Ethics summary

Well, we can observe that we’re not born into an ethical vacuum. We essentially inherit deep-rooted preferences about how we ought to live and behave from our surrounding culture. If you grew up in the United States or Europe, for example, you probably came of age in the ethical climate of liberal individualism, and thereby absorbed some very specific notions about freedom that are different to other parts of the world. These inherited ideas about freedom shape everyone’s thinking and values, no matter where they lie on the political spectrum. 

But just because we inherit ethical preferences doesn’t mean that our values are completely determined by the ethical climate in which we find ourselves. We also have the power to reflect on and influence that ethical climate. Ethical concerns are essentially preferences about how we should treat each other. These preferences obviously don’t align with those of everyone we encounter. And so: we debate, we critique, or use brute will to shape our ethical environments according to our vision. And when we turn our ethical preferences into formal demands of each other, that’s what you’d call a law.

Our ethical environments are so fundamental to our lives that sometimes they become invisible. But we should be careful to not take our societies’ ethical climate for granted, and think through our ethical commitments carefully. After all, many of humanity’s most atrocious deeds were the product of a distorted ethical climate. You could even say that the roads to concentration camps and sweatshops were paved with ethical judgments gone terribly awry. 

Thinking through our ethical commitments and keeping others accountable is what moral philosophy is all about. It’s an academic tradition over two thousand years old, and continues to be a widely influential and highly active branch of contemporary philosophy. But ethics is hardly just the domain of academic theorists. All kinds of people have the power – and perhaps responsibility – to shape the moral climate! Just think about the Vietnam War as an example. Photo journalists who chronicled the devastating realities of the Vietnam War shaped public opinion far more than any professional philosopher writing on the topic.

Still, moral philosophy matters a great deal and is applicable to all humans, because it helps us examine the ethical concerns that matter so much to us at a deep and very precise level. So, even if you didn’t study philosophy in school, ethics is still worth learning about, because it’s here that you’ll find the tools to think critically about right and wrong, and learn to live a more ethical life.  

The thing is, ethics doesn’t have the best reputation. Even if we can acknowledge that ethics is important, it’s not always something we like to think about. It’s thorny, disturbing, and complicated. 

For one thing, the right course of action isn’t always obvious. It’s not like the world offers signposts for how we ought to live and behave. And, when it comes to hot-topic issues like abortion, people’s ethical judgments are notoriously clouded by emotion.

Another reason ethics can be unpleasant to think about is that ethical concerns threaten our comfort levels if we benefit from the status quo. I mean, how would you like it if I pointed out that there’s a good chance you’re listening to this on a device produced under highly exploitative conditions, possibly even using the labor of enslaved children?

Maybe you would get defensive and throw the accusation back at me by asking if my recording device is uncompromised. Or you might argue that individuals are embedded in unjust social structures that we can’t control, so it’s not fair to moralize about someone’s individual consumer choices. Or, if you really prefer to not think about it, you might dismiss me out of hand as a buzzkill or a pessimist. All of these responses are attempts at evading ethical thinking, which is just another way of evading ethical responsibility. 

There are a whole host of threats to ethical thinking like these, and Simon Blackburn devotes nearly half of his book to skewering them. Because if every time you encounter a difficult moral problem you just throw up your hands and claim that it’s all hopeless, you’re effectively saying that trying to do good is just for suckers, and that ethics is just a sham!

But that would be too easy. That’d be letting ourselves off the hook. And worst of all: it sets us up to be terrible people. 

So, if we’re not ready to give up on ethics, we need to identify the threats and understand the erroneous thinking behind them. Then we’ll be well-equipped to cut through the bullshit and do the hard but also crucially important work of treating each other well. So, let’s go through those threats.