Ethical and Political Principles for a Just Society
Ethical Model and Political Action
Achieving an ethical model requires effective political and social action. This involves establishing universally acceptable norms and values, coordinating moral heteronomy and personal autonomy, and creating a shared project with duties imposed on us. The pattern of life that follows universally desirable individual duties must include at least:
- Recognition of duties prior to legislation: This includes core values such as life, liberty, and equality.
- Rejection of illegitimate differences: Ensuring that we are not victims of discrimination.
- Participation in political power: To achieve freedom, equality, and security.
- Rationality as the optimal way to resolve conflicts: Reason will lead us to understanding, while irrationality is a source of violence and injustice.
- Assurance policies: Protecting against injustice with systems of warranties.
- The social function of property: Defending the value of equality and other values as they are affected by economic factors.
- Aid policies: The equality of human beings and help imposes conducts.
Ethical Criteria and Theories
The ethical model must meet ethical criteria such as:
- The moral experience of humanity and the impartial study of historical evolution.
- The requirement of coherence and the ability to foresee consequences.
It should be compared to similar theories, considering the significant decline in ethical considerations.
- Material Ethics: Argues that there is a purpose that guides our behavior and establishes a set of rules to achieve it.
- Formal Ethics: Focuses on finding or making good, without mentioning happiness and without specific rules.
Citizenship and Political Participation
- Citizen Candidate: Conforms to the dictates of power.
- Active Citizen: Capable of critically examining the world around them and acting conscientiously.
Political action is how we organize and participate in common government. Political society is the state and its component institutions. Civil society is a set of social coordination institutions not dependent on the state administration.
Citizen participation should be public action through politics and civil means. It must satisfy three objectives:
- Improving public space: The public use of reason is the mediating element between civil society and political power.
- Increasing “community capital”.
Understanding Politics
- Political History: The part of history that depicts the evolution of systems of political organization.
- Political Science: Studies the fundamental concepts of political systems, their structure, functions, varieties, and different forms of social organization related to power.
- Political Philosophy: Responsible for examining the origin of politics, not merely studying political systems but developing theories on the origin and legitimacy of political power, rational analysis, and criticism.
Political Theories
Different theories are distinguished by their origin, legitimacy, and different forms of exercise.
1a. Organic Theory: Believes that the human being can only be fulfilled and achieve full happiness in the community (polis). Aristotle states that man is by nature a political animal and that society is detached.
1b. Individualistic Theory: Assumes that the individual is sovereign and chooses to live under a common power as a more effective way to organize coexistence. This change resulted in the preeminence of the individual and their personal autonomy.
2a. Absolutist Theory (Machiavelli and Hobbes): Argues that power should be exercised absolutely over citizens, who are understood as subjects.
2b. Liberal Theory: A precursor of modern democracies, it sought a legitimation of power that was not in power itself but in a series of rights and freedoms, namely that all human beings are equal and sovereign.
Relationship Between Ethics and Politics
- No relationship – Political Realism: Argues that politics is different from ethics. Representative: Machiavelli’s “The Prince.”
- Idealism in Politics: Argues that ethics prevails over politics. Example: Thomas More’s “Utopia.”
- Relationship with Recognition of Differences: There is a political ethic or implication between the two.
Justice and Equality
Aristotle distinguished two types of justice: distributive and commutative. The first varied according to merit, and the second was based on agreed-upon terms. Justice as Freedom: Freedom is an undeniable right, and a democratic state must guarantee this and provide the right conditions for freedom to unfold. Justice and Legal Security: Legal certainty is the certainty provided by the law of certain values and freedoms guaranteed by law. Justice and Ethics: To each their own; rights are prior to justice. Righteous behavior is to treat each one according to their rights; it is unethical according to the model.