'ETHICS' (academic essay).

'ETHICS' - THE ARTICLE THE GUARDIAN REFUSED TO PRINT

or why, though revolutions may have different names,
they are always a social phenomenon..

by VLAD K ONCE

It is no secret to anyone that our modern world is less than perfect. And things have been this way for a long time! But how exactly does the imperfection of our world manifest itself?
What criteria can be taken to form the basis of a comparative judgement?
Obviously, we cannot judge the fairness of the world order by how effective technology is.  So should we take the cost of a basket of shopping as our yardstick, the health care system or the length of the working week?  One could spend a very long time drawing up a list that would take the many and varied aspects of modern living into account.
But suppose we start with ETHICS, or the science of morality. It is a science whose subject is the good of society.  Its aim is to find the integral or formula for achieving this good.
When we speak of morality we understand it to mean above all the imperatives to which it summons us.
Thus since as long ago as the time of Aristotle (who carried out a great deal of research in this sphere of philosophy), the study of ethics has been regarded as one of the most important lines of philosophical enquiry.
The Aristotelian principle for a fair society sounded like this: one person’s happiness should not interfere with the happiness of another ….
You could hardly put it more precisely or succinctly than Aristotle.  Well, after all, he is Aristotle!
But - you will ask – how is this ancient principle applicable to modern life? The more so, given that even in the Stagirite’s own time some
manifestations of ethical norms (from the point of view of a modern human being) were, to put it mildly, far from salubrious (for example, the slave trade)!
Yes, that is all true, and there are many questions.  There are far fewer answers, but then that is the science - finding the right answers to questions that have been correctly put, and when the reality is current and the need is there, the process of perfecting the methodological aspects will develop.  Without doubt, it has to be noted that the trend in development will correspond to requirements and expectations (in this case the expectations of society).  Yes indeed, precisely that - the expectations of society (whichever society it may be), because ethics is a social science! And, of course, I don’t think anyone would suffer from doubts over the truth of the proposition that the modern world with its problems has not become any simpler than the ancient world was in its time.  And this process can be seen (in the foreseeable future) to be getting worse...

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