Objective: The objective of this paper is to acquaint the students with fundamental
ethical issues from both Western and Indian perspectives.
Unit-I
1. Nature, Scope of Ethics
Utility of Ethics
2. Good, Ought and Right
Good
The word ‘Good’
is derived from the German word ‘Gut’. It means anything valuable, useful or
serviceable for some end or purpose, therefore desirable. As the term ‘good’ is
too wide signifying anything that is desirable, one may use the expression
‘morally good’ to signify moral qualities. Hence, in ethics the word ‘good’ is
used to express moral qualities.
It
should be stated in this connection that the word ‘good’ is used both as an
adjective and also as a noun. Thus when one speaks of ‘material and immaterial
goods’, ‘a relative good’ and ‘the absolute or the highest good’ one evidently
uses the word ‘good’ as a noun. Good/ used in this way implies ‘an object of
desire or pursuit’, ‘anything that is sought’, e.g., wealth, health, courage
etc.
In
Ethics, a distinction is drawn between good as an end and good as a means. If,
for instance, happiness be good, then wealth and health as means of attaining
happiness are also good. Again, if health be a good, then regular exercise,
regulation of taking diet, taking of good medicine are also good as means of
securing good health. It will be easy now to understand the distinction between
a relative good and the absolute or the highest good of man. A ‘relative good’
is a kind of good as a means, i.e., it is an object which is desired, not for
itself, but for the sake of an ulterior end or good which, again, may be
relative to a still higher end, and so on. ‘Absolute good’ means “the good
which is desired for its own sake, and is not subordinate to any ulterior
good.’’ In short, it is not the concept of good as a means to a higher good; it
is however, the highest good- the ultimate end of human activity. Every
voluntary action is relative to an end or object of desire. And among ends,
there is gradation, culminating in the supreme end or the highest good which is
the goal of life.
Thus,
the ultimate, absolute or highest good of man is intrinsically good in the
sense that the same is desired for its own sake, and not desired for the sake
of anything else. In other words, absolute good is not a means to attain any
higher end or good. The highest good is the absolute good i.e. the supreme end.
The subordinate goods are instrumental goods or relative goods.
Right and Good
Right’ and ‘good’ are the two basic
terms of moral evaluation. In general, something is ‘right’ if it is morally
obligatory, whereas it is morally ‘good’ if it is worth having or doing and
enhances the life of those who possess it.
Acts are often held to be morally
right or wrong in respect of the action performed, but morally good or bad in
virtue of their motive: it is right to help a person in distress, but good to
do so from a sense of duty or sympathy, since no one can supposedly be obliged
to do something (such as acting with a certain motive) which cannot be done at
will.
Henry Sidgwick distinguished
between two basic conceptions of morality. The ‘attractive’ conception,
favoured by the ancient Greeks, views the good as fundamental, and grounds the
claims of morality in the self-perfection to which we naturally aspire. The
‘imperative’ conception, preferred in the modern era, views the right as
fundamental, and holds that we are subject to certain obligations whatever our
wants or desires.
Ought and Right
"Ought"
is used in different senses in Xenakis' two examples, a moral sense and a
prudential sense, is there anything in com- mon between the two and between
them and any other senses it may have? And is there any systematic way of
exhibiting the difference among its senses? The answer to both questions is in
the affirmative. Let us begin by considering the moral sense of
"ought" again. To say to X, speaking morally, "You ought to go
there" is to say much the same thing as "It is your duty to go
there" (except that the latter way of speaking is more forceful than the
former). Very well; now if it is true that X ought to go there or that it is
his duty to go there, what can we say about him if he does not go there? We can
say that he violated his duty-and to violate one's duty is to do wrong. If he
had gone there, he would have performed his duty-and to perform one's duty is
to do right. Hence, to say "You ought to go there," speaking morally,
is to imply, "If you do go there you will be doing what is right and if
you don't go there you will be doing wrong." Indeed, this is the way in
which we can find out whether some- one does intend to be using
"ought" in a moral sense: if someone tells us, "You ought to do
x," we can ask him, "Do you mean that I would be doing wrong if I
didn't do x?" and if the answer is in the affirmative, we know he is
speaking morally. Thus, in this case, the sense in which "ought" is
being used can be specified by reference to the contrary moral terms
"right" and "wrong": the action that one ought to do, in
this sense, is the one that it would be right to do and wrong not to do.
3. Moral Consciousness: Its Characteristics and Elements
Moral Consciousness
Characteristics
of Moral Consciousness
The characteristics of moral
consciousness are usually examined jointly with normative and value factors. O.
G. Drobnitskii justly considers the leading criterion of moral consciousness to
be the normative quality of moral judgments, the distinctive characteristic of
which consists, in turn, of the impersonal nature of such judgments, and also
of the fact that moral consciousness "does not associate its judgments
directly to whatever facts may be at hand" ("The Nature of Moral
Consciousness" [Priroda moral'nogo soznaniia], Voprosy
filosofii, 1968, No. 2). Without entering into a polemic against these
assertions, we should like to proceed to deal with a different aspect of the
same question.
Elements of Moral Consciousness
1. Awareness of Self, 2. Awareness of Others, and 3.
Awareness of Social Issues
Elements of Human Consciousness
4. Moral Judgement: Object of Moral Judgement
Unit-II
1. Theological Ethics: Egoism
Altruism
2. Kant's Categorical Imperative
Unit-III
1. Postulates of Morality
2. Crime and Punishment: Theories of Punishment
Crime 7 Different Types of Crimes (Extra information)
Unit-IV
1. Carvaka Ethics
2. Buddhist Ethics: Four Noble Truth, Pancusila
3. Jaina Ethics: Mahavrata, Anuvrata
4. Ethics of Bhagavadgita: Swadharma
Niskama Karma
Note:
1. Ethics Guide
2. Ethics (e-book)
3. Ethics (online Textbook)
