Ethics and Politics

By Carlo Fonseka

(March 14, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Socrates (469 – 399 BC) taught that the most important thing for us to learn in life is how to live in harmony with others. To live in harmony with others we have to do things that are helpful to others and avoid doing things that are harmful to them. Who judges whether or not the way we live is helpful or harmful to others? "Others, of course", is the obvious answer. The problem is that what we do and don’t do may not make us popular with all others even in our own society, let alone in the wide world. For example, smoking and drinking may not make me popular with all others living in our society, because the majority in our society don’t smoke and drink. So in general smoking and drinking will make me unpopular in our society. Does this mean that in order to live harmoniously with others I must not smoke and drink even if I happen to enjoy them? Are smoking and drinking wrong? If they are wrong, are they bad? Some will say yes and others will say no.

Morals, Laws, Ethics

The question is: how do we decide what is right and what is wrong ; what is good and what is bad; what is legal and what is illegal? What is illegal is easy to decide. Whether what is illegal is necessarily socially wrong and morally bad is not so easy to determine. For example, after the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol Act No.27 of 2006 became law on December 1, 2006, it became illegal for us to smoke in "enclosed public places". But smoking itself is not illegal. Nor is smoking illegal in an open public place. Thus in our society , smoking itself is not considered morally bad, and smoking in an open public place is not considered socially wrong ,but smoking in an enclosed public place is illegal. It has been made illegal because there is strong evidence that "your cigarette is killing me" by second- hand smoke. Perhaps the most telling example of this kind of problem has to do with the subject of abortion.

Sir Douglas Black, a past president of the Royal College of Physicians of London once said more in sorrow than in anger, that in the UK "abortion changed overnight from being a crime to being something entirely legal". From this fact he concluded that "medical ethics are relative and not absolute". Here we have an example of something that many people considered to be intrinsically bad morally and socially wrong and had therefore been made illegal, becoming legal overnight. The question arises whether after abortion became legal in the UK, it became morally and socially "right". Ethics is concerned with understanding the nature of such problems, if not with solving them conclusively.

Uncertainty

Needless to say, ethics is not a science like physics which is regarded as the most accurate and objective branch of science. But even in physics, in the realm of quantum theory, there is a lot of mystery. As Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize- wining physicist startlingly said, "If you think you understand quantum theory, you don’t understand quantum theory". Most people learn the right way to live with others in their particular society from the religion into which they are born. All religions are concerned with morals and ethics. In secular life the subject matter of morals and ethics is studied in the branch of philosophy called moral philosophy. The aim of moral philosophy is to establish general principles from which rules concerning the way all human beings ought to live with others can be deduced.

Moral sense

Anthropologists have found that in every group of human beings living in communities there are acts which are considered right and acceptable and acts which are considered wrong and unacceptable. Even a gang of robbers or a crew of a pirate ship has rules about what they should do and shouldn’t do. This implies that just as human beings have a sense of hunger and thirst and sex they have a sense of right and wrong deeply rooted in their biological make up. We may call this our moral sense. Even like our sense of hunger, thirst and sex our moral sense promotes the survival and the wellbeing of our communities on earth.

Therefore there is a reason to believe that our moral sense predates the formal religions of humankind. Indeed, it looks as if the religions of humankind were derived from the moral sense of humankind. Thus, to the question which came first, ``morals or religion?’’ the answer must be "morals". So it is legitimate to infer that people can have morals without religion.

Ethical Propositions

To explore the nature of ethics further let us consider some examples of ethical propositions.

May all our Tamil brethren be well and happy!
Would that elections in our country were freer and fairer!
Would that doctors treated patients with greater compassion!
Would that husbands never battered their wives!

It is easy to see that these ethical propositions are really nothing more than expressions of feelings, desires and aversions. There is no way of proving or disproving them in the way we can verify or falsify a scientific hypothesis. All you can do with ethical prepositions is to agree with them or disagree with them. Does this mean that all ethical judgments are nothing but expressions of personal taste? For instance, is all that is wrong with a drunk battering his wife, that we don’t like it? Let us see.

Consensus

Suppose you say that ripe "durian" fruit has a lovely smell and a delicious taste and I say that its smell is nasty and its taste horrible, no one will doubt that the difference between us is a matter of personal taste. On the other hand, if you say that enemy soldiers coming with white flags should not be shot, and I say that they should be shot, because they can never be trusted, is the difference between us merely a matter of personal taste ?To take a more glaring example, suppose I say that even innocent infants of enemies should be killed because they are likely to grow up to become enemies, and you say that infants should never be killed because they are innocent, no one will admit that the difference between you and me on this question is simply a matter of personal taste. That cruelty to innocent children is wrong and bad and unethical and unacceptable is almost universally accepted. This suggests that even if our ethical judgments are entirely subjective, yet it is possible to arrive at a consensus. Is there a way, then, of objectifying our subjective feelings on ethical matters?

Science

An analogy with the practice of science may help to clarify the issue. We agree that science is based on perceptions built on information acquired through our five senses. Our senses (vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch) generate our perceptions about the external world. However, our senses are notoriously subjectively and deceptive. We are subject to sensory errors, illusions and hallucinations. In fact the deepest pitfall in scientific research arises from the subjectivity of our observations. Despite the subjectivity of our perceptions, however, an impressive and reliable body of scientific knowledge about our external world has been built up by science. This has been possible because it has been verified that the perceptions of the vast majority on a given phenomenon are similar .Thus, science is based on a consensus of verifiable perceptions.

Politics

In like manner when the feelings of the vast majority of a society on a given ethical matter are in harmony, it should be possible to devise a code of ethics based on a harmony of feelings. The moment we embark on trying to ascertain the feelings of the members of a community on a given matter, we have entered the realm of politics. Thus, in the last analysis, ethics inevitably leads to politics. The historical record leaves no reasonable doubt that the only sanction known to ethics in a given society is the assent of the majority. That is probably why Aristotle regarded ethics as a branch of politics and not as a branch of metaphysics. So it comes about that when the adult people of a given society have elected their rulers at a free and fair election, the rulers tend to assume that whatever they do thereafter is good, right, legal, ethical and acceptable. Many people, among whom I count myself, do not think that this is just, but the hard fact is that in the real world as presently constituted, justice translates itself into the interest of those who have been elected by the people. The bigger the majority by which they have been elected the more righteous they feel. This is defended on the basis of "democracy".

True Democracy

But true democracy means much more than holding free and fair elections based on adult suffrage, at periodic intervals. The basis of democracy should be social justice for all in society. Democracy demands an unvarying respect for human rights of all .It requires independence of the judiciary. Without an honest acceptance of the concept of the rule of law, democracy degenerates into something like the law of the jungle. The public behaviour of the elected rulers must be transparent. They are finally accountable to the people who entrusted power to them to use it for the welfare of the whole society. Let us remember these things in the run up to the parliamentary elections.