EAS 203: Engineering Ethics
Brit Shields, Ph.D.
Ethical Theories Primary Source Packet
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Translated by Roger Crisp, Cambridge University Press
Book 1: Chapter 7
… Happiness in particular is believed to be complete without qualification, since we always
choose it for itself and never for the sake of anything else. Honor, pleasure, intellect, and
every virtue we do indeed choose for themselves (since we would choose each of them
even if they had no good effects), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, on the
assumption that through them we shall live a life of happiness; whereas happiness no one
chooses for the sake of any of these nor indeed for the sake of anything else.
…But perhaps saying that happiness is the chief good sounds rather platitudinous, and one
might want its nature to be specified still more clearly. It is possible that we might achieve
that if we grasp the characteristic activity of a human being. For just as the good - the doing
well- of a flute-player, a sculptor or any practitioner of a skill, or generally whatever has
some characteristic activity or action, is thought to lie in its characteristic activity, so the
same would seem to be true of a human being, if indeed he has a characteristic activity.
Well, do the carpenter and the tanner have characteristic activities and actions, and a
human being none? Has nature left him without a characteristic activity to perform? Or, as
there seem to be characteristic activities of the eye, the hand, the foot, and generally of each
part of the body, should one assume that a human being has some characteristic activity
over and above all these? What sort of thing might it be, then? For living is obviously
shared even by plants, while what we are looking for is something special to a human
being. We should therefore rule out the life of nourishment and growth. Next would be
some sort of sentient life, but this again is clearly shared by the horse, the ox, indeed by
every animal. What remains is a life, concerned in some way with action, of the element
that possesses reason. (Of this element, one part has reason in being obedient to reason,
the other in possessing it and engaging in thought.) As this kind of life can be spoken of in
two ways, let us assume that we are talking about the life concerned with action in the
sense of activity, because this seems to be the more proper use of the phrase.
If the characteristic activity of a human being is an activity of the soul in accordance with
reason or at least not entirely lacking it; and if we say that the characteristic activity of
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anything is the same in kind as that of a good thing of the same type, as in the case of a lyreplayer and a good lyre-player, and so on, without qualification, in the same way in every
case, the superiority of the good one in virtue being an addition to the characteristic
activity (for the characteristic activity of the lyre-player is to play the lyre, that of the good
lyre-player to play it well); then if this is so, and we take the characteristic activity of a
human being to be a certain kind of life; and if we take this kind of life to be activity of the
soul and actions in accordance with reason, and the characteristic activity of the good
person to be to carry this out well and nobly, and a characteristic activity to be
accomplished well when it is accomplished in accordance with the appropriate virtue; then
if this is so, the human good turns out to be activity of the soul in accordance with virtue,
and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete. Again, this
must be over a complete life. For one swallow does not make a summer, nor one day.
Neither does one day or a short time make someone blessed and happy.
Book 1: Chapter 8
…Nevertheless, as we suggested, happiness obviously needs the presence of external goods
as well, since it is impossible, or at least no easy matter, to perform noble actions without
resources. For in many actions, we employ, as if they were instruments at our disposal,
friends, wealth, and political power. Again, being deprived of some things - such as high
birth, noble children, beauty - spoils our blessedness. For the person who is terribly ugly, of
low birth, or solitary and childless is not really the sort to be happy, still less perhaps if he
has children or friends who are thoroughly bad, or good but dead. As we have said, then,
there seems to be an additional need for some sort of prosperity like this. For this reason,
some identify happiness with good fortune, while others identify it with virtue.
Book 2: Chapter 1
Virtue, then, is of two kinds: that of the intellect and that of character. Intellectual virtue
owes its origin and development mainly to teaching, for which reason its attainment
requires experience and time; virtue of character is a result of habituation...
From this it is clear that none of the virtues of character arises in us by nature. For nothing
natural can be made to behave differently by habituation. For example, a stone that
naturally falls downwards could not be made by habituation to rise upwards, not even if
one tried to habituate it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to
burn downwards, nor anything else that naturally behaves in one way be habituated to
behave differently. So virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature, but
nature gives us the capacity to acquire them, and completion comes through habituation.
Again, in all the cases where something arises in us by nature, we first acquire the
capacities and later exhibit the activities. This is clear in the case of the senses, since we did
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not acquire them by seeing often or hearing often; we had them before we used them, and
did not acquire them by using them. Virtues, however, we acquire by first exercising them.
The same is true with skills, since what we need to learn before doing, we learn by doing;
for example, we become builders by building, and lyre-players by playing the lyre. So too
we become just by doing just actions, temperate by temperate actions, and courageous by
courageous actions. What happens in cities bears this out as well, because legislators make
the citizens good by habituating them, and this is what every legislator intends. Those who
do not do it well miss their target; and it is in this respect that a good political system
differs from a bad one.
Again, as in the case of a skill, the origin and means of the development of each virtue are
the same as those of its corruption: it is from playing the lyre that people become good and
bad lyre-players. And it is analogous in the case of builders and all the rest, since from
building well, people will be good builders, from building badly, bad builders. If this were
not so, there would have been no need of a person to teach them, but they would all have
been born good or bad at their skill.
It is the same, then, with the virtues. For by acting as we do in our dealings with other men,
some of us become just, others unjust; and by acting as we do in the face of danger, and by
becoming habituated to feeling fear or confidence, some of us become courageous, others
cowardly. The same goes for cases of appetites and anger; by conducting themselves in one
way or the other in such circumstances, some become temperate and even-tempered,
others intemperate and bad-tempered. In a word, then, like states arise from like activities.
This is why we must give a certain character to our activities, since it is on the differences
between them that the resulting states depend. So it is not unimportant how we are
habituated from our early days; indeed it makes a huge difference – or rather all the
difference.
Book 2: Chapter 6
...Fear, confidence, appetite, anger, pity, and in general pleasure and pain can be
experienced too much or too little, and in both ways not well. But to have them at the right
time, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right
way, is the mean and best; and this is the business of virtue. Similarly, there is an excess, a
deficiency and a mean in actions. Virtue is concerned with feelings and actions, in which
excess and deficiency constitute misses of the mark, while the mean is praised and on
target, both of which are characteristics of virtue. Virtue, then, is a kind of mean, at least in
the sense that it is the sort of thing that is able to hit a mean.
Again, one can miss the mark in many ways (since the bad belongs to the unlimited, as the
Pythagoreans portrayed it, and the good to the limited), but one can get things right in only
one (for which reason one is easy and the other difficult - missing the target easy, hitting it
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difficult). For these reasons as well, then, excess and deficiency are characteristics of vice,
the mean characteristic of virtue:
“For good people are just good, while bad people are bad in all sorts of ways.”
–unknown
Virtue, then, is a state involving rational choice, consisting in a mean relative to us and
determined by reason - the reason, that is, by a reference to which the practically wise
person would determine it. It is a mean between two vices, one of excess, the other of
deficiency. It is a mean also in that some vices fall short of what is right in feelings and
actions, and others exceed it, while virtue both attains and chooses the mean. So, in respect
of its essence and the definition of its substance, virtue is a mean, while with regard to what
is best and good it is an extreme.
But not every action or feeling admits of a mean. For some have names immediately
connected with depravity, such as spite, shamelessness, envy, and, among actions, adultery,
theft, homicide. All these, and others like them, are so called because they themselves, and
not their excesses or deficiencies, are bad...
Book 2: Chapter 7
...In giving and taking money, the mean is generosity, while the excess and deficiency are
wastefulness and stinginess. People with these qualities are excessive and deficient in
contrary ways to one another. The wasteful person exceeds in giving away and falls short in
taking, while the stingy person exceeds in taking and falls short in giving away.
Book 2: Chapter 9
Enough has been said, then, to show that virtue of character is a mean, and in what sense it
is so; that it is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency; and that it is
such because it is the sort of thing able to hit the mean in feelings and actions. This is why it
is hard to be good, because in each case it is hard to find the middle point; for instance, not
everyone can find the center of a circle, but only the person with knowledge. So too anyone
can get angry, or give and spend money - these are easy; but doing them in relation to the
right person, in the right amount, at the right time, with the right aim in view, and in the
right way - that is not something anyone can do, nor is it easy. This is why excellence in
these things is rare, praiseworthy and noble.
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Immanuel Kant: Pure Practical Reason and the Moral Law
Edited by Peter Singer, Oxford University Press
Nothing in the world – indeed nothing even beyond the world – can possibly be conceived
which could be called good without qualification except a good will. Intelligence, wit,
judgment, and the other talents of the mind, however they may be named, or courage,
resoluteness, and perseverance as qualities of temperament are doubtless in many respects
good and desirable. But they can become extremely bad and harmful if the will, which is to
make use of these gifts of nature and which in its special constitution is called character, is
not good. It is the same with the gifts of fortune. Power, riches, honor, even health, general
well-being, and the contentment with one's condition which is called happiness make for
pride and even arrogance if there is not a good will to correct their influence on the mind
and on its principles of action, so as to make it universally conformable to its end. It need
hardly be mentioned that the sight of being adorned with no feature of a pure and good will
yet enjoying uninterrupted prosperity can never give pleasure to a rational impartial
observer. Thus the good will seems to constitute the indispensable condition of worthiness
to be happy.
...The good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes or because of its
adequacy to achieve some proposed end; it is good only because of its willing, i.e. it is good
of itself. And, regarded for itself, it is to be esteemed incomparably higher than anything
which could be brought about by it in favor of any inclination or even of the sum total of all
inclinations. Even if it should happen that, by a particularly unfortunate fate… this will
should be wholly lacking in power to accomplish its purpose, and if even the greatest effort
should not avail it to achieve anything of its end, and if there remained only the good will
(not as a mere wish but as the summoning of all the means in our power), it would sparkle
like a jewel with its own light, as something that had its full worth in itself...
...It is in this way, undoubtedly, that we should understand those passages of Scripture
which command us to love our neighbor and even our enemy, for love as an inclination
cannot be commanded. But beneficence from duty, also when no inclination impels it and
even when it is opposed by a natural and unconquerable aversion, is practical love, not
pathological love; it resides in the will and not in the propensities of feeling, in principles of
action and not in tender sympathy; and it alone can be commanded.
Immanuel Kant: The Categorical Imperative
From The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals in The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant,
translated by W. Beck. First published in 1785.
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...Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should
become, a universal law...
2. Another man finds himself forced by need to borrow money. He well knows that he will
not be able to repay it, but he also sees that nothing will be loaned him if he does not firmly
promise to repay it at a certain time. He desires to make such a promise, but he has enough
conscience to ask himself whether it is not improper and opposed to duty to relieve his
distress in such a way. Now, assuming he does decide to do so, the maxim of his action
would be as follows: When I believe myself to be in need of money, I will borrow money
and promise to repay it, although I know I shall never do so. Now this principle of self-love
or of his own benefit may very well be compatible with his whole future welfare, but the
question is whether it is right. He changes the pretension of self-love into a universal law
and then puts the question: How would it be if my maxim became a universal law? He
immediately sees that it could never hold as a universal law of nature and be consistent
with itself; rather it must necessarily contradict itself. For the universality of a law which
says that anyone who believes himself to be in need could promise what he pleased with
the intention of not fulfilling it would make the promise itself and the end to be
accomplished by it impossible; no one would believe what was promised to him but would
only laugh at any such assertion as vain pretense...
Now, I say, man and, in general, every rational being exists as an end in himself and not
merely as a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will. In all his actions, whether they
are directed to himself or to other rational beings, he must always be regarded at the same
time as an end. All objects of inclinations have only a conditional worth, for if the
inclinations and the needs founded on them did not exist, their object would be without
worth. The inclinations themselves as the sources of needs, however, are so lacking in
absolute worth that the universal wish of every rational being must be indeed to free
themselves completely from them. Therefore, the worth of any objects to be obtained by
our actions is at all times conditional. Beings whose existence does not depend on our will
but on nature, if they are not rational beings, have only a relative worth as means and are
therefore called "things"; on the other hand, rational beings are designated "persons,"
because their nature indicates that they are ends in themselves, i.e., things which may not
be used merely as means. Such a being is thus an object of respect and, so far, restricts all
[arbitrary] choice. Such beings are not merely subjective ends whose existence as a result
of our action has a worth for us but are objective ends, i.e., beings whose existence in itself
is an end. Such an end is one for which no other end can be substituted, to which these
beings should serve merely as means. For, without them, nothing of absolute worth could
be found, and if all worth is conditional and thus contingent, no supreme practical principle
for reason could be found anywhere.
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...The practical imperative, therefore, is the following: Act so that you treat humanity,
whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means
only.
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John Locke: Our Rights in the State of Nature
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason,
which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and
independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions: for
men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker, all the
servants of one sovereign master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business;
they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one
another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of
nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us
to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of
creatures are for ours. Every one, as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his
station willfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not in
competition, out to he as much as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it
be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the
preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb or goods of another.
...For the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain, if
there were nobody that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby
preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. And if anyone in the state of nature may
punish another for any evil he has done, everyone may do so: for in that state of perfect
equality where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what
any may do in prosecution of that law, everyone must needs have a right to do.
...And thus, in the state of nature, one man comes by a power over another; but yet no
absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according
to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own will; but only to retribute to
him, so far as calm reason and conscience dictates, what is proportionate to his
transgression, which is so mush as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two
are the only reasons why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call
punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by
another rule than that of reason and common equity, which his that measure God has set to
the actions of men for their mutual security, and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the
tie, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him,
which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided
for by the law of nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to preserve
mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them,
and so may bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that law, as may make him
repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his example others, from doing the
like mischief. And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath a right to punish the
offender, and be executioner of the law of nature.
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...Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us that men, being once born, have a
right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink and such other things as
Nature affords for their subsistence, or revelation, which gives us an account of those
grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah and his sons, ‘tis very clear that God, as
King David says, Psalm CXV. 16 has given the earth to the children of men, given it to
mankind in common. But, this being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty how
anyone should ever come to have a property in anything...
God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use
of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given
to men for the support and comfort of their being. And though all the fruits it naturally
produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the
spontaneous hand of nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the
rest of mankind in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state, yet being given for
the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other
before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial, to any particular man...
Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a
property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body
and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out
of the state of nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with it, and joined
to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed
from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labor something annexed to it
that excludes the common right of other men. For this labor being the unquestionable
property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at
least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others... He that is nourished
by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the
wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself.
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Jeremy Bentham: Natural Rights
Postscript: “The end in view of every political association is the preservation of the natural
and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and
resistance to oppression.” -Declaration of Rights, French National Assembly, 1791
Sentence 1. The end in view of every political association, is the preservation of the natural
and imprescriptible rights of man. More confusion – more nonsense – and the nonsense, as
usual, dangerous nonsense. The words can scarcely be said to have a meaning...
How stands the truth of things? That there are no such things as natural rights – no such
things as rights anterior to the establishment of government – no such things as natural
rights opposed to, in contradistinction to, legal: that the expression is merely figurative;
that when used, in the moment you attempt to give it a literal meaning it leads to error, and
to that sort of error that leads to mischief-to the extremity of mischief...
In proportion to the want of happiness resulting from the want of rights, a reason exists for
wishing that there were such things as rights. But reasons for wishing there were such
things as rights, are not rights; - a reason for wishing that a certain right were established,
is not that right – want is not supply – hunger is not bread.
That which has no existence cannot be destroyed – that which cannot be destroyed cannot
require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural
and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense, -nonsense upon stilts.
...The right itself must be specifically described, not jumbled with, an undistinguishable
heap of others, under any such vague general terms property, liberty, and the like.
Jeremy Bentham: The Principle of Utility
I. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two masters, pain and pleasure. It is
for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and
effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we
think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate
and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality, he will
remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and
assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of
felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in
sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
But enough of metaphor and declamation: it is not by such means that moral science is to
be improved.
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II. The principle of utility is the foundation of the present work: it will be proper therefore
at the outset to give an explicit and determinate account of what is meant by it. By the
principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action
whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the
happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other
words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever; and
therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of
government.
III. By utility is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit,
advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness, (all this in the present case comes to the same
thing) or what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain,
evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered: if that party be the
community in general, then the happiness of the community: if a particular individual, then
the happiness of that individual.
***
I. Pleasures then, and the avoidance of pains, are the ends which the legislator has in view:
it behooves him therefore to understand their value. Pleasures and pains are the
instruments he has to work with: it behooves him therefore to understand their force,
which is again, in other words, their value.
II. To a person considered by himself, the value of a pleasure or pain considered by itself,
will be greater or less, according to the four following circumstances:
1. Its intensity.
2. Its duration.
3. Its certainty or uncertainty.
4. Its propinquity or remoteness.
III. These are the circumstances which are to be considered in estimating a pleasure or a
pain considered each of them by itself. But when the value of any pleasure or pain is
considered for the purpose of estimating the tendency of any act by which it is produced,
there are two other circumstances to be taken into the account; these are,
5. Its fecundity, or the chance it has of being followed by sensations of the same kind:
that is, pleasures, if it be a pleasure: pains, if it be a pain.
6. Its purity, or the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite
kind: that is, pains, if it be a pleasure: pleasures, if it be a pain.
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These two last, however, are in strictness scarcely to be deemed properties of the pleasure
or the pain itself; they are not, therefore, in strictness to be taken into the account of the
value of that pleasure or that pain. They are in strictness to be deemed properties only of
the act, or other event, by which such pleasure or pain has been produced; and accordingly
are only to be taken into the account of the tendency of such act or such event.
IV. To a number of persons, with reference to each of whom the value of a pleasure or a
pain is considered, it will be greater or less, according to seven circumstances: to wit, the
six preceding ones...
And one other; to wit:
7. Its extent; that is, the number of persons to whom it extends; or (in other words)
who are affected by it.
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John Stuart Mill: Higher and Lower Pleasures
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness
Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness,
wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the
privation of pleasure. To give a clear view of the moral standard set up by the theory, much
more requires to be said; in particular, what things it includes in the ideas of pain and
pleasure; and to what extent this is left an open question. But these supplementary
explanations do not affect the theory of life on which this theory of morality is groundednamely, that pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and
that all desirable things (which are as numerous in the utilitarian as in any other scheme)
are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion
of pleasure and the prevention of pain.
Now, such a theory of life excites in many minds, and among them in some of the most
estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they
express it) no higher end than pleasure – no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit
– they designate as utterly mean and groveling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine...
...Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once
made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their
gratification.
...It is quite compatible with the principle of utility to recognize the fact, that some kinds of
pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others. It would be absurd that while,
in estimating all other things, quality is considered as well as quantity, the estimation of
pleasures should be supposed to depend on quantity alone.
...Now it is an unquestionable fact that those who are equally acquainted with, and equally
capable of appreciating and enjoying, both, do give a most marked preference to the
manner of existence which employs their higher faculties. Few human creatures would
consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance
of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed
person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and
base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better
satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs...
It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest
chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly-endowed being will always feel that any
happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn
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to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the
being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all
the good which those imperfections qualify. It is better to be a human being dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or
the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.
The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
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