand, it was the role of philosophers to define and rationally defend such a code. The validity of a code of ethics was, for her, a matter of life and death not only for individual people, but for mankind as a species. She was irate at the failure of philosophers in this regard, and made it her mission to challenge the lethargy and status quo of academia.

Ethics has been contentious through the ages, not because of a disagreement that Man requires a set of guiding principles to define good and evil and guide his choices and actions, but because leading thinkers have not agreed on what the standard of value should be. In general two choices have been offered: the standard of value is the will of god (or other metaphysical entity, real or imagined); or the standard of value is Man’s life.

It is this disagreement about the standard of good and evil, right and wrong, which leads to major disagreements in ethics. Without the ability to discuss the grounds for different viewpoints in a rational way, no acceptable peaceful resolution can be found. The wider framework for a reasoned and scientific discussion of these more fundamental issues is to be found in the discipline of Philosophy. To the extent one is committed to appeal to god rather than reason, one deals in the realm not of philosophy, but of theology. In this realm, faith, not reason, determines the standard of value.

Rand defined philosophy as the science that studies the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, man, and of man’s relationship to existence. Unlike the natural sciences that deal with particular aspects of existence, philosophy deals with wider aspects that pertain to everything that exists. At its best, philosophy is a unifying science of understanding.

The task of philosophy, wrote Rand, “is to provide man with a comprehensive view of life. This view serves as a base, a frame of reference, for all his actions, mental or physical, psychological or existential. This view tells him the nature of the universe with which he has to deal (metaphysics); the means by which he is to deal with it, i.e., the means of acquiring knowledge (epistemology); the standards by which he is to choose his goals and values, in regard to this own life and character (ethics) – and in regard to society (politics); the means of concretizing this view is given to him by esthetics.” (From her essay “The Chickens’ Homecoming,” quoted in The Ayn Rand Lexicon, p. 359.)

Here are a couple of other definitions of ethics to set the context for further discussion.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines ethics as the “science of morals.” It defines morals as “pertaining to the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil, in relation to actions, volitions, or character,” and “concerned with virtue and vice, or the rules of right conduct, as a subject of study.”

The Mirriam-Webster On-line Dictionary defines ethics as “a set of moral principles: a theory or system of moral values.”

An online business glossary defines ethics as: “A system of principles based on ideas of right and wrong, whether true or false; rules of practice in respect to human actions”
(Small Business Glossary, http://www.smallbusinessnotes.com/glossary/defethics.html).

Author Elaine Sternberg, in her book Just Business: Business Ethics in Action, defines ethics this way: “As commonly used, ‘ethics’ and ‘morals’ refer variously to moral codes, to the actions enjoined by them, and to the study of either or both…. When used more strictly, however, the term ‘ethics’ refers simply to a branch of philosophy, that which seeks to identify and clarify the presuppositions of human conduct having to do with good and evil.”

My view is similar to that expressed by Sternberg.

Ethics is, first and foremost, the branch of philosophy that identifies principles to guide human actions as we pursue our lives. As a branch of philosophy, ethics must adhere to the principles of the discipline, and those partaking in the subject must adhere to the basic requirements imposed by reality and reason.

As a normative science, ethics begins with observations of reality combined with logical reasoning to provide prescriptive guidance for man to achieve goals and ends appropriate to his nature as Man. In essence, it provides mankind with intellectual ammunition to help us determine, at the highest level, what’s for us and against us in our struggle with nature to live our lives successfully. That which can be shown in principle to support successful and prosperous human life is ‘the good’ and that which can be demonstrated to be harmful represents ‘evil.’ The standard of value is human life.

It should be pointed out that not everybody agrees that ethics is a normative science and that it refers to a branch of philosophy. As Sternberg indicates, there is common usage around the term “ethics” that is descriptive and non-normative. For example one could research and report on the normative practices of various groups of people or cultures and speak about their ‘ethics.’ Hence, talk of ‘business ethics’ can be both prescriptive (business leaders should behave this way) and descriptive (our survey shows that most business leaders behave this way). This latter approach is how the humanities typically approach ethics, and can be seen in areas such as anthropology, sociology, or history. This is what might be called a ‘journalistic’ approach to ethics, as differentiated from ethics proper.

Still, it is only right that if you are going to profess to be an ethicist or expert in the realm of ethics, such as business ethics, that you provide a definition of, or delineate what it is you are talking about. I don’t trust people who want to tell me what I must do to be ethical unless they can demonstrate why such action is ethical and why other actions are unethical. I want to know what the standard of value is and what ethical principles are involved. I want to assess the real world consequences of any recommended moral prescriptions. My advice to everyone is: be wary of those practitioners who provide self-serving, non-objective definitions of ethics, and who cannot demonstrate the objectivity of their prescriptive judgments. Don’t be bullied by ethical language and the desire to be perceived as ‘ethical’ in the eyes of others. Ethics is open to human knowledge and human judgment, and, if one pursues it as the science which it is, then ethical conclusions are subject to reasonable proof.

Any discussion that takes us from what is the case to what ought to be the case, if it is not merely someone’s opinion but to which we intend to give the weight of serious principled guidance in pursuit of the good, takes us into the realm of ethics and philosophy, and the full weight of these disciplines come into play.