Ethics and Politics: Navigating Morality in Governance
Ethics and Politics
Ethics is a discipline that reflects on our moral actions, explaining the causes and reasons that lead us to act in a particular way. The ethics of freedom and responsibility emphasize treating people as ends in themselves, not merely as means to our interests. Ethics defends and promotes human rights, as enshrined in constitutions. This forms the basis for shared social values that guide our lives. A democratic ethic is an ethic of citizens who reconcile and articulate individual autonomy with moral norms, creating a collective project for a democratic life.
Politics, on the other hand, is the activity performed by citizens when they engage in public affairs, expressing their opinions through voting or other means of participation. Politics is a space of relationships shaped by collaboration and competition, affecting all of us and permeating our lives, becoming a fundamental human dimension alongside work and family life.
Today, we must demand a democratic ethos to strengthen civil society. We must be demanding of transparency, denouncing unethical and corrupt attitudes. We should be more participatory in developing our civic competence. Politics has its own space for reflection but is not separate from moral considerations. It is not merely a repertoire of procedures and methods to gain or maintain power. It requires united democratic participation, where freedom and welfare are at stake.
The relationship between politics and ethics has evolved through several phases. In classical Greece, Plato and Aristotle considered ethics indispensable for political practice, believing that a just state required the best and brightest leaders, educated in all disciplines and tested over time. In the Middle Ages, during the height of theology and scholasticism, medieval theocracy maintained hegemony, promoting the idea that politics should be under the control of the church.
Thomas Aquinas argued that the church should imbue the state with its principles, with God above all. The problem of the relationship between ethics and politics only became radically apparent in modernity. The rise of monarchies, commercial capitalism, and the Protestant Reformation, along with the Scientific Revolution, led to the collapse of the theocentric worldview of the Middle Ages. Modern individuals, fascinated by the discovery of individuality, claimed freedom from social constraints. It was then that awareness of the complex relationship between ethics and politics intensified.
John Rawls argues that the principle of justice has priority, as it is what free people would choose in a position of equality. The principles of any society’s welfare are the principle of freedom and the principle of difference. The first requires that society provide a framework of basic liberties, such as freedom of speech and thought.
The difference principle allows social inequalities only when they benefit the least advantaged social group. Social and economic inequalities should be structured to benefit the least advantaged, according to a criterion of just saving, and to ensure equality of opportunity. According to Rawls, freedom should be prioritized in any conflict between the two principles.