Ethics and Morality

• Ethics is what you should do, focusing on the pursuit of the infinite good.
• Morals define how you act, applying the search for good in daily life but it varies between individuals.
• Objective is independent of feelings, relies facts not emotions.
• Subjective relies on personal feelings, interpretations, and emotions over external facts.
• Autonomy is self-governing with independent control over actions and decisions.

Four Types of Ethical Experiences

• Personal Response is an instinctual, spontaneous decision to help.
• Face to Face with the Other involves feeling responsible, experiencing guilt that influences decision making.
• Obligation involves feeling unrest if choosing to ignore an ethical response.
• Contrast recognizes unfairness and a divergence from how humans should act, like in response to terrible events.

Aristotle

• Aristotle was a philosopher and Plato's student, with his father being a king's physician.
• Teleology states all things aim for goodness, found in community and everlasting happiness, linked to rationality and intelligence.

Six Aspects of Aristotle's Theory on Happiness

• Support from community is required.
• Happiness equates to succeeding in living and acting well.
• Virtues is doing what makes us better humans.
• The Golden Mean is about moderation, remaining balanced in actions, and personal equilibrium.
• Teleology is acting rationally and with intelligence to build good character, discovering human purpose.
• Pleasure is fleeting, while happiness is a lasting state.

Kant

• Kant was a philosopher who focused on duties, obligations, behavior, and its causes.
• The supreme good found in God needs work for good with God, freedom to perform good actions, and immortality to achieve supreme good in Heaven.

Six Aspects of Kant's Theory on Happiness

• God's existence enables attaining supreme good, which we cannot achieve alone.
• Freedom enables actions aligned with attaining the supreme good through free will.
• Immortality extends the achievement of good beyond a single lifetime.
• The Good Will is doing duty for its own sake, with worth determined by the motive.
• Ethical Maxims is acting as every rational person would if using reason, following the golden rule.
• Recognize the person as an end, maintaining dignity and respect.

Levinas

• Levinas was a philosopher concerned with the sameness and singularities, seeing others as witnesses of God.
• Finding the good involves embracing the uniqueness, which is following God.

Six Aspects of Levinas's Theory on Happiness

• The singularity of things celebrates unique differences.
• The good is infinite, considering unique individuals as traces of good/God.
• The face is the most vulnerable body part to see traces of God.
• Faces act as witnesses of God, revealing a person's uniqueness.
• The emphasis on sameness in Western society opposes embracing uniqueness.
• "Thou shall not kill" refers to not diminishing another's uniqueness.

Comparison of "The Good"

• Aristotle’s foundation is virtue, ethics, and teleology
• Kant’s foundation is duty for reasoning.
• Levinas’ foundation ethics of responsibility.

Defining the Good

• Aristotle defines it as Long-lasting happiness through virtues, not short-term pleasures.
• Kant defines it as good will from performing our duties
• Levinas defines it as responsible and loving others.

Finding the Good

• Aristotle finds it by finding the good needed for humans, through virtuous actions and beliefs
• Kant finds it in moral laws and obeying
• Levinas finds it through ethical responses based off face to face encounters.

Community

• Aristotle focuses on flourishing with all in our community.
• Kant focuses on obeying those that are held higher within our community.
• Levinas focuses on celebrating uniqueness and viewing God in every person within our community

Contrasts

• Aristotle focuses on flourishing in life through rational virtues, with good tied to achieving one's purpose.
• Kant emphasizes universal duties from reasoning, with good found in moral law.
• Levinas highlights ethical responsibility from human encounters, responding ethically to others without self-interest.

Chapter 2 Review: Definitions

• Agent is someone accountable for their actions through ethics and freedom.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein is the creator of Action Theory.
• Paul Ricoeur created the conceptual framework of action.
• Logical Positivists' strict verifiability rejected non-empirical statements, valuing sensory experience for meaning.
• Mitigate lessens severity.
• Aggravate worsens circumstances.
• Predestination is foreordaining by divine decree.
• Providence is God's or nature's guidance.
• Human Freedom is being without physical restraint, changing us at our core.

Freud's Influence on Morality

• Morality isn't only rational but also a psychological mechanism (ego and superego).
• Superego-induced guilt reveals morality to be oppressive, influencing genuine ethics.
• Morality is difficult to attain when the superego conflicts with personal desires.

Freud's Theory of the Unconscious Mind

• Freud's theory and social determinism link through societal norms influencing unconscious processes.
• Influence is from family or friends, guiding choices over self-determination.

Subjective vs. Objective

• Objective action occurs because people see and recognize the pieces
• Subjective involves internal, personal outlooks.
• Analytic Philosophy examines communication and meaningful action. The objective and subjective points when analyzing actions.

The Moral Agent

• Someone making decisions based on ethics and morals.
• Considering right and wrong.
• Being held accountable.

Social Determinism vs. Religious Determinism

• Social Determinism: No free will; decisions reflect upbringing, culture, etc.
• Religious Determinism/Predestination: No free will; God determines everything.
• Providence: God's guidance.

Social Determinism vs. Naturalism

• Social Determinism: No free will; decisions reflect upbringing, culture, etc.
• Naturalism: No freedom; actions are genetically predetermined.

Religious Determinism vs. Naturalism

• Religious Determinism: Predestination; God determines events. Providence is his guidance of earth's creatures
• Naturalism: No freedom; actions are genetically predetermined.

St. Augustine and Free Will

• Problem of evil: to explain how evil can occur in a world created by a good God, Augustine believed that evil comes from an abuse of freewill and our worldly desires
• Human responsibility: to show that humans are responsible for their choices as god can guide and influence us, but it is still our choice that matters
• God's Justice: Without free will, punishment and reward would be unjust.

Freedom in Ethics

• Freedom is essential for ethics, enabling intentional choices.
• Ethics would be irrelevant without independent decision-making ability.

Naturalism compromising "ethics"

• Naturalism suggesting all decisions result from genetic brain processes denies intentions or ethics.
• Eradicates ethics by suggesting humans can't choose actions, therefore society cannot strive toward it.

Narcissism and Self-Love

• Narcissism is extreme self-admiration or inflated self-love.
• Cain and Able help us understand the balance between self love and love for others (required for a healthy personality).
• Effort in relationships indicates healthy balance.

Aspects of the Human Person

• Importance of Others: Human relational actions are influenced by others (Cain & Able, Narcissism).
• Direction in Life: Moral Selves align choices.
• Communication and Language: Community dictates and shapes the common meanings of language.
• Moral Character and Body: Repeated ethics become habits that define character.
• Conscience: God speaks to us to do and love what is right
• Development of Conscience: Begins in family, refined by Christian norms.

Charles Taylor

• The lack of ability to identify with the self, which is also our concern, and the way we describe ourselves help identify what we stand for, our opinions on issues, and our personal values

Connection Between Identity and Moral Standing

• There is a link between identity and moral stance, as they give a name to our fundamental direction in life based on our role and relationship (e.g. daughter, son, mother). As such, we must understand who we are to know where we stand on personal issues
• An example is if we are under the catholic name, which would mean we follow the 10 commandments and pray

Building a Conscience

• Factors to build one's conscience: search out your intent, faults (weaknesses show where we need more support from God), sacraments, word of God, and conversation partners

Christian Origin of Person

• Mystery of trinity: 3 persons in one.
• Individual with rights and responsibilities.

Conscience

• Voice of God, Church teaching, moral judgements, reasoning following natural law.
• Freud focuses on Ego and Super Ego with no free will.

Three Senses of Conscience

• Capacity to recognize right from wrong.
• Process of moral reasoning.
• Judgment (action).

Symptoms of a Misinformed Conscience

• Rationalization: Justifying wrong behavior
• Trivialization: Minimizing significance.
• Misinformation: acting with incorrect knowledge.
• The End Justifies the Immoral Means: Wrongful actions become justified by the intended result.
• Means to an End: Something is done a ends justifies the means to do so
• Difficult to Reason: having a hard time to reason.

Moral Decision-Making

• STOP Model: S (search facts), T (think alternatives), O (consult others), P (pray).
• Do what Jesus would do, use reason and revelation.
• Imagine alternatives, consider laws (civil, natural, divine, church).
• Find insight from the Church.
• Identify values and instincts which create what you decide the conscience ought to be.
• Look back on whether or not we did the right thing