Part I

The Academic Ethical Traditions

 Introduction

1. Gawi and Gawa and Habituation

2. Ethics and Ethos
3. Plato’s Insight Into the Good
Gawi and Gawa in Filipino
• The two words can give a sense of what philosophers mean by ethical action.
Filipinos distinguish between thoughtless, instinctive mannerisms and
reflexes from gawa (actions) and gawi (inclination). In reflecting on how
Filipinos use these words, one can understand that human actions are
different from mere bodily movements.
• Freedom figures closely into action and inclination. Freedom here means not
only the ability to act free from outside influences or the independence from
the impediments to one’s wishes.
• It is the wilful act and decision that give form and shape to the actions and
inclinations of people.
• This freedom is oriented toward the wherefore, the what for, and the whom
for of the doings of people.
• These are the common aspects of human action that Filipinos understand as action
and inclination: that free human acts are governed by reflection and are freely
decided such that they are not determined by internal or external forces.
• However, gawi and gawa are not identical. Gawa refers to the free action that is
oriented toward a particular end. For example, a worker uses his/her free
imagination and will to bring about services and products that contribute to the
well-being of society.
• As one governed by free decision making, the creative worker embraces all the
information he/she can gather to effectively realize his/her purpose.
• A process od discernment accompanies the creative work. The carpenter, for
instance, must learn many details about wood: its feel, its hardness and pliability, as
well as its strength. He/she should know about the qualities that will help him/her
accomplish the task at hand very well. Part of this knowledge is the knowledge
about the body’s movement in accomplishing this work. The carpenter should study
how heavy or light the hand should move over certain kinds of wood, what tools to
apply so that the wood yields the best piece: a stool, a table, or the wheel of a cart.
• The word gawi also refers to a free kind of work. However, instead of
focusing on a particular end like a product or fulfilment, gawi refers to the
kind of acts that people are used to accomplishing. Gawi does not only refer
to particular acts of a person. A person’s kagawian or habitual action revelas
truth about himself/herself.
• While the beautiful table and the intricately designed chair are products of a
carpenter that has gotten used to being one, in his kagawian, he reveals
himself/herself as a good or bad person.
• A worker who produces for the society is judged skilled or unskilled. But a
person is judged good or evil, right or wrong based on kagawian or
habituation. Kagawian is the Filipino equivalent of ethos in Greek and mos or
moris in Latin.
Ethics and Ethos
• Ethics come from the Greek word Ethos, which means custom, a
characteristic, or habitual way of doing things, or action that is properly
derived from one’s character. The Latin word mos or moris (and its plural
mores) from which the adjective moral is derived is equivalent to ethos.
• From a purely etymological point of view, ethical and moral are, therefore,
synonymous. Also, restricted to such root word considerations, ethics and
morality may only be a “simple description of the mores or ways of
behaving, whether of the human person in general or of a particular
population.” It seems then that as a field of study, ethics need not be
“normative” in guiding human action and it is even seemingly imperative to
preserve an attitude of neutrality that excludes all judgments of value.
Etymologically, ethics is but a survey of patterns of behaviour that is done
by the human being in general or a society in particular.
• Looking closely, however, human action ought to be understood clearly in a
very strict sense. As considered above, human action has to do with human
movements that are ruled by one’s freedom.
• Given that freedom is not only the independence from what could hinder
but also a consideration of the goal of the action, ethics cannot be limited to
pure description. Since goals are inherently directional, they imply
normativity.
• In the same manner that gawi for the Filipino is different form gawa. Aristotle
differentiates between human actions that are “praxis” and “to poiein,” gawa
for Aristotle is to successfully complete a particular work be it artistic or
technical: that the table top is smooth, the carvings are precise, and the
chair’s legs are balanced.
• The human person himself/herself is significant only in considering the
result in matters of “to poiein” or gawa. Ethics, on the other hand, not only
has such “normative” considerations as to the end product of the actions.
• Ethics, as concerned with “praxis” for Aristotle, properly focuses on the
human agent that is revealed through his/her actions.
• Ethics is normative with regard to its being a practical science. It does not
only limit itself to the description of human actions but also aims to guide
them. Student’s who study ethics are not to stop at the pure description of
human mores but are ushered into a disciplined science that guides them in
judging and rectifying human patterns of behaviour. Ethics proposes
guidelines, considerations, and norms to provide advice and rules so that the
way of right living and its practice are clarified.
• If kagawian is the Filipino equivalent of the Greek ethos and the Latin
mor/moris, gawa is “to poiein” and gawi is “praxis”.
• Ethics for Filipino students is philosophy of human action that allows them
to learn the art of living. It is an art that enables them to be reconciled with
their freedom and that which is expected of them (by others and
themselves). Thus, ethics is a way for them to find happiness.
• Ethics also considers that which is worthy of a human being. This means
that living rightly is not only about searching for happiness but living as one
ought to live as a human being.
• In living rightly, one receives contentment and approval both from others
and himself/herself, and in living wrongly, he/she deserves blame (from
others and from himself/herself).
• Such an ethics not only serves as a path to happiness but also reaches out in
fullness of reflection for that action which is an obligation for a human
being.
• The gravity of such as ethical consideration is given voice in the Filipino
saying, madaling maging tao, mahirap magpakatao.
• The effort in living rightly, though a task, need not exclude the promise of
the gift of happiness.
• There is no reason to presuppose why a life that is consistent with what the
human person ought to do should not bring him/her happiness.
Plato’s Insight Into the Good
• An academic introduction to the discipline of ethics is incomplete without
reference to Plato (427-347 BCE). Even the word “academia” itself harks
back to academia, the institution of learning established by Plato for the
training of his followers who later will be called philosophers, lovers of
wisdom.
• Ethics, being a discipline of study in universities that fall under the umbrella
of philosophy, can also trace its roots back to Plato as the systematic thinker
who grappled with the question of that which is good.
• The context of the life of Plato is not totally unfamiliar with students of
today. Athens and Greece went through an expansion of trade around 600
BCE. Thus “global” awakening on the part of Greeks like Plato plunged him
to an experience of social, political, and intellectual challenge.
• Given the exchange of different experiences between Greece and it
neighbouring countries around the Mediterranean Sea, Plato was
interrogated by different points of view. Plato and the students of today
share this “global” challenge; it leads to questions of truth and inquiry into
what is good. Given this pluralism of perspectives, is it valid to as “what is
truly good?”
• A serious claim by Plato was given voice by a thinker named Protagoras
(481-411?BCE) who said that “man is the measure of all things.” The
implications of such a claim sit well with those who easily let go of the
validity of traditional mores and ethos to arrive at a conclusion that is
relativistic. This easy relativism holds on to beliefs and truths that are for
himself/herself or his/her society only. It denies the possibility of ever arriving
at truth that can be understood simplistically based on the concept that “to
each his own.”
• Socrates (470-388 BCE), on the other hand, taught Plato about the difficulty
of coming to a knowledge of the truth. This difficulty, however, did not
mean impossibility for Socrates. He instilled this rigorous questioning to his
students and did not shy away from interrogating even the traditional leaders
of Athens.
• This resulted in his death in 399 BCE on charges of impiety and of
misleading the youth with his ideas. Socrates, however, is immortalized in the
writings of Plato as the intelligent and courageous teacher who leads his
hearers nearer to the truth in the same way that midwives help in birthing
process of a child.
• The confrontation between Socratic inquiry and easy lack of thoughts is
portrayed in the allegory of the cave that is found in Plato’s The Republic.
• Glaucon’s story in the dialogue best introduces the allegory that is told by
Socrates. These two stories are occasioned by the question about the good
and the task of the human person to inquire about it. Glaucon proposes the
story of Gyges’ ring (The Republic, Book II, 359-360).
• According to Glaucon, a terrible earthquake later resulted in a break in the
land and the finding of a metallic horse that contained a skeleton. A ring was
said to be worn by that skeleton. The man who found the skeleton then took
the ring and found out that it had the power to render him invisible. A
simple inward turn would make the wearer imperceptible to others and
another turn outwards would allow others to see him again. Free from the
fear of shame and capture, Glaucon concludes his story by saying that the
man who found the ring would eventually become evil.
• Glaucon’s point about the good may not be as crude as the simple claim that
each one is left to determine the good for himself/herself. It is nonetheless
sinister in its simplistic presentation of the relationship between the human
person and that which is claimed as good. Glaucon dismisses the topic of
the good altogether and proposes to explain the human persons’ ethical
actions as the result of fear. It simply is the evasion of shame, incarceration,
or retaliation that spells itself out in “good behavior” of man in society.
• Responding to Glaucon’s story, Plato, through the character of Socrates, later
proposed the “Allegory of the Cave” (The Republic, Book VII, 514a-520a).
A group of people are said to have lived chained facing a wall where
shadows are projected from the objects passing before a fire behind them.
The shadows are thought of by these people as the most real things. Once, a
man is dragged out of the cave and made to see reality as it is enlightened by
the sun. The freed man has to accustom his eyes first to things as illuminated
at night, then sees what is illuminated during the day as reflected on small
pockets of water. He later on sees the sun itself as the source of light that
gives definition to reality. Having perceived true reality itself as enlightened
by the sun, the man then ventures to go back to the cave to free the other
prisoners. They, however, resist him, choosing to recognize the reality they
are accustomed to. The man who knows the truth ends up crucified with
burnt eyes.
• Plato then has Socrates explain to Glaucon that the sun represents the good.
Once it is seen and recognized by any man who has gone beyond the
shadows, that good is followed and lived even at the cost of one’s life. This,
of course, is a direct negation of Glaucon’s aforementioned claim that the
actions of humans are only directed by the avoidance of shame or
retribution. Plato directs humanity to the nobility that is reachable through
the knowledge of the good. His confidence in knowing the good as acting
upon it reaches out to every age that grapples with the question of what is
proper human action.
• This confidence in the human person’s ability to know the good and act in
accordance with it started the academic history of ethics. Plato’s claim is,
however, not only made in the past as they are recorded in dated documents
that survived history. Plato continues to address us today and his voice builds
confidence in our own ability to know the good and act ethically.
• Each age, however, has a particular way of interrogating Plato’s assertions
and further give nuance to what is known and how to act.
• Thinkers who come after him, for example, will challenge a necessity that
seems to have been so confidently lodged between knowledge and action.
• Does knowing the good automatically lead to acting on it?
• The wonderful thing about a course in ethics is that the voices of thinkers
who spent time researching such questions are still heard and understood up
to our present time and to challenge what we know about the good and how
we act pursuant to it.

THANK YOU!