Republic Of the Philippines

Commission On Higher Education

BUENAVISTA COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Cangawa, Buenavista, Bohol
COLLEGE OF HOSPITALITY MANAGEMENT
Bachelor of Science in Criminology
Second Semester (A.Y. 2023-2024)

Subject: ETHICS
Course: BSHM
I. Topic: WESTERN ETHICS
II. Learning Objective:
 Identify the ethical virtue from the western thought
 To understand the ethics using the Greeks and Christian philosophy
III. Overview:
In this discussion, students will be able to know the Greek and Christian ethics
IV. Learning Contents:
WESTERN ETHICS
Let us begin this topic with a brief historical survey of western ethics.
The moral life in the ancient Greece developed when a Greek performed his duties as a citizen,
e.g., paying taxes to the government. To the Greeks, a man who perform his duties is a good
man. This gave a rise to the concepts of how it is to be good. During the medieval period, the
moral life was dominated by the church and generally speaking, the good life was identified with
the holy life or religious life. In the modern period, a revolt against the catholic church has
occurred. There understanding of morality is more concerned with free individuals. Todays,
ethics is mainly conditioned by two influences namely the: free reflection that arose by the
Greek philosophers and the moral traditions of the church.
GREEKS ETHICS
Start with great three philosophers- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
Socrates
His morality always geared with epistemology towards moral life. Socrates taught that
knowledge and truth will give rise the will to act for the good so that the agent can live right or
good moral life. For Socrates, a person can act correctly and well if he knows what is good life.
Knowing what is right means doing what is right. For Socrates, evil is an act of ignorance. He
believes, the only life worth living is a good life, to live a good life if I really know what “good”
and “evil” are. “Good” and “evil” are not relative; they are absolutes that can only be found by a
process of questioning and reasoning. An unquestioning life is one of ignorance, without
morality. In this way, morality and knowledge are bound together. The life which is unexamined
is not worth living.
Plato
Plato contends that happiness lies in reason. Plato proposed that are two domains of reality,
namely: the Ideal (Idea) and Phenomenal (Phenomena) world. Idea described by Plato as
eternal, immutable, self-existing and indestructible. While the phenomenal world, on the other
hand, is material, mutable, teleological, and destructible. Plato’s concepts of ideal and
phenomenal worlds can be well related with the concept of man. Which man is consisting body
and soul. Plato maintains that man is a soul using a body.
The soul has three parts
 Rational soul (intellect)- located in the head (enables man to think reflect, and to
analyze)
 Appetitive soul (desires)- in the abdomen (to experience, thrust and other physical
wants)
 Spiritual soul (feelings)- in the crest (makes man to assert and experience abomination
and anger)

Aristotle
(Ethos- habit)
Aristotelian ethical theory begin is the experiment inquiry:
What is the fundamental object of human desire?
What is that which man ultimate looking for? It is honor, wealth, achievement, or sensual
pleasure?
Aristotle’s answer is negative; he believes that there is something fundamental behind fame,
riches, success, and sensuality. This fundamental principle for him is happiness
To understand happiness, we need the context of reason as virtue.
Virtue is a reason and reason is virtue, Aristotle, in effect, is telling us that a virtuous person is a
person who lives in reason and a person who lives in reason is happy, because he is in exercise
of virtue.
MEDIEVAL ETHICS
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine believes, humans are rational beings. He argues that in order for God to create
rational creatures, such as human beings, He had to give them freedom of will. Having freedom
of will means being able to choose, including choosing between good and evil.
God created is good. Good is to desire for God
Evil is absence of good.
God alone who can give perfect happiness and ultimate satisfaction, meaning immutable and
infinite. Agustine says, that beauty, power, honor, fame, health, and the like, cannot give man
perfect happiness and ultimate satisfaction because they are by themselves finite and mutable.
St. Thomas Aquinas
According to Aquinas, every agent acts for an end. Human’s actions are always geared towards
ends. When these ends are attained, they also become the means for the attainment of other
human actions. Then there should be a final end of all this end. This call this final and ultimate
end of human action true happiness.
Criteria to understand the end.
1. If it is desirable to us for its own sake;
2. If it is sufficient in itself to satisfy us;
3. If it is attainable by the wise among us; and
4. If it offers happiness to us.

Please study this module we will have our activity on face-to-face class.

Reference:
https://edenias.com/dimensions-branches-of-ethics-ethics-concept-series-2/
Ethics, Eddie R. Babor, PhD... LL.B., Book
THE PHILOSOPHY BOOK PHILOSOPHY THE BOOK Discover more at www.dk.com BIG IDEAS
SIMPLY EXPLAINED.

JOHN RILU A. ESTOSE, LPT

Instructor