If you were to stand on a street corner in a large city—as Socrates did in ancient Greece—and ask passersby: “What is ethics?” you might get a variety of responses before the police came to tell you that you needed to move on in order to avoid being arrested for loitering or disturbing the peace. Most people would doubtless hurry by, supposing you to be a beggar, a drug addict, or an evangelist. A few might react negatively, saying that what they think is “none of your business.” However, if you were well-dressed, had no begging cup, no Bible nor Koran, and did not look wild-eyed, a very few might believe you to be taking a street poll for a newspaper, and—sensing a possible opportunity for seeing their name in print—answer your question. Some of the answers they would probably give you are: “behaving in the right way,” “obeying all the laws,” “living according to the Bible,” “treating other people fairly,” and similar phrases. In doing so, they would not be providing a definition of ethics, but only giving you examples of ethical principles. Instead, in order to compare different ethical systems and different ethical principles, we need a definition broad enough to encompass all of ethics, rather than simply using the common practice of labeling behavior ‘ethical’ or ‘unethical’ depending upon whether it happens to be a part of our own particular system of ethics. Then it may be possible to develop criteria for judging ethical principles, so that we might decide that some are ‘suitable’ and others are ‘unsuitable.’ This represents a philosophical approach.
A definition broad enough to serve our purpose is that ethics is a code which specifies acceptable behavior between individuals in a group. The group can be large or small—it can be a culture, a nation, a company, a family or just two individuals. The individuals need not be human beings—they might be any sentient beings, such as animals. The purpose of such a code of ethics is to protect the group from the effects of harmful individual interactions within the group. In order to accomplish this task, however, the code must also provide sufficient protection to individuals as individuals. If it does not do that, enough individual members may leave the group to eventually cause its downfall. A relevant modern example of this was the ethical system of Nazi Germany—the short-lived Third Reich. In this system, which was intended to facilitate world conquest, large numbers of individuals—principally Jews, homosexuals, and liberal intellectuals—were at first harassed, then exported or killed because it was believed that they would be harmful to the group and its goals. There can be no doubt that this failure by the Nazis to keep and protect these individuals within their own country gave the Allied Forces much of their expertise and incentive to fight in World War II. Our own Civil War offers another such example. It is well-known that the black slaves in the South were essential to its economy. Therefore, the South created and maintained an ethical system in which slavery was an accepted practice. But because the slaves as individuals were not protected from abuse, they continually tried to escape, and were kept in the society only by draconian laws and punishments. One might be tempted to say that, because of their lack of freedom, they were never really a part of Southern society—but that would be no more correct than saying that the Jews were never a part of German society because of anti-Semitism. Everyone living in a society is a part of that society—whether or not others recognize their presence and accord them equal rights.
Consequently, in order to judge the suitability of an ethical system or of the principles it contains, we need to ask whether it protects both the group and the individuals within it. Because the best interest of an individual cannot be presumed to always be the best interest of the group, we need to first clearly state those individual interests that ought to be respected and protected by the group—since only the group has the power to set up an ethical code. We usually refer to the individual interests that are worthy of protection as individual ‘rights.’ In America, these rights are summarized in the Constitution, and further detailed in the Bill of Rights. According to the Constitution, we are guaranteed “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” While the rights of life and liberty can be abrogated under certain extreme circumstances—such as the execution and incarceration of dangerous criminals—any society that denies rights regularly to its citizens can be characterized as a totalitarian or ‘police’ state whose system of ethics is unsuitable because it does not protect individuals. The right of “the pursuit of happiness” is harder to pin down, but it probably means having at least some opportunity to follow one’s chosen path. The implication is that an acceptable system of ethics must also address the various racial, sexual, and class prejudices that limit access to both professional and social activity. It does not, of course, mean that a person who believes that his happiness lies in the pursuit of criminal activity has a right to follow that inclination. As may be ascertained from this paragraph, there always exists a certain tension between the rights of the individual and purposes of the group. I use the word ‘purposes’ intentionally, because I believe—like John Stuart Mill—that groups have only the rights that were delegated to them by the individual members of the group, rather than having rights of their own. Thus, to avoid confusion, I refer to these derivative rights as ‘purposes.’ Because the leaders of a group or society direct the purposes of the society, it can often happen that they direct it toward purposes neither desired nor authorized by most of its individual members. In such cases, a suitable code of ethics should require the removal, or impeachment of the leaders, as they have violated the public trust and failed to protect individual rights. In times of war or national emergency, the argument is made that it is necessary to temporarily restrict individual rights in order to protect the society. While this argument is undoubtedly valid under some circumstances, it can easily become an effective means to deny individual rights for political purposes, because most leaders have the power to declare a ‘national emergency’ without much consultation.
Apart from protecting the rights of individuals, serving the legitimate purposes of the society, and carefully managing the tensions between the two, a code of ethics must perform other important functions. Like the law, it acts to restrain inappropriate behavior. But an ethical system is not the same as a legal system. Obedience to ethical principles is, to a large extent voluntary and consensual, whereas obedience to the law is mandatory and enforced by the threat of punishment. The overall purpose of a code of ethics is to provide principles for a just and harmonious society, while a legal system is designed to determine the guilt or innocence of individuals in matters of serious harm, and to punish the guilty. In fact, the need for a legal system is just a result of both imperfections in codes of ethics and/or a disinclination or lack of will on the part of people to follow their principles. As a consequence of this situation, it is difficult, if not impossible, to reduce crime below a certain level in modern societies. If, for example, a code of ethics is too rigid and precise, people will not accept it. If it is too flexible and indeterminate, people will not find it useful. Therefore, a suitable code of ethics must strike a balance—it must leave some room for the exercise of individual judgment.
