Ethics

“ But this impeaches not the truth of the criterion of virtue, before mentioned, the only solid foundation on which any true system of ethics can be built, the only plain, simple, and uniform rule, by which we can pass any judgment on our actions; but by this we may be enabled, not only to determine which are good, and which are evil, but, almost mathematically, to demonstrate the proportion of virtue or vice which belongs to each, by comparing them with the degrees of happiness or misery which they occasion. ”

“ Whenever we say, ‘So and so is a good man,’ or ‘That fellow is a villain’; whenever we ask, ‘What ought I to do?’ or ‘Is it wrong for me to do like this?’; whenever we hazard such remarks as ‘Temperance is a virtue and drunkenness a vice’—it is undoubtedly the business of Ethics to discuss such questions and such statements; to argue what is the true answer when we ask what it is right to do, and to give reasons for thinking that our statements about the character of persons or the morality of actions are true or false. ”

“ Ascending still higher, we reach the plane of Ethics, where choice reigns notoriously supreme. An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. To sustain the arguments for the good course and keep them ever before us, to stifle our [Pg 288] longing for more flowery ways, to keep the foot unflinchingly on the arduous path, these are characteristic ethical energies. ”

“ Nothing in the whole field of ethics is more important than for each generation, as it stands on the threshold of temptation and opportunity, to see clearly the basic reasons for our hard-won and barely maintained code of chastity. A reverence for authority, a deep- implanted sentiment, a recurrent emotional appeal, and a barrier of scruples and pledges may keep many within the lines of safety. But the morality of sentiment and authority must always be based on a morality of reason and experience. ”

“ Practical Ethics sets forth the proper application of these fundamental principles of right and duty, as developed and justified in theoretical ethics, to the varied relations of men, personally, in the Family, in Society, and in the State. It passes on from the philosophy of moral obligations to a settlement of particular duties in the different spheres of human life and activity.
The connection between theoretical and practical ethics is very close and vital. Theory and practice always affect each other. They cannot be held wholly apart. ”

“ But, may it not be said, that every system of ethics must, or ought, to terminate, in plain and general maxims for the use of life? and, though in such axioms no discovery is made, does not the beauty of the moral theory consist in the premises, and the chain of reasoning that leads to the conclusion? ”

“ In the vast majority of cases, where we make statements involving any of the terms ‘virtue,’ ‘vice,’ ‘duty,’ ‘right,’ ‘ought,’ ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ we are making ethical judgments; and if we wish to discuss their truth, we shall be discussing a point of Ethics. ”

“ Ethics, I take it, we are agreed to consider as the science concerned with conduct; that is, with the actions of man in so far as they conform or do not conform with a standard of right, whatever that standard may be. Ethical, moral, morally good, right, we take to be synonymous terms. ”

“ A society in which any one of these three forms of moral excellence is especially prominent, has a natural tendency towards the corresponding theory of ethics; but, on the other hand, this theory, when formed, reacts upon and strengthens the moral tendency that elicited it. ”

“ All moral laws, I wish to shew, are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects. The very opposite of this view has been generally prevalent in Ethics. ‘The right’ and ‘the useful’ have been supposed to be at least capable of conflicting with one another, and, at all events, to be essentially distinct. ”

“ Conceived thus as comprehending the laws of right living at large, Ethics has a wider field than is commonly assigned to it. Beyond the conduct commonly approved or reprobated as right or wrong, it includes all conduct which furthers or hinders, in either direct or indirect ways, the welfare of self or others. ”

“ There are various schools of ethics, but they are all united in maintaining some obligatory force in morality, that whatever may be the precise meaning of the solemn word right, the right is binding on the allegiance of our will. ”

“ Ethical judgments contain an estimate of the worth of human actions. Every such estimate presupposes the existence of a need, a feeling which spurs us on to the judgment of the action, as also the existence of a standard, an ideal, according to which we judge. The motive to the ethical judgment may be called the basis of Ethics. ”

“ The first question which presents itself in Individual Ethics is: How is the individual to educate himself to an ethical personality? Here the development and strengthening of the ethical principle as governing and determining the life of the individual is concerned. The problem is one with the determination of the chief virtue which includes all other ethical qualities. This virtue is justice, which includes in itself the two groups contained under Self-assertion and Self-sacrifice. ”

“ If these views were true, the whole business of Ethics, in this department, would merely consist in discovering what feelings and opinions men have actually had about different actions, and why they have had them. ”

“ In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality. ”

“ As traditional and authoritative ethics weaken in the social process, the ethics formulated in the light of function bring to the general standard of the community a continuous and creative reinforcement. ”

“ Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself. Hence, by reflexion, it comes, through the operation of social justice, to recommend sacrifices by oneself, but all ethics, however refined, remains more or less subjective. ”

“ Accordingly, we find that many ethical philosophers are disposed to accept as an adequate definition of ‘Ethics’ the statement that it deals with the question what is good or bad in human conduct. They hold that its enquiries are properly confined to ‘conduct’ or to ‘practice’; they hold that the name ‘practical philosophy’ covers all the matter with which it has to do. ”

“ I have prayed to be saved from academic abstractness and remoteness, and to go as straight as I could to the real perplexities from which men suffer in deciding upon their conduct. The purpose of a study of ethics is, primarily, to get light for the guidance of life. And so, while referring to authors who differ from the views here expressed, I have sought to impart a definite conception of relative values, to offer a thread for guidance through the labyrinth of moral problems, and to effect a heightened realization of the importance and the possibilities of right living. ”

“ The ethical dignity of the contents of the real objects, whose independence and sameness is presupposed, does not alter in the least the logical character of the category involved. Logic is not ethics, but the ethical categories must be logical. ”

“ Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments; it is a branch of our reason, not of our sensitive faculty; and must be looked to for the abstract doctrines of morality, not for perception of it in the concrete. The intuitive, no less than what may be termed the inductive, school of ethics, insists on the necessity of general laws. ”

“ Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself. They celebrate their union by the highest service of truth, which is overshadowed in the one case by error, in the other by untruth. ”

“ From the lowest and narrowest 321view which calls an act right or wrong, according to its immediate effects upon one’s present life, to the clear vision of ultimate results which calls a course of conduct right or wrong, according to its final effects upon one’s eternal life, our ethics, small and great, is the science of human conduct measured by its results. ”

“ Therefore I welcome today's opportunity to outline, however briefly, why I have deemed it essential that we collectively pursue a reflection on ethics, and how we, as a people, would benefit from setting about the task of formulating an appropriate discourse for a change in public consciousness. ”

“ For the principles of conduct, like the principles of nature, must be derived from a study of the field to which they are applied. They require nothing more for their establishment than the analysis and generalization of the moral situation. If two or more persons conduct themselves with reference to one another and to an external object, their action either possesses or lacks, in some degree, that specific value which we call moral goodness. And by the principles of ethics we mean the principles which truly define and explicate this value. ”

“ He must have his own views of what are the really valuable elements in life, of what constitutes true happiness, and what part the deepest instincts play in the general course of affairs. He must therefore have his answer to the great problems of ethics. ”

“ The general terms of ethics were familiar but undefined: the tentative definitions suggested, followed up by objections available against each, included a large and instructive survey of ethical phenomena in all their bearings. ”

“ For action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics. ”

“ We experience the useful and the agreeable, but the right, the ethical idea, must be perceived or rationally seen, as a super-sensible reality in the ideal realm of the demands of duty. It is not a perception of relations themselves,64 but of a distinction as to something due in human relations and life. ”

“ But in this further discernment is revealed the nexus that binds together perceived right and man's responsibility to it. Hence, this is the cardinal thing in the conscience, for which the ethical idea prepares, and upon which the moral life rests. It is the point at which humanity is organized under a moral constitution and the behests of moral law. It is the sublime endowment in which man's nature is capacitated for its position, as standing face to face with the sublimer reality of the divine government over the world. ”

“ I might go much further, and say that to all those à priori moralists who deem it necessary to argue at all, utilitarian arguments are indispensable. It is not my present purpose to criticise these thinkers; but I cannot help referring, for illustration, to a systematic treatise by one of the most illustrious of them, the Metaphysics of Ethics, by Kant. ”

“ Our fundamental ethical conception of him, however, is that of a moral being and moral ruler. And to be moral means to love and choose the right as right. We must keep in mind here the relation between moral law and will, or the choices of the will. Moral authority does not exist as will, but as right. ”

“ It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. ”

“ When the ethical feeling develops, upon the basis of sympathy, to the feeling of duty and justice, the principle included in the above law becomes the standard according to which the individual judges his own actions as well as those of others, and pronounces them good or bad. The good is that which preserves and develops the welfare of conscious beings. ”

“ To get such a sane and far-sighted moral perspective; to see the acts of our fellow men with a proper valuation; to be able to point out the insidious dangers of conduct which is not yet as generally rebuked as it ought to be; and at the same time to emancipate ourselves and others from the mistaken and merely arbitrary precepts that are intermingled with our genuine morality, and so attain the largest possible freedom of action, such should be the outcome of a thorough study of ethical principles and ideals. ”

“ For though, while in obeying our fallible conscience, we have thus failed to bring our whole outward action in the case into harmony with full duty, or have even done what to others about us or to God above us was wrong, we have maintained our own subjective personal moral integrity, in maintaining that which is the fundamental and essential element of all morality, the right intention and effort. ”

“ Some day the ethics of business will be universally recognized, and in that day business will be seen to be the oldest and most useful of all the professions. ”

“ Our consideration of the great truth of the distinction between right and wrong which marks human life in all ages and places, and of the existence and nature of the moral faculty discerning and enforcing this distinction, leads up to an inquiry into the aggregate complex of endowments which are essential to moral agency. The great fact of moral agency is implied and made certain in what has already been brought into view. But the pre-supposition of such moral agency is manifestly the moral agent, with all the requisite endowments for the sublime reality of ethical life. ”

“ What is right springs immediately from the relations, as what is due in ideal moral order. The relations themselves exhibit a moral constitution as the immediate environment of the human moral personality. They bring the ethical requirement which they contain to the recognizing capacity of the reason and the obedience of the will. ”

“ And it may be admitted that, in some cases at least, it is right and proper that a man’s motives should thus influence our judgment. But the question is: What sort of moral judgment is it right and proper that they should influence? ”