Foundations · Iii
Ethical Conduct
How should we live?
Ethics is the part of philosophy that asks what makes an action right and a life good. The main answers differ in where they locate the good: in character, in God’s command, in duty, in results, or in the will that creates values.
| Virtue Aristotle, 4th century BC | Rightness comes from good character. The aim of life is flourishing (eudaimonia), and virtues such as courage and justice are habits formed by practice and guided by practical wisdom. |
| Divine command Ash‘arites, 10th century on | An act is good because God commands it. The Mu‘tazila disagreed: good and evil can be known by reason, and God commands what is already good. Plato had raised the same question in the Euthyphro. |
| Duty Kant, 1785 | Act only on a rule you could will everyone to follow, and treat persons always as ends, never merely as means. Results do not make an act right. |
| Consequences Bentham and Mill, 1789–1863 | The right act is the one that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Only results count. |
| Creating values Nietzsche, 1880s | Inherited morality is a human product, and often a sign of weakness. Strong individuals must create new values and say “yes” to life. |
How ethics depends on the first two questions
On how we know. The good may be known by reason (Kant, the Mu‘tazila), by feeling (Hume: reason is “the slave of the passions”), or by revelation (the Ash‘arites).
On what exists. If the universe has a purpose, as Aristotle held, values can be part of the nature of things. If only matter exists, values must come from us. Hume argued that no amount of facts about what is can by itself tell us what we ought to do.
In this chapter. Ethics stays in the background, but it surfaces where Whitehead defines religion as truths that have “the effect of transforming character” (paragraph 1), and in the pragmatic test, which judges religious experience “by its fruits” (paragraph 11).