Ethics Exam: Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Industrial Revolution, Kant
Final Exam Ethics Questionnaire
1. Characteristics of the Sophist Movement, Key Ideas, and Their Representatives
Characteristics:
- The Sophists considered that nomoi are merely conventional and that as each village has its own, there is no absolute value, which contradicts universal and permanent nature. This contrast between law and nature becomes the big story.
- The word “sophist” (sophistes) was initially synonymous with “wise” (sophos).
Key Ideas:
- Teach the arete, not in the sense of virtue, but as skill.
- Rhetoric: the art of speaking and writing.
- The rise of the political leader.
- Charging for teaching.
- Agreements between men by blood or imposition of power.
- Thought itself becomes a philosophical issue.
- Criticism of traditional moral values.
Representatives:
The most important Sophists of the first generation were Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus, who stood for the defense of skepticism and relativism. The most important representatives of the second generation were Callicles, Antiphon, Thrasymachus, and Critias. These philosophers further emphasized the critical role of reason and its ability to defend any thesis.
2. Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus: Key Ideas
Plato:
Plato’s ethical theory rests on the assumption that virtue is knowledge and that it can be learned. This doctrine must be understood within the whole of his theory of ideas. The ultimate idea for Plato is the idea of God, and knowledge of this idea is the guide on the verge of making a moral decision. Plato maintained that knowing God is doing good. The consequence of this is that anyone who behaves immorally does so from ignorance. This conclusion follows from Plato’s certainty that a virtuous person is truly happy, and as individuals always desire their own happiness, they are always eager to do what is moral.
Aristotle:
Aristotle produced two major treatises on ethics: Eudemian Ethics (eudemiana) during the second period and with Pythagorean influences, and Nicomachean Ethics (Nicomachean), written in his maturity as a thinker. The most representative ideas of Aristotelian ethics are in the latter. It is a “eudemonistic” ethic, that is, an ethic of happiness. It is also a virtue ethic, the best means to achieve happiness.
Epicurus:
Epicurus argued that the morally good is pleasure, a view received from Aristippus. The original meaning of the word “good” is enjoyable. It has nothing to do with conformity to a vein or a natural order of things. Similarly, “bad” is what brings us pain. “Pleasure is the beginning and the end of the happy life.” Epicureans understood pleasure in a subtle way, far from sensationalism and debauchery. For the Epicurean, spiritual pleasures are superior to sensitive ones.
3. Five Questions on the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution created new concepts and techniques, changing landowners in industrial nations. Industries began mass production. The first effects were production control and financial control. It emphasized the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Christian social doctrine, and the emergence of management as a social science. Proposals to solve the social problem arose. Faced with the poverty and insecurity of workers, there were criticisms and formulas to try to solve them. For example, the utopian socialists sought to create an ideal society, fair and free from all kinds of social problems. These elements were crucial to the emergence of protest movements for the rights of workers.
4. Ethics and Morality: Concept and Differences
Ethics:
Ethics is related to the study of morality and human action. The concept comes from the Greek word ethikos, meaning “character.” An ethical decision is a moral statement that defines what is right, wrong, obligatory, or permitted, relating to an action or decision.
Morality:
Morality is the sum total of knowledge gained on what is high and noble, and that a person respects in their conduct. It regulates behavior. Morality is often identified with religious and ethical principles.
Differences:
Morality is the set of principles, standards, norms, and values that guide our behavior. Ethics is the theoretical reflection on morality. Ethics is responsible for discussing and reflexively informing this set of principles or rules which constitute our morality.
5. Scene from the Movie “Herod’s Law”
This film depicts the different areas of the country in a small representation of a town. It emphasizes the reality of political management that, until a decade or less ago in Mexico, was the most common: dedazo (handpicking), cronyism, nepotism, and the gift of public office that came from the highest to the lowest in the institutional hierarchy of government. Thanks to handpicking, a completely unknown person reaches political power. In the town, which is a kind of miniature universe of political institutions that fight for power, there are the doctor, the priest, an American (a gringo who represents the United States), and the people in general. This man, naive and with the highest aspirations, wants to be president. He experiences corruption, crime, robbery, systematic lying, and betrayal in his short tenure of power in the town. In other words, he knows the dark side of power and its consequences. Thanks to these consequences, he begins to implement “Herod’s Law,” which seems to be the law governing the country where the movie was filmed.
6. Summary of the Individual Trial
Each individual will develop this in class.
7. The Categorical Imperative in Kant
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. According to Kant, a person is autonomous when governed by what they say, but not only by their desires or instincts, that after all, they do not choose to have, but by a kind of rules that they believe should be met by anyone, whether they feel like it or not.
8. Works by Kant
Kant’s work is usually divided into two periods: the pre-critical and the critical. The first would cover all Kantian philosophical activity up to the “Dissertation” of 1770, and the second, his post-philosophical activity, which develops his thought in a different direction, broadly speaking, in the “Critique of Pure Reason.” Some studies of Kant, however, distinguish two phases in the pre-critical period: first, up to 1755, according to some, or 1760, according to others, in which Kant’s interest in physics and science in general predominated; second, until 1770, coinciding with his activity as Privatdozent at the University of Königsberg, dominated by metaphysical concerns.
9. Kant’s Four Fundamental Questions
- Kant gives us a general formula of the categorical imperative: “Act so that the maxim of your will can serve as a principle of universal law.”
- That is, the reason invoked to justify an action must be so good that it could become universal law.
- Kant insists, then, on the universality of the rational justification of the action. Another statement of the categorical imperative is, “Act so that you treat humanity, in your own person and in that of another, as an end and not as a means.”
- To take a person as a means would be immoral, and it would only be moral to consider each person as an end in itself.
Problems (Kant’s Four Fundamental Questions):
- What can I know? Metaphysics.
- What should I do? Morality.
- What may I hope? Religion.
- What is man? Anthropology.