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Ethical Theories in Contemporary Western Philosophy. Modern Philosophical Ethics Ethics in Modern Times

18.08.2023

Above we spoke in defense of scientific ethics. Unfortunately, modern philosophical ethics has a somewhat alienated attitude towards science. But this does not mean that it is useless or that it is separated from science by insurmountable barriers. Philosophical ethics is a potential of knowledge relevant to the fate of mankind, which should not be underestimated. Before turning directly to modern philosophical ethics, it is necessary to consider historical approaches to it. We are talking about the ethics of the virtues of Aristotle, the ethics of duty by I. Kant and the utilitarianism of Bentham-Mill.

Aristotle's virtue ethics. A person has theoretical (wisdom and prudence) and moral (courage, prudence, generosity, splendor, majesty, honor, evenness, truthfulness, friendliness, justice) virtues. Every moral virtue controls the passions by excess and deficiency. Thus, courage controls insane courage (passion-excess) and fear (passion-lack). The goal of moral behavior is happiness. Happy is he who perfects himself, and not he who is preoccupied with pleasures and honors.

Criticism. Aristotle's virtue ethics does not know truly scientific concepts. For this reason, it is powerless to contribute in a decisive way to the resolution of today's pressing problems. Aristotle anticipated the position that the world of passions should be optimized - "nothing too much." But he described this process of optimization in an extremely simplified way.

Ethics of duty I. Kant. Man is a moral being. It is in morality that he elevates himself above his sensory world. As a moral being, man is autonomous from nature, free from it. Live according to the laws of freedom. To be free means to observe the absolute moral law, which is given to reason a priori. This law is known to everyone who has reason. So, every person knows that it is unworthy to lie. Live according to the categorical imperative: act in such a way that the maxim of your will may have the force of law for all people, and never treat yourself or another as a means to an end contrary to the duty of man. It is necessary to be honest, conscientious, sincere, worthy of your high human calling, to oppose lies, greed, avarice, servility.

Criticism. The undoubted merit of I. Kant is that he considered the question of the truly theoretical nature of ethics. With this in mind, he put at the head of it a certain principle, namely the categorical imperative. The requirement of freedom was considered by Kant in his context. Kant's idea of giving ethics a theoretical character deserves approval, but, unfortunately, in its implementation he met with insurmountable difficulties. Not knowing the principles of the axiological sciences, Kant replaced them all with the categorical imperative. He did not explain the meaning of his main postulate: each person should adequately represent humanity.

Utilitarianism(from lat. utilitas- benefit) Bentham Mill. The core of ethics is the all-round maximization of utility. It acts as the maximization of happiness and the minimization of suffering for all individuals and social groups that experience the consequences of certain actions of people. Focus your life on high quality pleasures (spiritual pleasures are more beneficial than physiological ones). You should anticipate the consequences of possible actions, both your own and others. Only that action is worthy of performance, which in a given situation is preferable in the horizons of maximizing happiness and minimizing the suffering of all people.

Criticism. At first glance, utilitarianism lacks moral loftiness. This impression is deceptive. To see this, let's turn to the main principle of utilitarianism: maximize the total amount of utility (happiness). The emergence of the maximization criterion is extremely important, because it involves a quantitative calculation of utility. How to do it, the classics of utilitarianism I. Bentham and J.S. Mill did not know. But modern scientists know this. In contrast to Kant's ethics, utilitarianism leads directly to the center of science. In comparison with Kant's ethics, in utilitarianism the metaphysical component decreases and the scientific component increases.

The ethics of duty by I. Kant was very popular in Germany until the beginning of the 20th century. But as a result of the rise of first the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger and, finally, the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas, the authority of Kant's philosophy fell sharply. This caused a significant decline in the popularity of Kant's ethics of duty. Ultimately, the above innovations led the leading German philosophers of the 20th century to the ethics of responsibility.

In the English-speaking world, the decisive events of the XX century. was the strengthening of the positions of pragmatism and analytical philosophy. Both led to a significant weakening of the position of utilitarianism, which had to give way to the pragmatic ethics of social progress. Thus, the two main philosophical and ethical trends of our time are the ethics of responsibility and pragmatic ethics. So, the subject of the nearest analysis is the ethics of responsibility.

Ethics of responsibility. The concept of responsibility was introduced into ethics in the late 1910s. M. Weber: “We must make it clear to ourselves that any ethically oriented action can obey two fundamental different irreconcilably opposed maxims: it can be oriented either towards an 'ethics of conviction' or an 'ethics of responsibility'". When they act according to the ethics of beliefs, they are not responsible for their results. When a person acts according to the maxim of the ethics of responsibility, then “one must pay for (foreseeable) consequences his actions ... Such a person will say: these consequences are imputed to my activity.

According to Weber, responsibility is an ethical act taken in the unity of all its moments. Responsibility transcends subjectivity. Unfortunately, he did not explain in any way exactly how responsibility is connected with the subjective, including consciousness.

It should be noted that after M. Weber, many German philosophers turned to the topic of responsibility. But not all of them managed to organically fit the ethics of responsibility into current philosophical systems. In this regard, X. Jonas and J. Habermas were especially successful. As a faithful student of M. Heidegger, Jonas, author of the book “The Principle of Responsibility. The Experience of Ethics for a Technological Civilization (1979) was concerned primarily with the existence of man. There is nothing more important than this, and meanwhile, as a result of the development of technology, which has become a powerful planetary factor, man has put his life at risk. There is only one way out of this situation - a person must take responsibility for both technology and nature - for everything that is involved in his nature. Do what you can to save life on earth.

Yu. Habermas paid special attention to who and how imputes responsibility to people. A person can take responsibility for nature and technology, but will he be truly free, i.e. freed from social injustice? The responsibility of a person should not be a burden for him. In this regard, he is sure that people themselves impute responsibility to each other. Social injustices can be avoided only when they develop agreement in discourse.

Another outstanding modern German philosopher X. Lenk pays special attention to the moral responsibility of people. In particular, it is not enough to be legally responsible. The highest type of responsibility is moral responsibility.

pragmatic ethics. Its founder is J. Dewey. What is needed is an ethic that, in harmony with the transience of history, would ensure the democratic future of the people. They are always in a certain situation in which they are forced to control their behavior, which is made up of individual actions, the consequences of which are not always desirable. In this regard, intellectual behavior is necessary, which can be carried out using theory as tools, on the basis of reflection, ending with a decision. Morality has a social character, the individual is woven into the public. Only in abstraction are the social and the individual separated from each other. Ultimately, the main instance of ethics is civil society with its freedoms, and especially the sphere of education.

J. Rawls, unlike J. Dewey, paid special attention to the discursive nature of ethical norms. Like Habermas, he believes that the consent of people is necessary for the successful functioning of ethics, which is achieved in discourse.

Criticism of the ethics of responsibility and pragmatic ethics. Supporters of the two ethical systems under consideration do not shy away from science, but, on the contrary, seek to take into account its achievements. However, this accounting is one-sided. J. Dewey, and after him many other pragmatists, considers theories to be just tools for social progress. In this regard, science is not completely removed from the shadow of general philosophical reasoning.

German philosophers, unlike most of their American counterparts, are somewhat wary of science. Americans always focus directly on the phenomenon of practice. Germans tend to talk more about understanding practice. The American pragmatic ethic of democratic social progress is developed in the name of analytic philosophy. The German ethics of responsibility organically merges with hermeneutics and fundamental

ontology.

In conclusion of the paragraph, let us turn to the question of using the achievements of modern ethics. Consideration of a particular situation must always be carried out in the context of ethical systems. In this regard, the ethical theory stands out, which allows you to understand the situation as thoroughly as possible. But at the same time, one should not forget about the strengths of other ethical concepts. Ultimately, the success of deep scientific and philosophical research should be ensured.

conclusions

Modern ethics is represented by many ethical theories. Of these, two theories are the most authoritative: the German-based ethics of responsibility and the American-based pragmatic ethics of social progress.
The ethics of responsibility was the result of the development of the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger and the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas.
Pragmatic ethics was the result of the development of J. Dewey's pragmatism and analytical philosophy.
Both the ethics of responsibility and pragmatic ethics do not sufficiently take into account the achievements of the philosophy of science.

Weber M. Selected Works. M.: Progress, 1990. S. 696.
There. S. 697.

Topic 10: Ethical Theories in Modern Western Philosophy

Introduction

2. Ethics in the philosophy of existentialism

3. Humanistic ethics of E. Fromm

4. "Ethics of reverence for life" by A. Schweitzer

Conclusion

Introduction

The twentieth century has become a century of rapid development of science and technology, qualitative changes in production and at the same time - a century of global problems such as the threat of nuclear war, environmental and demographic problems. On the one hand, we can talk about the crisis of the ideas of rationalism today, on the other hand, about the excessive and one-sided rationalization and technization of consciousness. The general crisis of culture and the desire to harmonize and improve the world and the soul of individuals were reflected in ethical searches.

This paper highlights the provisions of some modern ethical theories that took place in the twentieth century. This topic is important because the development of history is largely determined by the views and ideologies that dominate society. Ethics is one of the components that has a direct impact on their development. It is necessary to know the basic ethical principles according to which the history of the past developed in order to make one's own ethical choice in the future.

The purpose of this work is to study the ethical and philosophical views of prominent thinkers of the twentieth century.

1. Ethical concept of F. Nietzsche

The course of history in the 19th-20th centuries seemed to have completely refuted the foundations of humanistic classical philosophy, and reason and science, although they confirmed their triumph in the knowledge and subordination of the forces of nature, also revealed their impotence in the organization of human life. The claims of classical philosophy, based on the belief in the natural structure of the world and its movement in the direction of progressive ideals, in the rationality of man and the world of civilization and culture he creates, in the humanistic orientation of the historical process itself, turned out to be unconfirmed. Therefore, it was necessary either to indicate new ways and means for the realization of these claims, or to expose their illusory nature and deliver mankind from vain expectations and hopes.

The philosophy of life of F. Nietzsche marked the final "reassessment of all values" of the previous philosophy, culture and morality.

Nietzsche saw his task precisely in waking up humanity, dispelling its illusions, in which it was sinking ever deeper into a state of crisis and degeneration. This required potent means capable of shocking, excite the public. Therefore, Nietzsche does not skimp on biting statements, harsh assessments, philosophical paradoxes and scandals. He considered his works a real “school of courage and audacity”, and himself a true philosopher of “unpleasant”, “terrible truths”, an overthrower of “idols”, by which he understood traditional values and ideals, and an exposer of delusions rooted not even in the weakness of knowledge but above all in human cowardice!

Many times he calls himself "the first immoralist", a real "godless", "antichrist", "world-historical monster", "dynamite", designed to blow up the swamp of established ideas.

Nietzsche strives for the ordinary ideas of cultural consciousness, for the "values" of civilization and culture - religion, morality, science, to comprehend the true essence of being - the instinctive desire of life for self-affirmation. Life is understood by him as a disordered and chaotic deployment of the energy of chaos inherent in being, a stream that is not derived from anywhere and directed nowhere, obeying the madness of the orgiastic principle and completely free from any moral characteristics and evaluations. In ancient culture, Nietzsche considered the ecstasy of the god of wine, the daring revelry and fun of Dionysus to be a symbol of such an understanding of life, symbolizing for a person a sense of strength and power, bliss of delight and horror from his emancipation and complete merging with nature.

However, it is inherent in the energy of life to go through periods of ups and downs in its deployment, the creation and destruction of life forms, the strengthening and weakening of the instinctive desire for self-realization. In general, this is a harsh and merciless struggle of various manifestations of life, distinguished by the presence in them of the “will to live” and the “will to power” over its other manifestations.

Therefore, according to Nietzsche, “life itself is essentially appropriation, harm, overcoming the alien and weaker, oppression, severity, the forcible imposition of one’s own forms, annexation and ... exploitation.”

Exploitation, oppression, violence are therefore not belonging to some imperfect, unreasonable society, but are a necessary manifestation of living life, a consequence of the will to power, which is precisely the will to live.

A stronger will to life and power suppresses the weakened will and dominates it. This is the law of life, but it can be distorted in human society.

Man is one of the imperfect manifestations of life, which, although it surpasses other animals in cunning and foresight, in its ingenuity, is immeasurably inferior to them in another respect. He is incapable of living a completely direct instinctive life, obeying its cruel laws, because under the influence of consciousness and its illusory ideas about his “goals” and “purpose”, his life instincts weaken, and he himself turns into a failed, sick beast.

Consciousness, reason strive to streamline the life energy of being, to shape and direct the life flow in a certain direction and to subordinate it to a rational principle, the symbol of which in antiquity was the god Apollo, and if this succeeds, then life weakens and rushes to self-destruction.

Public life is the struggle between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles in culture, the first of which symbolized the triumph of healthy life instincts, and the second - the decadence experienced by Europe, i.e. the weakening of the will to power carried to the extreme, which led to the dominance in European culture of unnatural values that undermine the very sources of life.

The decay and degradation of European culture, according to Nietzsche, is due to its cornerstone foundations - the Christian morality of philanthropy, the exorbitant ambitions of reason and science, which “deduce” from historical necessity the ideas of social equality, democracy, socialism and, in general, the ideals of the optimal organization of society on the basis of justice and rationality. Nietzsche attacks these values of traditional humanism with all his force, showing their unnatural orientation and nihilistic character. Following them weakens humanity and directs the will to live towards Nothing, towards self-decomposition.

It was in the values of Christian morality, the ideals of reason and science that Nietzsche discerned a “fraud of a higher order”, which he tirelessly denounced all his life, putting forward the slogan “revaluation of all values”.

Christianity is a "monstrous disease of the will" and arises out of fear and need, among the weakest and most miserable bearers of the weakened will to live. It is therefore permeated with hatred and aversion to a healthy life, masked by the belief in a "perfect heavenly life", which was invented only in order to better slander this earthly life. All Christian fantasies are a sign of the deep exhaustion and impoverishment of the present life, its illness and weariness, so that Christianity itself lives by the narcotization of human misfortunes.

However, remaining a manifestation, albeit sick, but still of the will to live, Christianity, in order to survive among the strong and cruel, invents a bridle for the strong and fearless through the most unbridled moralizing, identifying itself with morality. Through the cultivation of the moral values of Christianity, a sick life catches a healthy one and destroys it, and the more true, the deeper the ideals of self-denial, self-sacrifice, mercy and love for one's neighbor spread.

Such traditional philanthropic morality is interpreted by Nietzsche as "the will to deny life", "the hidden instinct of destruction, the principle of decline, humiliation". Christian morality is initially permeated with self-sacrifice, it grows out of a slave state and seeks to spread it to its enslavers, inventing God for this. Faith in God requires a conscious sacrifice to him of one's freedom, pride, dignity, open self-abasement of a person, promising heavenly bliss in return.

Nietzsche very subtly plays with the main provisions of Christian morality, revealing its hypocritical and deceitful nature. “Whoever humbles himself wants to be exalted,” he corrects Christ's sermon.

He deciphers the requirement of selflessness and disinterestedness, "not to seek profit" as a moral fig leaf for the expression of impotence - "I no longer know how to find my own benefit ...".

The consciousness, unbearable for a weak will: “I am worth nothing”, takes on the form in Christian morality “everything is worth nothing, and this life is also worth nothing.” The ascetic ideal of holiness, the cultivation of dispassion and suffering, is for him an attempt to give meaning to the meaninglessness of suffering, when it is impossible to get rid of it because of one's own weakness, because any meaning is better than complete meaninglessness. Dispassion is only the spiritual castration of man, and by undermining the root of human passions, one can only destroy life itself.

Compassion and love for one's neighbor is only the flip side of morbid self-hatred, for these and other virtues are clearly harmful to their owner, but useful and therefore they are hypocritically praised by his competitors who seek to bind their owner with their help. Therefore, concludes Nietzsche, “if you have virtue, then you are its victim!”

In addition, by means of mercy and compassion, Christian morality artificially supports too much of what should perish and give way to more powerful manifestations of life.

Essential in morality is, according to Nietzsche, one thing - that it is always a "long oppression" and a manifestation of the herd instinct in an individual person.

And although religion and the morality it preaches are necessary and useful for the overwhelming mass, for the herd, for strong and independent people representing the dominant race, all this becomes superfluous. However, they can use this extra means of their dominance over the herd in order to better force it into obedience, without becoming themselves prisoners of poor morality. For along with this wretched morality, which requires the sacrifice of a person to God, there are other higher "morals" in which God himself is sacrificed!

“We must free ourselves from morality in order to be able to live morally!” - exclaims Nietzsche, proclaiming the need for a reassessment of "eternal values", the rejection of the morality of slaves and the restoration of the rights of life. This is available only to masters, strong and free minds, holders of an invincible will, who own their own measure of values and assign themselves a measure of respect and contempt for others. They are true aristocrats of the spirit, who do not seek unanimity with others, retain the "pathos of distance" and the habit of "looking down". They retain independence from the dogmas of ordinary morality, are free from its fetters and are disgusted by all moral chatter about duty, selflessness, holiness, because they themselves lay down their own laws.

This “master morality” is the morality of strength and selfishness, which “is the most essential property of a noble soul”, by which Nietzsche understood “an unshakable belief that a being “like us” must naturally obey and sacrifice itself to other beings” .

This morality also has certain duties, but only in relation to their own kind and equals, - in relation to beings of a lower rank, "you can act according to your discretion ... being on the other side of good and evil." “In every act of a higher person,” Nietzsche contemptuously throws towards the average man in the street, “your moral law is violated a hundred times.”

Nietzsche easily and ingeniously deals with the problem of "free will", which plagued the previous ethics. Every will is a manifestation of the instincts of life, and in this sense it is neither free nor rational. We need to talk not about free and not free will, but about a strong will that rules and commands and takes responsibility, and a weak will that only obeys and fulfills. The first is free to the extent that it is strong, and the second is not free in the same sense.

Therefore, the morality of freedom and dignity exists only for higher people, and for others only the slavish morality of self-denial and asceticism is available, in which the weakened instincts of life are discharged not outside, but inside the human soul with the aggression of self-destruction.

Nietzsche dealt with the "scientific" humanism of socialists and democrats from the same positions. “Fanatics of the brotherhood,” as he called them, just like Christian morality, ignore the laws of nature, seeking to eliminate exploitation, overcome the natural inequality of people and impose on them “the common herd happiness of green pastures.” This will inevitably lead to the same result - the weakening and degradation of mankind, because a person always develops in struggle and rivalry, and inequality and exploitation are a necessary condition for life.

In the morality of a socialist society, the will of God is replaced by the social benefit derived from history and the common good, which is guarded by the state. At the same time, the interests of the individual mean nothing, why Nietzsche considers socialism as the younger brother of despotism, in which the state seeks to turn a person from an individual into an organ of the collective. A person, of course, tries to resist this, and then state terrorism becomes an obligatory means of planting loyal feelings, consciousness and humility of actions.

In such a morality, everything that singles out and elevates an individual person above the general level frightens everyone, is condemned by everyone and is subject to punishment. The state pursues an egalitarian policy, leveling everyone, of course, at the lowest level, as a result of which the democratic form of government is, according to Nietzsche, a form of grinding and devaluing a person and reducing him to the level of mediocrity.

Thus, Nietzsche's philosophy was a kind of revelation and a tub of cold water for traditional classical ethics, oriented towards humanistic ideals and the progress of reason. His idea that "there is no pre-established harmony between the promotion of truth and the good of mankind" became one of the central values in philosophy in the 20th century.

With his “philosophy of life”, he passionately sought to destroy the idea of a person as a “creature”, as an object and means for achieving goals alien to him and to help the self-creation in him of a “creator”, a free agent. Nietzsche tried to overcome the idea of morality as an objective system of compulsions, norms and prohibitions that do not depend on a person, alienated from him and suppress him, and present it as a sphere of freedom.

With his work, he defended the vitality and value of individualism, with which he associated a new understanding of humanism, but inevitably coming along this path to the absolutization of subjectivism and the relativity of moral values, to the opposition of aristocratic morality (“everything is allowed”) and the morality of lower beings.

Nietzsche was able to theoretically foresee and express the essential characteristics of the moral practice of the socialist reorganization of society, but did not see the inner relationship of his “new order” with totalitarian social systems. For the rights and moral freedoms of Nietzsche's chosen ones were compensated by lack of rights and ruthless suppression of the plebeians. The morality of the "supermen" turned out to be superhuman morality, free from moral obligations to humanity and permeated with contempt for universal human values.

That one of the characteristics of these relations, he leaves aside others, considering them derivatives of it, and at the same time creates rather complex philosophical constructions. 5. Modern religious philosophy. During the years of dogmatization of Marxism, any religious philosophy in connection with militant atheism was regarded as reactionary. Of course, criticism of Marxism by representatives of this...

Old and New Testaments) found their expression only in Christianity. In the future, Christianity and the moral values of the Bible will be accepted as synonymous. This essay does not consider the further history of Christianity and the Christian Church. 2. Western philosophy of the XX century By the middle of the XIX century. Western European philosophical thought found itself in a deep crisis. ...

Not in Mexico, without having received appropriate professional training and even, to be honest, without having deeply studied a single book on these subjects? By the way, adherents of structuralism often even defined structuralism as a “method and philosophy” at once. So, the main book of the prominent representative of this movement in France, N. Mulud, “Les structures, la recherche et le savoir” (the name of the Russian ...

Both cultures and a certain detachment from both. * * * Concluding the conversation about the two great intellectual traditions of the East, let us draw the main conclusions that are essential for the intention of this book. Turning to Chinese philosophical thought, modern philosophy can find in it a completely different model for the development of philosophical speculation, which gave rise to a discourse that retained the original model...

There are lines of morality that no one is allowed to cross. This is especially true of human health and personal tragedies. But, alas, in our world with its market relations, the anticipation of money destroys all moral foundations. Terrible proof of this were the photographs of the helpless Oleg Tabakov in the hospital, which circled the entire Internet. This act of the unfortunate journalist was sharply criticized by the musician Alexander Rosenbaum and other artists.

As you know, a few days ago, people's favorite Oleg Pavlovich was hospitalized. Friends of the 82-year-old actor and doctors say that the condition is serious. An operation was performed, after which the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov was placed in intensive care. One of the Russian TV channels decided to secretly check the health of the artist. What came of it, the editors will tell "So simple!". We will also tell you about cyberethics, which you simply need to know about in our digital world.

Modern ethics

The journalist made his way to the intensive care unit to the bed of the helpless Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov. He photographed both the artist, wrapped in the wires of the devices, and his vital signs, and then he let it all out on the Internet. When this horror caught the eye of Alexander Rosenbaum, the musician could not contain his indignation. He also asked the Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent to contact him to express his point of view on such filming.

“I was on tour when they sent me these shots. I immediately called TV presenter Elena Malysheva and said that this was a disaster. What is happening in our lives and with our conscience? It's just beyond good and evil! We have fought for many years to ensure that patients can be visited in intensive care. Allowed. This is good.

But some person walked by with a phone and filmed everything: the actor himself, and even the monitor, on which Oleg Pavlovich's life parameters are visible. Blaming healthcare workers is wrong. Bad people, to put it mildly, those who exposed these shots, hung them on the Internet, and gave them on television.

When Princess Diana was in a fatal accident, no publication published pictures of her torn body. And there were a lot of photographers there. The fact that Tabakov was shown in this form is, from the point of view of humanity, just a crime. Something needs to be done so that this does not happen in nature.

I remind you once again that we should not blame the medical institutions here, which, according to the law, open the doors for the relatives of the patient. And those who publish such photos should be blamed. A great man, a people's favorite in the most difficult condition, and in such a form, at such a time ... This is beyond human understanding.

We fully agree that such antics of journalists are inhumane. After all, this is a personal tragedy of the artist and his family, and not the property of the public. And in general, there is such a thing as cyberethics - a philosophical area of ethics that studies human behavior on the Internet and on information portals in order to develop certain rules for using them. In many countries, it is given great importance and controlled by specialized bodies.

Cyberethics examines whether it is legal to broadcast personal information about other people on the Internet, such as current location, whether users need to be protected from false information, who owns digital data (music, movies, books, web pages) and what users are entitled to do with them, and also whether access to the Internet is a basic right for everyone.

Availability, censorship and filtering of information raise many ethical questions related to cyberethics. The existence of these issues continues to challenge our understanding of privacy and secrecy, and affects our participation in society. Cyberethics is based on the Code of Fair Use of Information. These requirements were introduced by the US Department of Health and Human Services back in 1973.

It is very important to respect yourself and others, as well as observe ethics both professional and any other. Yes, we have the right to freedom of speech and access to information. But our rights are limited where we violate others. You need to understand that there are things that are absolutely not intended for making money. You never know what will happen to you or your loved ones.

Ethics(from other Greek "ethos") - the science of morality, explores the process of motivating behavior, critically examines the general orientations of life, substantiates the need and the most appropriate form of the rules for the joint coexistence of people, which they are ready to accept by their mutual consent and perform on the basis of voluntary intention. The latter distinguishes morality and the science of morality from law, based on the force of coercive influence, although the ethical justification of the law itself is also not excluded.

Origin of the term

ancient ethics

Ancient ethics developed mainly as a theory of the virtues. Virtue in the most general definition, it shows what a thing should be in order for it to meet its purpose. The development of this thesis initially went along the path of clarifying the question of what a person should be in order to gain maximum happiness, which is better: to be an ascetic or a hedonist, to indulge in a calm contemplation of things, or, conversely, to actively relate to the world, trying to adapt it to human needs. Then, in the concepts of Plato and Aristotle, virtues are no longer associated only with personal life preferences, but also with civic service, with the perfect implementation of a social function. Late antique teachings (Epicureanism, Stoicism) reflected the developing contradictions of the individual and society, they formulated a call for equanimity of spirit, which was often combined with passivity, elimination from active being. Nevertheless, in these teachings the meaning of human individuality was more deeply comprehended, the idea of the divine mind as a source of perfect forms that determine the main goals of the existence of all things was overcome.

Ethics in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

In the Middle Ages, a single authoritative source of moral of good - Almighty God. He also relies on the all-good, all-seeing, omnipresent. In Christianity, God performs punitive functions and at the same time hurts the ideal of moral perfection. Christian ethics, in contrast to Greek and Roman, has basically become ethics debt . It formulated other criteria for moral goodness. Such qualities as courage, military prowess faded into the background. Love for God and neighbor was introduced as a duty (as the spread of the principle of divine love), all people began to be regarded as equally worthy, regardless of their success in earthly life.

Medieval ethics reflected a higher assessment of human sensibility compared to antiquity, a higher assessment of labor, including simple labor associated with handicraft production and agriculture, as well as a person’s historical view of their own development.

The Christian idea of the Resurrection from the dead affirms not only the preservation of the posthumous existence of the soul, but also the restoration of the transfigured, freed from sin body. This is connected precisely with the awareness of the significance of the sensual aspects of human existence. At the same time, the sensual manifestations of human life are comprehended in Christianity from the point of view of the need for their reasonable control. In the very idea of original sin, one can see a new understanding of the tasks of a person regarding his own development, his improvement, including a special attitude to his sensuality. Now this is no longer the “finishing up” of the first nature, characteristic of antiquity, but its complete alteration: the rejection of one, sinful nature and the formation of another - transformed, put under the control of the human mind. An extremely important achievement in moving along this path was the formation of the idea of repression evil at the level of motives, that is, the repression of the sinful thoughts themselves. understanding played a significant role conscience as the voice of God in man, forbidding unworthy deeds. In this vein, the idea of non-violence, which has become extremely relevant in the modern world, is developing. Non-resistance to evil by violence means the desire to reduce evil, by eliminating the motive for violent action from the person who uses violence.

Ethics in modern times

The ethics of modern times had a complex history of origin. From the very beginning, it was based on various, even contradictory principles, which received their special combination in the concepts of individual thinkers. It is based on humanistic ideas developed in the Renaissance, the principle of personal responsibility introduced through the Protestant ideology, the liberal principle that put the individual with his desires at the center of reasoning, and that considers the main functions of the state in protecting the rights and freedoms of the individual.

In the 17th century moral theories reflect the complexity of the process of the emergence of a capitalist society, the uncertainty of a person in his destiny, and at the same time encourage an initiative aimed at practical achievements. In ethics, this leads to a combination of two opposing approaches: the desire for personal happiness, pleasure, joy at the lowest empirical level of the subject's being and the desire to gain stoic calmness at a different, higher level of being. Higher moral being is comprehended through purely rational constructions associated with the assertion of intellectual intuition, innate knowledge. In them, the sensual aspects of the subject's being are actually completely overcome.

18th - 19th centuries associated with a relatively quiet period in the development of capitalism. Moral theories are more guided here by the sensual aspects of human existence. But feelings are understood not only in eudemonistic terms, as conditions for achieving happiness, as positive emotions that contribute to the joy of life. In a number of concepts, they begin to acquire a purely moral meaning, they appear precisely as moral feelings aimed at a humane attitude towards another, which contributes to the harmonization of social life. As a reaction to the sensual and eudemonistic understanding of morality, an approach arises in which morality appears as a rational construction derived from pure reason. Kant tries to formulate an autonomous approach to the justification of morality, to consider the moral motive as not connected with any pragmatic motives of being. The Kantian categorical imperative, based on the procedure of mental universalization of one's behavior as a means of its control by the autonomous moral will, is still used in various versions in the construction of ethical systems.

The idea of history finds expression in the ethics of modern times. In the concepts of the Enlighteners, Hegel, Marx, morality is understood as relative, specific to each specific stage of the development of society, in Kant's philosophy, the historical consideration of morality, on the contrary, is subject to the study of those conditions under which absolute moral principles can become effective, practically feasible. In Hegel, the historical approach is developed on the basis of the thesis that the autonomous moral will is powerless, cannot find the desired connection with the whole. It becomes effective only because it is based on the institutions of the family, civil society and the state. Therefore, as a result of historical development, morality is conceived by Hegel as coinciding with perfect tradition. 19th century it is also a period that gives a powerful surge to the utilitarian understanding of morality (Bentham, Miles).

Marx, and especially his followers, tried to combine the Hegelian and Kantian approaches in an ingenious way. Hence, morality, on the one hand, turned out to be class, historically relative, on the other hand, it became the only means of regulating behavior in a communist society, when, according to the classics of Marxism, all social circumstances distorting the purity of morals would disappear, all social antagonisms would be overcome.

Modern ethics

Modern ethics is faced with a rather difficult situation in which many traditional moral values have been revised. Traditions, in which the basis of initial moral principles was seen in many respects, often turned out to be destroyed. They have lost their significance in connection with the global processes developing in society and the rapid pace of change in production, its reorientation towards mass consumption. As a result, a situation arose in which opposing moral principles appeared as equally justified, equally derivable from reason. This, according to A. McIntyre, led to the fact that rational arguments in morality were mainly used to prove those theses that the person who cited them already had in advance.

This, on the one hand, led to an anti-normative turn in ethics, expressed in the desire to proclaim an individual a full-fledged and self-sufficient subject of moral requirements, to lay on him the entire burden of responsibility for independently made decisions. The anti-normative tendency is represented in the ideas of F. Nietzsche, in existentialism, in postmodern philosophy. On the other hand, there was a desire to limit the area of ethics to a fairly narrow range of issues related to the formulation of such rules of conduct that can be accepted by people with different life orientations, with different understanding of the goals of human existence, the ideals of self-improvement. As a result, the category of good, traditional for ethics, turned out to be, as it were, taken out of the bounds of morality, and the latter began to develop mainly as an ethics of rules. In line with this trend, the topic of human rights is being further developed, new attempts are being made to build ethics as a theory. justice. One of such attempts is presented in the book by J. Rawls "The Theory of Justice".

New scientific discoveries and new technologies gave a powerful boost to the development of applied ethics. In the XX century. many new professional codes of morality have been developed, business ethics, bioethics, ethics of a lawyer, media worker, etc. have been developed. Scientists, doctors, philosophers began to discuss such problems as organ transplantation, euthanasia, the creation of transgenic animals, human cloning. Man, to a much greater extent than before, felt his responsibility for the development of all life on earth and began to discuss these problems not only from the point of view of his own survival interests, but also from the point of view of recognizing the inherent value of the fact of life, the fact of existence as such.

An important step, representing a reaction to the current situation in the development of society, was an attempt to understand morality in a constructive way, to present it as an endless discourse in its continuation, aimed at developing solutions acceptable to all its participants. This is being developed in the works of K.O. Apel, J. Habermas, R. Alexi and others. The ethics of discourse is directed against antinormativity, it tries to develop common guidelines that can unite people in the fight against global threats facing humanity.

The undoubted achievement of modern ethics was the identification of the weaknesses of the utilitarian theory, the formulation of the thesis that some basic human rights should be understood precisely in the absolute sense, as values that are not directly related to the question of the public good. They must be observed even when it does not lead to an increase in public goods.

In modern ethics, the difference between different principles is certainly revealed, for example, such as the principles of liberalism and communitarianism, the approaches of particularism and universalism, the idea of duty and virtue. This is not its shortcoming, but only means that when solving the issue of moral motivation, moral duties, it is necessary to combine various principles. How to do this is a matter of public practice. This is already mainly the sphere of politics, the sphere of social management. As for ethics, its task is to show the advantages and disadvantages of reasoning built on the basis of one or another principle, to determine the possible scope of its application and the necessary restrictions when transferred to some other area.

Ethical Theories in Contemporary Western Philosophy. Modern Philosophical Ethics Ethics in Modern Times

Modern ethics

Origin of the term

ancient ethics

Ethics in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Ethics in modern times

Modern ethics

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