Chapter 4.ethics-self-knowledge, words. docx.pdf (original) (raw)

Ethics, self-knowledge, and life taken as a whole

HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

What does thinking of "world as a whole, life" entail for ethnography? Would the modification of life with the adjectival everydayi.e. "everyday life"-provide a different lens with which to take forward our notions of ethics, or rather, ethical life, in anthropology? The argument of this paper is that everyday life cannot be taken as a given, or treated as an object that can be directly apprehended. Rather we have to ask what picture of intimacy, closeness, or ordinariness we might be able to imagine to render everyday life as knowable? Within this picture of everyday life, ethics are not a matter of finding a specialized vocabulary through which moral life can be rendered but rather of tracing the work that goes into making everyday life inhabitable.

On the Nature of Ethical Inquiry

From the essay: Understanding the “nature” of our Cosmos is a clue to the revelation of our own identity for we exist as archetypes of God’s expression of curiosity. We must become “self-aware;” we must discover who and what we really are. This discovery will change the psychology that directs the logical interpretation of our World View. The psychology of the human mind speaks to a physiology designed to explore and, in consummating each new exploration, we raise our level of understanding to appreciate the World within—our awareness is expanded.

Making sense of ethics in the everyday

2015

To inquire into the foundation of some area of discourse or practice is often a matter of trying to establish the meanings of the key terms that figure within it-although it is to be noted that this need not involve 'definition' in the traditional sense, but might require, instead, the exploration of the connections between the terms at issue and their interconnection within the wider semantic or conceptual network to which they belong. In the case of ethics, as well as normative discourse more broadly, this would presumably mean that the any inquiry into the foundations of ethics ought to entail an inquiry into the 'meanings' of-or the semantic and conceptual interconnections between-basic ethical and normative terms. Something like this task has indeed been traditionally taken as constitutive of so-called 'metaethics'. Richard Rorty has claimed, however, that the meaning of basic normative terms such as 'good', 'just' and 'true' is really a problem only for philosophers-that we all know what these terms are well enough for the uses they serve, and do not need philosophers to explain their meanings. 1 On the one hand, one might such a claim to mean that, that from the perspective of ordinary discourse and practice, ethics is in no need of philosophical foundation at all-meta-ethics would appear, rather like traditional metaphysics, as something to be 'overcome' rather than continued. On the other, it might be said that this very claim entails a very particular kind of foundation-even if one that stands apart from foundation in the usual sense. On this latter reading, ethics already carries its own 'foundation' with it-a foundation given in ethical practice itself, although exactly how such a practice could supply its own foundation remains to be explained. 2 The

Developing Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities

Routledge eBooks, 2015

The cognitive and neuro-sciences have made great strides in uncovering the nature of human psychobiology in recent years. Moral educators have yet to make much of their findings. The three theories presented here capitalize on recent research that has implications for building moral personalities and cultivating morally-adept citizens (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004b; Narvaez & Lapsley, 2009). 1 The Adaptive Ethical Expertise blends deliberative and intuitive development for ethical expertise development. The Integrative Ethical Education model is a step-by-step model intended for integration into academic instruction at all levels. Multi-Ethics Theory, a more comprehensive theory of moral development rooted in neurobiological processes, has implications for moral education as well. All three theories address the development of moral personhood. Approaches to education for moral character are typically divided into two opposing views that are rooted in different philosophical paradigms (see Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006; Narvaez, 2006). One philosophical paradigm represents particularist claims regarding virtue with a focus on the agent and the deliberate cultivation of virtues or excellences (MacIntyre, 1981). Of primary concern is the nature of a good life and the characteristics necessary to live a good life (e.g., Anscombe 1958; Hursthouse 1999; McDowell 1997). The individual is mentored in virtue by the community and gradually takes on the responsibility for discovering and cultivating the virtues and values inherent in the self (Urmson, 1988). From this perspective nearly everything in life has moral meaning, from friend selection to leisure activities. Traditional character education emerges from this view (Wynne & Ryan, 1993), although it seems to have misappropriated how virtue is best cultivated (Kohn 1997a, 1997b; Narvaez, 2006), resulting in minimal outcome success (Leming, 1997). The contrasting view emphasizes universalist claims regarding justice and reasoning (Kant, 1949), addressing what is the right thing to do in a particular moral situation (e.g., Hare 1963; Rawls, 1971). Moral conduct is that which accords with applicable principles, derived from reasoning, for a particular situation and only in select slices of life. In comparison to virtue theory, typically, few demands are made on individuals, leaving many life choices out of the moral realm. Moral obligation is reduced to

A Philosophical Inquiry into the Fundamental Issues with the Meaning and Nature of Ethics

Igwebuike: An African Journal of Arts and Humanities, 2020

The concept of ethics is often an object of misconception, misinterpretation and mismatching with other terms like morality, value and aesthetics in philosophy especially among undergraduate students of Arts and Humanities. It is evident that a good number of them are sometimes confused when it comes to the definition and meaning of ethics, its differences from the notion of morality and the relationship between the two in moral philosophy. There are those that do not know why there are various ethical theories and justification for them in the society that cherished such ethical theories. Again, there are young learners who desire to know the similarities, differences and relationship between normative and meta-ethics. Therefore, this paper is concerned with the definition and meaning of ethics, the differences between meta-ethics and normative ethics, the differences between ethics and morality, the significance each plays in the understanding of ethics and implications inherent in their relationship with one another. Besides, the paper also gives a general survey of special ethics to young and curious minds with reference to various professions that are growing up in leap and bound of our contemporary society.