CODE OF ETHICS

ETHICS – comes from the Greek word – ETHOS – custom. Latin word – MOS – from which
“moral and morality” have sprung.

 Traditionally, ethics has come to mean the philosophical science which treats morality of
human acts.

What is ETHICS?

-can never be irrelevant, for as each day goes, there are those who do not live up to its
demands & thus, call the censure of those who can’t turn a blind eye to it.

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 CODE OF ETHICS
 Confucius’ “kingliness without” is thoroughly ethical in intent: how to act to others covers the
virtues of human-heartedness, righteousness, ritual & wisdom.

Main Pillars of Eastern Philosophy

1. Confucianism
2. Hinduism Same concept of man & that is to become a sage,
3. Buddhism a man of wisdom, a perfect man.
4. Taoism

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 CODE OF ETHICS
 In the Christian tradition, an act is said to be morally good when it leads man to the acquisition of
hi s absolute ultimate ends in life: the possession & enjoyment of the Summum Bonum – God.

An act is morally evil when it takes a man away from the realization of this last end.

MORALITY

– is that quality of human acts by which we call some of this acts good and some
evil.
– Mary Mothersill simply defines morality as the “rules of conduct”.

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 CODE OF ETHICS
HUMAN ACTS – in contrast to “acts of man“, characterize by knowledge, free will & voluntariness.

DIVISIONS OF ETHICS

I. General (statement of principles)

II. Special (concerned with practical solutions of moral problems)

A. Individual
B. Social

1. Family
2. The State of Political Ethics

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 A BRIEF HISTORICAL OUTLINE

Periods Philosophers Principal Works

I. The Classical Period 1. Plato The Republic

2. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics
3. Epicurus Principle Doctrines

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 A Brief Historical Outline
II. The Middle Ages 1. Boethius The consolation of philosophy

The Happy Life

2. Augustine The City of Man
The City of God

The steps of
3. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Humility

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 A Brief Historical Outline

III. The Early Modern Period 1. Nicolo Machiavelli The Prince

2. Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Ethics
3. Benedict Spinoza Essay Concerning
4. John Locke Human Understanding
Sermons
5. Joseph Butler Picture of Human Nature
6. David Hume Lecture on Ethics
7. Emmanuel Khant

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 A Brief Historical Outline
IV. The Nineteenth Century 1. Jeremy Bentham An Introduction to the
Principle of Morals &
Legislation
2. George Wilhem The Philosophy of
Frederich Hegel History
3. Arthur Schopenhauer The World as Will & Idea
4. John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism
5. Soren Kierkegaard Either/or

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A Brief Historical Outline

6. Frederich Nietzsche Sounding Out Idols

7. Francis Herbert Bradley Ethical Studies

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 A Brief Historical Outline
V. The Contemporary Period 1. Sigmund Freud Civilization & its Discontents
Reconstruction in Philosophy
2. John Dewey Principia Ethica
Systematic Theology
3. G. E. Moore Theology of Culture
4. Paul Tillich

5. Jean Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness

6. Alfred Jules Ayer Language, Truth and Logic

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 MAIN TYPES OF ETHICAL THEORY
1. Hedonism – an ethical system w/c affirms pleasure as the chief good in life.

Kinds:

a. Egoistic Hedonism- the ethical theory which states that man seeks pleasure for his
own personal good.
-was supported by Aristippus, Epicurus and Thomas Hobbes who have
reduced the concept of morality to a mere pleasure-pain basis.

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 Main Types of Ethical Theory
b. Altruistic Hedonism/ Universalistic Hedonism/ Utilitarianism
-the ethical theory which expresses that man desires pleasure not for his own
interest but for the common good for the well-being and welfare of the greatest
number of people.
-This is also known as the greatest happiness principle, Bentham and Mill are the
most famous exponents of this theory.

2. The Cynic Ideal- comes from the school of Diogenes, one of the ancients and tells that the highest
good is in the simple enjoyment of happiness.

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 Main Types of Ethical Theory
3. Stoicism- of Zeno, another ancient philosopher, it teaches that happiness comes from
morality, the highest good.

4. Theistic- considered as the Christian ideal, upheld by Augustine, Anselm, Thomas and
others, which declares that God or the possesison of God is man’s ultimate end and highest
good.

5. Idealism- an enunciated by Kant, is that theory which believes the supreme created good is
the most perfect world, that is, where men are happy and desire to be happy.

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 Main Types of Ethical Theory
6. Self- realization- is a theory with many variations, represented by Bradley, who thinks that
the end of every moral act is self-realization.

7. The Libido- according to Freud, is the cornerstone of the problem of happiness and thus,
there is no golden rule: every man must find out for himself how he can be happiest in the
world.

8. Authentic existence- is taken by the existentialist as the only way to happiness

-Kierks exposes his view of it: to live in the present to himself, as against
people who live only in memory (the past) or hope (the future).

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 EXISTENTIALIST ETHICS
Existentialism

- Soren Kierkegard is the Father of Existentialism, a Daish thinker

who lived and worked in the last century.

- But is was Jean Paul Sartre, a French philosopher, who popularized

it.

- It is a reaction to the depersonalization, the dehumanization, the

loss of the uniqueness of the individual during the Industrial
Revolution.

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 Existentialist Ethics

- Roger Troisfontaines defines it briefly as “a philosophy of subjectivity or

selfhood, whose fundamental doctrine proclaims man’s freedom in the
accomplishment of his destiny and whose method is consequently that of
description or phenomenology”.

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MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF
EXISTENTIALISM
1. Subjectivity – indicates something more personal, more intimate, something that can
hardly be put into words.
2. Freedom – Existentialist philosophers affirm man’s freedom, which is the opposite of the
determanism (what will be, will be).
3. Phenomenology – Edmund Husserl is the Father of Phenomenology
- it is the description of what is immediately given in experience (phenomena).
- “Philosophy of Encounter”, that is how William Lujipen calls phenomenology.

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THE FOUNDATION OF THE MORAL LIFE

1. Man

2. The Human Other

3. God

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 The Foundation of the Moral Life
1. Man
- WHO is man? WHAT is man?
a.) For Aristotle and the scholastics, man is rational animal.
b.) Msgr. Fulton Sheen compares him to a three-level structure the
1st level is his body, the 2nd level is his soul, & the 3rd level is his
spirit.
c.) Traditional philosophy presents the soul as the composed of the
intellect & the will.
d.) To Teilhard de Chardin, man is a phenomenon,”a very special
phenomenon”

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 The Foundation of the Moral Life

e.)To Martin Heideger, a man is a desein, a “being there” part of

this world and part of the next.

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 The Foundation of the Moral Life

2. The Human Other

-today when so much conflict is going on in the world due to

violations of human rights, a review of the traditionalists’ charge
that contemporary ethics is weak in its vagueness of personal
relationships and moral choices, as well as for the
contemporaries’ charge that traditional ethics is frustrating in its
formalism and concentration on acts instead of persons.

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 The Foundation of the Moral Life

3. God
- perfectly good.

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