by Roger Crisp
It’s often been said (including by Socrates) that the most important, ultimate, or fundamental question in ethics is: ‘How should one live?’.
That is usually understood as equivalent to: ‘How should I live?’. If so, then I’m not sure that this is the most important ethical question. Consider the following case from Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons:
The Bad Old Days.
A thousand torturers have a thousand victims. At the start of each day, each of the victims is already feeling mild pain. Each of the torturers turns a switch a thousand times on some instrument. Each turning of a switch affects some victim’s pain in a way that is imperceptible. But, after each torturer has turned his switch a thousand times, he has inflicted severe pain on his victim.
Here the question, ‘What should I do?’, works well. If any torturer asks it, at the end of a day, the answer will be: ‘Stop torturing!’. But now consider another of Parfit’s cases:
The Harmless Torturers
In The Bad Old Days, each torturer inflicted severe pain on one victim. Things have now changed. Each of the thousand torturers presses a button, thereby turning the switch once on each of the thousand instruments. The victims suffer the same severe pain. But none of the torturers makes any victim’s pain perceptibly worse.
Here, if a torturer asks the ‘I’ question, they might plausibly answer: ‘I like torturing, and I’m not doing any harm, so I’ll keep on torturing’.
With these cases, Parfit illustrates well how the ‘I’ question isn’t suited to many significant collective action problems. Consider climate change. Many people think they might have to do something to prevent a climate disaster. But – unless they have significant influence – they can plausibly conclude: ‘Whether this disaster happens or not won’t depend at all on what I do. So I’ll keep on living in the same way’. And, of course, if large numbers of people do this, then a climate disaster may occur which is worse for all of them, and every other living person, than if they’d all changed their behaviour.
Our culture is individualistic: the ‘I’ question comes naturally to us. Other cultures are more collective: in these cultures, practical reasoning begins from, or at least takes very seriously, the question: ‘What should we do?’. There is no reason to think that, in itself, the individualist question is the place to start ethical thinking.
It is also important to recognize that there are ethical reasons for thinking in certain ways, or with certain concepts. As those working in ‘conceptual engineering’ have brought out especially clearly in recent years, the use of certain concepts or lines of thought is itself open to ethical assessment (consider e.g. Sally Haslanger’s work on race and gender).
The most important question in ethics, then, is not ‘How should one live?’, but ‘How should we live?’. And if you find yourself asking the question ‘How should I live?’, the answer is: ‘Ask yourself how we should live, and then take it from there’.
FAQs
It's often been said (including by Socrates) that the most important, ultimate, or fundamental question in ethics is: 'How should one live? '.
What are the three ethical questions that we should always be asking? ›
Blanchard and Peale suggest that leaders ask the following three questions when making a decision about an ethical problem:
- Is it legal? The purpose of this question is to get you to look at existing standards. ...
- Is it balanced? ...
- How will it make me feel about myself?
For many of us, the fundamental question of ethics is, "What should I do?" or "How should I act?" Ethics is supposed to provide us with "moral principles" or universal rules that tell us what to do.
What is an ethical question? ›
Ethical questions often involve words like 'should we' or 'shouldn't we', 'ought we' or 'oughtn't we'. We often ask ourselves if the decision is 'right' or 'wrong'. Consider, for example, a patient in a serious prolonged disorder of consciousness.
What is the essential question that ethics seeks to answer? ›
To summarize, the study of ethics aims to address two primary questions: what moral obligations do we have, and what behaviors are appropriate or immoral depending on the context?
What are the two big questions ethics seeks to answer? ›
Unit 10 "Ethics Discussion Questions Part 1 1. What is Ethics and what are the two big questions it seeks to answer? (10.1) • Ethics is the study of right and wrong. Ethics seeks to answer two foundational questions "What does it meant to live a good life?" and "How should we live?"
What are the three most important ethical principles? ›
These are respect for persons, beneficence and justice.
What are the three main ethical issues? ›
There are three main types of ethical issues: Utilitarian, Deontological, and Virtue. Utilitarian ethics focus on the consequences of an action, while deontological ethics focus on the act itself. Virtue ethics focuses on the character of the person acting.
What are the three questions of ethics? ›
The Blanchard and Peale three-question ethical model is used to analyze ethical dilemmas. It comprises of three questions: 'Is it balanced?' , 'Is my proposed action legal?' and 'How will it make me feel about myself?'
What is the most basic question that ethics tries to answer quizlet? ›
All ethical theories try to answer two questions: 1) what is the good life, and 2) what ought we to do? The story of Thales illustrates that unless we are objective, we will never be able to discover the truth about ethics.
Ethics is what guides us to tell the truth, keep our promises, or help someone in need. There is a framework of ethics underlying our lives on a daily basis, helping us make decisions that create positive impacts and steering us away from unjust outcomes.
What simple question does ethics try to answer? ›
What simple question does ethics try to answer? How should we act?
What are three important ethical questions to ask? ›
Ethical Questions that Arise from the Scenario
Should you or should you not let them? Is it fair to the others in the class? What harm can it cause to you or others?
What are the major ethics concerns? ›
The most commonly experienced ethical issues include discrimination, harassment, unethical accounting, technological abuse, data privacy, health and safety, and favoritism and nepotism. Most of these concerns are experienced in workplaces.
What are the four main ethical dilemmas? ›
Ethical dilemmas can be divided according to the types of obligations that are in conflict with each other. For example, Rushworth Kidder suggests that four patterns of conflict can be discerned: "truth versus loyalty, individual versus community, short term versus long term, and justice versus virtue".
What is the most important ethical value? ›
Recommended Core Ethical Values
- Integrity, including. Exercising good judgment in professional practice; and. ...
- Honesty, including. Truthfulness; ...
- Fidelity, including. Faithfulness to clients; ...
- Charity, including. Kindness; ...
- Responsibility, including. Reliability/dependability; ...
- Self-Discipline, including.
One of the central debates within analytic metaethics concerns the semantics of what is actually going on when people make moral statements such as “Abortion is morally wrong” or “Going to war is never morally justified.” The metaethical question is not necessarily whether such statements themselves are true or false, ...
What is greatest number in ethics? ›
The principle of the greatest number, also known as utilitarianism, was founded by Jeremy Bentham and later expanded upon by John Stuart Mill. It holds that an action is judged based on whether it results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
