AKC 1 General – Autumn Term 2007 – Social Ethics
01/10/07
AKC 1 – 1 OCTOBER 2007
INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS
The Revd Dr Richard A Burridge, Dean of King's College London.
NOTICES
1) Full details of course in the orange booklet: 1st years should have it; 2nd and 3rd years
pick up your copy at today’s lecture, or from Dean’s Office, or Chaplaincy offices.
2) Lectures: must attend main lecture on each site; see timetable; if there is a problem,
there is the second showing. If both slots on your site are blocked – contact Dean’s Office
3) Registration: everyone to complete online form; 2nd and 3rd students should have
passed last year (either the exam or AAP); 1st years – fill in form as soon as you decide to
do AKC
4) Attend lectures; no compulsory extra reading or essays; suggested reading to help.
5) Exam: Monday 21st April 2008; prizes for best 1st & final year in Schools.
6) Website: www.kcl.ac.uk/akc contains all details & handouts; also Discussion Board.
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Terms and Definitions
What is ethics?- ethics / ethos are Greek words; morality Latin; 'custom'.
Ethics is related to, and often confused with other things, such as customs, manners, taste,
expediency, law, politics, science, religion.
Ethic or ethics - singular or plural?
Term is used for moral questions; sets of answers; reflections on methods.
Concepts of right/wrong; good/bad; fair /unfair.
Objective (independent existence of ethics) or subjective (it depends on us)?
Absolute (always everywhere the same) v relative (varies) - question of truth?
Are things right/wrong in and of themselves (intrinsically), or because of people's
intentions and motives, or because of their consequences?
Do ethics come from external sources (God, state, rules) or internal (individual human
choice)? Heteronomy v autonomy.
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Dilemmas and Choices in key human experiences
Ethics touches all areas of human life: money, poverty and wealth; business; life in
society, state, politics; human sexuality, marriage, divorce, family; use and abuse of
power and obedience; violence, war and peace; birth, life, health and illness, death;
environment, animals, ecology. Trends and fashions.
3
Human moral experience
Vernon White, Honest to Goodness: Moral Experience and the existence of God
(Grove Ethics 40, Nottingham 1981)
Universality - pervasive and persuasive experience of right/wrong common to all human
beings; the same forms and concepts; similarity of content.
Objectivity - the sense that morality stands over and against us.
Irreducibility - can right/wrong be reduced to pleasure/pain, or feelings?
Obligatory - sense of ethics being binding upon us, making demands.
Purposiveness - ethics not just arbitrary; having a goal or purpose.
Individual conscience - Do we have any choice?
Determinism and freewill; reductionist or naturalistic challenges to ethics.
Sociological: ethics are conditioned by the needs of the tribe, family or society.
Biological: ethics determined by our genes and need to survive.
Psychological: ethics determined by parents, upbringing, development.
AKC 1 General – Autumn Term 2007 – Social Ethics
01/10/07
4
Contemporary settings and today's context
Theocratic societies share (or impose?) the same ethics, religion, culture and law on
everyone - Christendom, Jewish hopes, Islamic law.
Not true in Western democracies - various pressures:
Secularisation; privatization; individualism / existentialism; liberation; pluralism;
relativism; reductionism; alienation; future shock and millennium fever.
5
Source and types; Books and systems
The 'religions of the Book' - Judaism, Christianity, Islam; deriving ethics from a holy
book - Torah, Bible, Qur'an; but which book? how to use it? issues of interpretation and
authority.
Moral philosophy of Greece and Rome; development of moral theology; dominance of
'natural law' tradition - rooted in purposes of God the creator.
Ethics based on legal approaches, rules / commandments, cases or 'casuistry'; principles
such as love, greatest good; developing people's virtues (Aristotle).
Philosophy developing natural law, 'secularized' versions.
Utilitarianism - greatest good; Kant - not God's commands, autonomy, duty.
Marxism, social-historical relativism and class analysis; struggle.
Development of human rights theories, from Revolutions to United Nations.
Various systems 'without rules' - intuition; existentialism; situationism.
Various 'tools' can be used; principle of double effect; lesser evil; acts and omissions;
example: tools applied to the example of the terminally ill.
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Ethics and Religion: Morality without God?
MacIntyre - theism v nihilism (Nietzsche); does atheism lead to Nazi concentration camps
or Stalin's purges? But what about Inquisition, crusades and holy wars?
Do ethics need to depend upon faith: Richard Dawkins still wants morality, despite his
idea of the 'selfish gene' - but is that consistent?
Universality of moral experience is an argument for existence of God, and existence of
God explains universal character of moral experience.
Objectivity - basis in character of God, as creator with loving purposes.
Irreducibility - roots what cannot be reduced in person/existence of God.
Obligatory - sense of being binding upon us is response to God's demand.
Purposiveness - not just arbitrary; ethics have a goal in God's purposes.
Religious belief can provide objective content (the Mosaic law, the teaching of Jesus, or
the Prophet Mohammed); a personal dimension (ethics as a response to the vision of God,
heart of love); moral resources (power or grace of the Spirit, forgiveness, love beyond
duty); and goal (belief in better world to come, justice, vindication, judgement, the
kingdom of God). But - it can also lead to fanaticism, intolerance, imposition etc.
Full details about the AKC course, including copies of the handouts, can be found on the
AKC website at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/akc. Please join in the Discussion Board and leave
your comments. If you have any queries please contact the AKC Course Administrator on
ext 2333 or via email at dean@kcl.ac.uk. Please make a note in your diary that the AKC
Examination will take place on Monday 21 April between 14.30 and 16.30.
YOU MUST REGISTER FOR THE COURSE using the online form on the website. You
will need to register for the exam separately, information will be provided next semester.