Ethics and Ethical Behavior

Introduction

Human beings are constantly judging their own actions and those of others. Good and evil, moral and amoral, and conscienceless are the respective judgments whereby we implicitly assume that “one” knows the basic difference between good and evil. Moral conduct is thus always attributed to an individual, who is regarded as being responsible for his actions and held accountable for these, i.e., he has to answer to himself, his own conscience, or an external authority or institution. Moral behavior therefore presupposes the concept of voluntariness and freedom. Conscience, freedom, and responsibility are central concepts of moral behavior and ethics as the philosophical doctrine of morally relevant behavior (Moral Philosophy).

Ethics as a philosophical discipline dates back to Aristotle, who also pursued earlier approaches, as those of Plato and Socrates. The term ethics is derived from the Ancient Greek “ethikos”: custom, habit, or tradition. Although the adjectival or adverbial forms of moral and ethical are frequently used synonymously, here the following differentiation – outlined by Anzenbacher (1992a) based on Kant’s definition – is made: an action is moral if it is judged in dependence on the individual conscience of the agent, while ethical also means according to convention and is thus placed in a social context. It is therefore open for discussion, on the basis of which norms an action is ethical.

Guided by the idea of a meaningful human life, i.e., a morally good and just life, philosophical ethics attempts to make universally valid statements about good and just behavior in a methodical manner – without reference to political and religious authorities or the well tried. It is primarily concerned with an answer to the questions “What shall I do? Who do I want to be, how do I want to live? What is a successful, succeeding, and happy existence?” complemented by questions like “In what kind of social and political environment do we want to and shall we live?” (Höffe 1999).

Major Contents and Methodological Positions of Ethics

The Ethics of Morality was first defined by Aristotle. It describes the respective historically and socially relevant norms and values as the basis for virtuous moral conduct; these shall be realized sagaciously.

The autonomous Ethics of Reason is subject to a rigorous principle of morals and posited primarily by Kant. Norms have to be verifiable with the aid of a procedure which claims universal and categorical validity. The categorical imperative is of the highest order and demands with consideration of our respective subjective maxims (life principles) to “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a principle of general law.” The decisive factor is alone the individual’s good will guided by reason. This approach has therefore also been discussed as an Ethics of Conviction. Kant asks for the conditions of the possibility for moral action.

Utilitarian Ethics, an approach posited by J. Bentham and J. St. Mill, is concerned with “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” and serves as a guideline for weighing the utility of an action and its consequences. As a result of the utility principle, the well-being of the individual comes after that of society as a whole, and a rational examination of the action is performed against the background of its concrete, foreseeable results (Lang 1992).

In Scherer’s phenomenological approach to Value Ethics, a hierarchy of tangible values which possess an objective quality (pleasure/pain; approve/disapprove; love/hate) is developed, where an action is described as moral when the respective highest-ranked value is realized (Pieper 2007).

In contemporary philosophy the Discourse Ethics of Habermas and Apel (developed as Ethics of Reason) plays an important role. They attempt to determine a rational foundation of reason by asking what we need to presuppose to conduct meaningful argumentation. The starting point is the discourse, the argumentation in speech. Everyone who argues has always implicitly committed himself to uphold four validity claims: understandability, truth, rightness, and truthfulness/frankness. These commitments are moral in a twofold sense: In the sense of an ethics of truthful communication, they commit the subject to reason and represent a criterion for the negotiation and evaluation of moral norms. All norms upon which an agreement is reached by common consent in a discourse without constraints are morally binding (Lang 1992).

Alternative contemporary approaches to Discourse Ethics are anti-universalistic and relativistic as, e.g., the Usualistic Ethics of Odo Marquard (1981, 2007). His position is characterized by a skeptical stance and the renunciation of an ultimate moral standard and is oriented toward the concrete moral horizon of the “usual.” He thus arranges himself in a skeptical position between absolute knowledge and absolute ignorance in the sense of the Aristotelian doctrine of mesotes (extremes are to be avoided) (Lang 1992).

In addition to the described differences in terms of content, systematic differentiations also have an important role regarding the question as to the content of ethics. Differentiations are made between Descriptive Ethics, which is concerned primarily with the examination, description, and explanation of the phenomena of morals and conventions; Normative Ethics, whose principal concern is the critical analysis of prevailing morals and the reasons for forms and principles of right and good actions; and Metaethics, which attempts the critical analysis of linguistic elements in moral statements.

Based on the Ethics of Responsibility, the individual considers all possible consequences of a specific action in the evaluation of his decision to perform this action, while Ethics of Conviction is oriented alone toward the good intention, the good will.

The differentiation between Formal and Material Ethics, which is related to the differentiation between Deontological (obligation oriented) Ethics and Teleological (goal oriented) Ethics, is indebted to Kant. Formal Ethics (Ethics of Reason) is based on the universal idea of duty and moral laws. These have the character of unconditional, universally valid claims based on the transcendental view of obligation “from the universal concept of the reasoning being as such.” Exclusively applied are the precepts of rationality and the respective test procedures. It is the self-willing and determining reason which constitutes morality. Material Ethics bases the concept of morality on the understanding, willing, and pursuit of good purposes or values (e.g., Virtue Ethics, Value Ethics). Material Ethics is frequently viewed as a complement to Formal Ethics in as far as it holds the criteria which serve to examine the moral value of goals and contents (Höffe 2002).

Central Questions of Ethics

Despite the different approaches and groupings, ethics is essentially concerned with three different topics, which are also significant from a psychological perspective, because they are of basic relevance to all human experience:

• 1. Happiness

• 2. Good and evil

• 3. Freedom (Pieper 2007).

It is in the nature of most humans to strive for happiness. Ethics expounds on this natural striving of man for happiness and asks if and how this can be morally justified. While one school of moral philosophers claims that happiness represents the highest normative principle (Hedonist, Utilitarian, Eudemonistic, Egoistical Ethics), another puts the principle of duty before happiness; the striving for virtue, morality, and reason are given priority (Plato, Spinoza, Kant). It is, however, crucial that happiness cannot be achieved directly, but only through concrete goals, whose attainment holds the promise of satisfaction and thus of happiness. Furthermore, happiness does not simply occur but needs to be actively pursued in a practice, which contributes to a meaningful life when successfully accomplished.

The Good in itself is one of the central principles of ethics. In Greek philosophy and metaphysics, the Good is the essence of all being, the goal toward which all striving is directed, and through which man becomes wholly himself (Plato, Aristotle). Something is morally good, which is good in itself and not with regard to something else or for something else. Kant states, “Nothing can be thought anywhere in this world, or even outside the same, which can unreservedly be regarded as good, except the good will alone … The good will is not good through that which it effects or accomplishes, nor through its usefulness in achieving a certain purpose, but it is good through the willing only, good in itself” (Kant 1995b – Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: 180f).

Joined in the concept of the highest Good, in which consummate personhood is reflected, are the three topics of ethics: happiness, freedom, and the Good (Pieper 2007). “It is a priori (morally) required to achieve the highest Good through the freedom of will, … In the highest for us practicable – i.e., realizable through our will – Good, virtue and happiness have to be thought as necessary and connected” (Kant 1995b, p. 173).

The term freedom has repeatedly occurred above and is, in fact, of even greater importance to ethics, because it implies both precondition and goal. Today the question arises based on recent findings from neurobiology, attachment research, and psychoanalysis of how free the human being is in his actions. Were behavior – as it is understood by some behaviorists and neurobiologists – completely predetermined, there would no longer be a need for a science of morals.

While freedom was seen as self-evident in antiquity, it has assumed great importance in the reflections of modern ethics since Kant. As a “natural being” man is other-directed as a result of his sensuality, i.e., his drives, instincts, feelings, passions, needs, and interests (heteronomy). Even if he cannot invalidate the laws of nature, he can decide what he can want, shall want, or not want, i.e., he can act self-determinedly (autonomy). Because he can free himself from the constraints of nature and determine autonomously what he can want, he uses his moral freedom. In contrast to unconstrained freedom, arbitrariness, moral freedom refers to the freedom of others and acknowledges this as a principle. The contradiction between unconstrained, absolute freedom and freedom which delimits itself with consideration of the freedom of others characterizes moral freedom. Moral freedom is the basis for freedom of action. Freedom of action, which means not merely to want the Good but to do it, is always limited by the prevailing circumstances.

Inherent in the concept of freedom is also one of the limits of ethics. As a theory it cannot be its own practice, because the realization of freedom lies outside itself. The individual is moral through will; it is not ethics that renders him moral. In addition, because freedom is one of its presuppositions, ethics cannot develop a material catalog of norms. It can, however, substantiate formal norms whose critical application functions as a standard for material norms. The critical evaluation and application is ultimately left to the acting individual (Pieper 2007).

The goals of ethics, which are of importance to humans from a psychological standpoint, may be summarized as the reflective enlightenment of the acting individual in regard to the moral conditions of his actions. With comprehension of freedom as an essential element for the human being, the critical power of judgment of moral actions, i.e., the critical differentiation between good and evil before the background of freedom as an unconditional principle, has to be practiced. A third crucial element represents the acquisition of moral competence and social responsibility (Pieper 2007).

The Psychic Development of Moral Competence as the Basis for Moral Conduct

Two significant directions can be identified regarding the development of moral competence: the psychoanalytical view of Freud, complemented by several aspects from Jung, and the theories of developmental psychology ranging from Mead to Piaget and Kohlberg to Gilligan.

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development (Kohlberg 1984) is based on both Piaget’s stages of cognitive development and his division of moral development into a premoral, a heteronomous, and an autonomous stage analyzing the child’s changing awareness of rules. Founded on the results of his empirical research, Kohlberg added three additional stages to those of Piaget and summarized these in three levels (Table 1).

Ethics and Ethical Behavior, Table 1 Stages of moral development

These described stages of moral development may also serve as an indication of current social and historical development where moral conscience increasingly appears to be moving toward the discourse today (Lang 1992).

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development are based on the conception of a moral of justice as proposed by Carol Gilligan (1982). She has elaborated Kohlberg’s theory of moral development by introducing the concept of moral of caring, starting from the premise that both attitudes to morality are in a dialectical relationship. This approach is of particular interest because it complements the so-called “male” abstract moral with a “female” moral of human caring (Garz 2006, p. 117).

Freedom and Psychoanalysis

Prior to Kant, psychology was a branch of Special Metaphysics. In contrast to General Metaphysics, i.e., ontology (science of the nature of being), psychology was regarded as Special Metaphysics concerning itself, as the “science of the soul,” with questions of self-knowledge, identity, and oneness of consciousness. The focus of psychology has since then been on concrete psychic experience (Pieper 2007).

In addition to the development of moral competence, the question as to where the conscience or morality can be located in the human psyche is of interest from a psychoanalytical perspective. In his theory of psychic structure, Freud names the superego as the judge or censor of the ego. The superego’s functions comprise the conscience, self-observation, and ideal formation. This term therefore designates the presence of internalized values, commands, and prohibitions. The superego develops in the child after an extended period of need for support with the Oedipus complex and as a result of the fear of loss of paternal love. From a philosophical viewpoint, this would be expressed as follows: “The demand of the conscience (superego) may thus be seen as the advice to act wisely: Act in conformity with your conscience or you will lose the goodwill of the one whose protection and help you need” (Anzenbacher 1992, p. 207). Freud (1999) views morality as a strategy, in which culture, indirectly also serving the pleasure principle, attempts to defend itself against the destructiveness of aggression. Culture virtually installs the superego in the individual to serve as his conscience which constrains the ego; this leads to the development of a sense of guilt and the need for punishment and thus to the diminishment of aggression.

Freud considers the quest for the highest Good, the purpose in life, as emerging from the pleasure principle, which takes priority over everything else. This would, however, completely instrumentalize reason and cannot become practical as pure reason in the sense of Kant. This, in turn, would form the first result in the leveling of an independent meaning of morality (Anzenbacher 1992).

Jung (1995, § 825–857) asserts that ethics and moral are innate, because without the ability of the psyche to experience guilt there can be no sense of guilt. Furthermore, the omnipresent opposites are thereby raised to conscious awareness. Ethos is thus understood by Jung as a “special case of the transcendent function” which connects the unconscious with the conscious. Only in the conscious, reflective examination of one’s own actions can what appears to be moral conduct be changed into ethical conduct. From a religious standpoint he defines this as the establishment of a connection between reason and grace.

In relation to the principles of ethics, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as applied psychology also have an important role. Psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic methods essentially consist of the dialogical working-through of the patient’s emotional history. It is the aim of the therapy to free the individual from psychic constraints through the bringing to consciousness, emotionally working through and processing of complex- and conflict-charged events that prevent him from living life as a truly human being liberated on to himself. This is a moral aim in a twofold sense, as it also requires the analyst to be conscious of his own responsibility. However, in contrast to ethics, psychology does not aim to reflect on the conditions of moral conduct but wants to enable the human being to act morally. Through cognitive insight and emotional experiences, i.e., through self-knowledge, the individual shall recognize and integrate the constraining factors to achieve the capability of interaction. The discourse ethicist Habermas connects morality and psychoanalysis as follows: “Since the analysis imposes the experience of self-reflection on the patient, it calls for a ‘moral responsibility for the content’ of the disorder. Because insight as the aim of analysis is only this, namely that the ego of the patient is to recognize itself in the other represented by the disorder as his alienated self and identify with it. As in Hegel’s dialectic of morality, the offender recognizes his own destroyed being in his victim, an act of self-reflection through which the abstractly separated entities perceive the devastated moral totality as their common ground and through this are able to return to it. Analytic knowledge is, at the same time, moral knowledge” (Habermas 1968, p. 288).

In contrast to Habermas, Drewermann (1982), who as a moral theologian, church critic, and psychoanalyst attempts to establish a connection between religion and the unconscious, describes psychoanalysis as inherently amoral. Psychoanalysis is essentially concerned with the confrontation with never questioned, internalized contents of the superego and so to decide against prevailing norms. “Every psychotherapy renders a bit more conscienceless, egomaniac, unscrupulous. Every psychotherapy is therefore a kind of seduction, a lesson in immorality” (Drewermann 1982, p. 83). While he views this in one respect as positive in that it implies an increase in individual freedom, it is also from a Hegelian perspective a risk, because self-consciousness can be achieved only in a life and death struggle. At stake in this struggle are the concepts of free or not free, self-determined, or other-directed, but not of good or evil. In the course of the struggle the Old has to be cast off and combated, the subjectively accomplished acknowledgment of morality, i.e., the awareness of morality through a process of becoming conscious gained against the background of personal freedom can be reintegrated only in a second step according to Hegel. The New is then frequently identical with the cast-off Old, although now it is chosen self-determinedly and consciously. In the sense of Hegel, the moral dilemma would then be resolved. It remains, however, open to question if in the phase of self-discovery of the analysis, the second step is actually taken, i.e., if the reconnection to the prevailing morality is achieved or should even be achieved. This, in the sense of the goal of freedom, shall not be the aim of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. If ethics were “repealed” and humans in their being good or being active would no longer find a justification for being or developing, there would nevertheless need to be another reason for the justification of being. Drewermann’s stance is that this can be found in man’s being held in the grace of God. For him it is God who is the ultimate reason for man’s being, while the Moral is not the definitive measure of humanness. The aim of psychotherapy would then be the – humble – acknowledgment of one’s own being and the assumption of responsibility for one’s own life as a gift of God. His position is thus contrary to the basic principles of ethics, to find determinants for moral conduct outside of (religious) authorities.

See Also

Drewermann, Eugen

Freud, Sigmund

Jung, Carl Gustav

Plato and Religion

Plato on the Soul

Psychoanalysis