Ch 1 Need for Ethics
Thinking
Critically About Ethical
Issues, Seventh Edition
By: Ruggiero
© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2008
I
THE CONTEXT
CHAPTER ONE
THE NEED FOR ETHICS
Why do we need ethics? We have laws to protect people’s rights. If the laws are enforced, what need have we of further rules?
Ethics is the study of the choices people make regarding right and wrong.
Each of us makes dozens of moral choices daily. Will we go to work or call in sick? Follow the research protocol or violate it? Put quotes around borrowed phrasing or pretend the words are our own? Answer a colleague’s question truthfully or lie? Obey the speed laws or drive as fast as our vehicles will go? Pay our bills or spend our money on entertainment?
Keep our marriage vows or break them? Meet our children’s emotional needs or ignore them? Pet the cat or kick it? In most times and places, people have acknowledged the existence of an objective moral standard binding on all people regardless of their personal desires and preferences. (Of course, there was not always complete agreement on what that standard was.) Over the past several decades, however, that need for a standard has been called into question. It is fashionable today to believe that decisions about right and wrong are purely personal and subjective. This belief is known as moral relativism. According to it, whatever anyone claims to be morally acceptable is morally acceptable, at least for that person. Supposedly, there is only one exception to this rule: Judging other people’s conduct is considered intolerant. (To this author’s knowledge, no moral relativist has ever explained why, if any view of honesty, faithfulness, fairness, and justice is considered valid, only one view of tolerance is permitted.)
In the 1960s moral relativists challenged the traditional view that fornication and adultery are immoral. “Only the individual can decide what sexual behavior is right for him or her,” they said, “and the individual’s decision should be respected.”
Critically About Ethical
Issues, Seventh Edition
By: Ruggiero
© The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2008
I
THE CONTEXT
CHAPTER ONE
THE NEED FOR ETHICS
Why do we need ethics? We have laws to protect people’s rights. If the laws are enforced, what need have we of further rules?
Ethics is the study of the choices people make regarding right and wrong.
Each of us makes dozens of moral choices daily. Will we go to work or call in sick? Follow the research protocol or violate it? Put quotes around borrowed phrasing or pretend the words are our own? Answer a colleague’s question truthfully or lie? Obey the speed laws or drive as fast as our vehicles will go? Pay our bills or spend our money on entertainment?
Keep our marriage vows or break them? Meet our children’s emotional needs or ignore them? Pet the cat or kick it? In most times and places, people have acknowledged the existence of an objective moral standard binding on all people regardless of their personal desires and preferences. (Of course, there was not always complete agreement on what that standard was.) Over the past several decades, however, that need for a standard has been called into question. It is fashionable today to believe that decisions about right and wrong are purely personal and subjective. This belief is known as moral relativism. According to it, whatever anyone claims to be morally acceptable is morally acceptable, at least for that person. Supposedly, there is only one exception to this rule: Judging other people’s conduct is considered intolerant. (To this author’s knowledge, no moral relativist has ever explained why, if any view of honesty, faithfulness, fairness, and justice is considered valid, only one view of tolerance is permitted.)
In the 1960s moral relativists challenged the traditional view that fornication and adultery are immoral. “Only the individual can decide what sexual behavior is right for him or her,” they said, “and the individual’s decision should be respected.”