Ethics can be described in various ways, some will say ethics are equal to moral laws; some say ethics are sequences of judgments about what’s good and what’s bad, and there are also people who believe that ethics were merely some seemingly true standards created by the strong to control people’s mind by deceiving languages.
As for me, I think ethics are some sort of systematic mindset that is used to determine whether we should do something. To have a more comprehensive perspective of ethics, I am going to analyze this from multiple angles.
Firstly, where did the moral laws come from?
I want to begin with Kant’s moral philosophy. From the earliest recorded history, people’s moral beliefs and practices were grounded in religion. Scriptures, such as the bible and the Quran, laid out moral rules that believers thought to be handed down from God: Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery, and so on. The fact that these rules supposedly came from a divine source of wisdom gave them their authority. They were not simply somebody’s arbitrary opinion, they were God’s opinion, and as such, they offered humankind an objectively valid code of conduct. This theory had resulted in people obeying these moral laws with no doubts and they were said to be rewarded with their obedience. On the other hand, if they violated the so-called “commandments” then the punishments will occur as follows.
Subsequently, these godly doctrines were seriously challenged as the commencement of the scientific revolution. The reason why they were challenged is that all of them were given by God, which can be reversed if the figure of god collapses. The tricky thing about this whole system is that what if God is proven to be wrong or what if the followers realize that the god’s omniscience is actually biased, which had bothered the moral philosophers back then and drew the discussion of the authenticity of god. Scottish moral philosopher, Alisdair MacIntrye, addressed this as “the Enlightenment problem”——If religion wasn’t the foundation that gave moral beliefs their validity, what other foundation could there be? If there is no God—and therefore no guarantee of cosmic justice ensuring that the good guys will be rewarded and the bad guys will be punished—why should anyone bother trying to be good?
If godly moral laws were not convincing enough, where would the moral law come from?
Consequently, the non-solidified concepts of god had brought up the considerations of what’s good and what’s bad; who’s gonna determine; and do the ideas of “good” and “bad” really exist or they just in relatively speaking.
From my perspective, I think human are gifted with the thoughts of good and bad.
“What is good and what is evil?”; Philosophers of all ages have thought over this question. Each reckoned that he had solved the question once and for all, yet within a few years, the problem would re-emerge with new dimensions. In fact, most of the answers would be later found inadequate or unsatisfactory.
Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, believed that good and evil are two notes in a symphony. He found that many things change into their opposites, which led him to believe that the combination of opposites resulted in a harmonious whole.
Soctrates, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, believed that knowledge of good and evil and its criteria are imbued in man and he can differentiate between the two if he desires so. With sustained thought and guidance of nature, he is in a position to know what is good and what is evil. Soctrates’s famous saying——“O man! Know thyself” had also indicated that basic principles of good and evil are innate in man.
Taken together of all these thoughts on good and evil, I found that most of the philosophers insisted that man are endowed with the knowledge of good and evil before coming to this world. Only they need the right orientation and inspiration. However, If this premise is hypothetically valid, then why would we need laws and rules of all kinds to constrain and regulate people’s behaviors? Didn’t the government just need to trigger their underlying abilities of judgment? Since all humans are meant to capable of determining good and bad.
Obviously, this is not the case for any generation, not even the generations of philosophers. If there’s life at stake, people will certainly obey the official laws.
There had been lots of great materials regarding the law and its relationship with humanities. Philosophy of law, also called jurisprudence branch of philosophy that investigates the nature of law, especially in its relation to human values, attitudes, practices, and political communities. Philosophy of law often aims to distinguish law from other systems of norms, such as ethics or other social conventions. Views about the nature of law often depend upon, and occasionally have contributed to, answers to some of the most fundamental philosophical questions—for example, regarding the foundations of morality, justice, and rights; the nature of human action and intention; the relations between social practices and values; the nature of knowledge and truth; and the justification of political rule.
From all the discussions of law and ethics, the seemingly fair can be applied—–Based on society’s ethics, laws are created and enforced by governments to mediate in our relationships with each other. Laws are made by governments in order to protect its citizens and they have to be approved and written by these three branches of government before they are implemented and enforced by the police and the military, with the help of the legal system consisting of lawyers and other government servants. Nevertheless, While laws carry with them a punishment for violations, ethics does not. In ethics, everything depends on the person’s conscience and self-worth. So people should remain their obediences to the government law when there’s conflict.
Learning philosophy helps us to better understand the occurrences in real life; I will give the example of George Floyd to illustrate the relationships between ethics and laws. George Floyd, who died on May 25 after being pinned to the ground by an officer who pressed a knee into his neck. From an ethics perspective, this was an extremely racist, unjust, and outrageous decision that the white police killed an unarmed African American citizen. George Floyd was begging the officer not to kill him, which turned out was ignored by the officer who also pointed his gun to the others who were trying to help. Ethically, what the police did back there should have been punished in the consideration of human; however, the government decided to expire his jurisdiction as the
response, which had definitely upset the crowd and directly engendered the riots and protests that came after. Legally, the officer was on his duty arresting Floyd and he has the power to control the suspects using tools; what he did that day was a little excessive but technically still inside his jurisdiction. This example showed exactly how people think about morality and laws. Most of the time the ethics corresponded to the intentions of executing those punishments; they both hope people do what’s right, which people don’t follow very often so the lawful punishments were mostly anti-ethics.
Just like a famous saying “the only thing that doesn’t change is changing.”; sometimes the punishments were added with personal or evil intentions, at which time people will rise up and against evil. But citizens will all obey the laws at the end of the day so when it comes to the counterpart among ethics and laws, the laws will always be considered priorly.
In a nutshell, believe it or not, humans are gifted with the ability to judge good and evil and it’s our choices to do what we believe is right or what we’re told is right. None of the laws of belief can be challenged because they’re all made by man, a species with vastly varied thoughts and behaviors. So we have to explore infinitely to try to find out what type of person we want to become and how authentic our moralities and the laws are.
In my personal suggestion, try to be good as much as possible.
Resources:
https://www.thoughtco.com/kantian-ethics-moral-philosophy-immanuel- kant-4045398
http://www.al-mawrid.org/index.php/articles/view/good-and-evil-1-views- of-the-philosophers