ETHICS

             Ethics is the study of human conduct. It asks itself questions such as What sort of life is most worth living? How should one best conduct it? What in it should matter most?

             The investigation of these questions has tended to take three distinct directions: (a) it has occupied itself with the strictly practical problems of how the most worthwhile life can best be achieved (morality proper); (b)J it has gone on to consider the possible theoretical reasons for choosing various lines of conduct (ethics proper); and (c) it has become occupied with an inquiry into the nature and meaning of those theories (metaethics).

             Although in its typical form an ethical treatise consists of moralizing with the help of an ethical theory, defended on methodological or metaethical grounds, it is especially characteristic of ancient writers to be concerned with the question of what life is best to live (morality proper); of more recent writers to be concerned with the question how such choices can best be justified (ethics proper); and of today's writers to be occupied with the question of the meaning and validity of the judgments proposed (metaethics).

             Aristotle believed that the best thing to strive for in life was happiness; but happiness, he believed, cannot be achieved without realizing our highest capacities and potentialities, and in the case of humans this is reason. The happy life, therefore, according to Aristotle, is one devoted to the exercise, development, and perfection of reason, one guided by its dictates.

             Kant argued that the basic question of ethics is not how to achieve happiness but rather how we might become worthy of it. To become so worthy, he argued, the rule to follow is not the golden mean (practicing moderation in all things), as Aristotle had suggested, but rather the golden rule-doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. Kant therefore offered as his fundamental principle of morality the categorical imperative or the principle of universality: So act that the maxim of your action may be willed as a universal law. That alone is right which unconditionally permits everyone else to do it, one in which no exceptions are made for oneself. In another formulation, designed to bring out the notion that respect for each other as persons is central to ethical conduct, Kant stated his basic principle as follows: "Act so that you treat humanity whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only."

             Utilitarianism rejecting both personal happiness and the dictates of duty as the criterion of morality, argued that the only fit and proper standard is the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, happiness being generally equated with pleasure. If an action this principle of utility states, produces the greatest balance of pleasure (considered quantitatively by Bentham but qualitatively by Mill) over pain for the greatest number of people concerned, then it is right and ought a be done; otherwise it is wrong and should be avoided. 

             Although utilitarians sought to arrive at a principle that would enable them a determine with scientific objectivity and accuracy whether an act is morally justifiable, the group of contemporary writers on ethics, known as logical positivists, by applying their principle of verification cast doubt on the validity and objective reality of the subject as a whole with its questionable notions of right and wrong, moral and immoral, and so forth. They concluded that these terms are cognitively meaningless and serve only to express our feelings and emotions, or arouse similar feelings and emotions in others.

             Although emotivists tried to resolve the traditional opposition between the deontological approach to ethical matters (as represented by Kant's theory) and the teleological approach (as represented by the utilitarian theory) by suggesting that there is really nothing to resolve, the problems of ethics being essentially pseudoproblems, the subject and problems seem to resist this attempt to eliminate them The problems remain and refuse to go away. And they remain because of course we remain, and the goals we set ourselves continue to elude us. We continue to believe with Aristotle that the goal is indeed happiness; we continue to believe both with him and many of the other great philosophers (as well as contemporary psychologists and psychotherapists) that it is somehow bound up with goodness. How and why are questions that still continue to intrigue and challenge us.