What Ethics Is Not, Part 1

The outline is from Peter Kreeft's What Would Socrates Do? Comments are my own, unless quoted with italics, in which they are Dr. Kreeft's.

1. Ethics is not a checkup
Ethics is not something you use “just in case” something immoral comes up. This assumes that ethics is only negative. Rather, ethics is about the best way of living, oneself in connection with others.

The reason that many people think of ethics as a checkup is because they see it as a set of abstract “rules”. Most philosophers see it as something real and solid and substantial. What is a good person and what is a good life. Those are more fundamental than a set of rules.

2. Morals are not mores
Ethics is not just a collection of behaviors. You cannot take a poll and find out the right thing to do.

“The difference between morals and mores correspond to the difference between shame and guilt. Shame is the frustration of the desire to be accepted by others, the desire to save face. Guilt is the frustration of the desire to be morally good. Shame is social, guilt is individual. Shame comes from others, guilt comes from yourself. When the dog pees on the carpet, it feels shame, not guilt. If you weren’t there to see it, it wouldn’t feel anything at all.… In guilt, the self is divided in two in a way no animal can do. One of the two is the observing and judging self that says, ‘You are guilty,’ or ‘You are not guilty.’ ‘You are evil,’ or ‘You are good.’ The other self is the observed, judged self that hears this judgment. It is this self consciousness, this ability to split ourselves in to two—the judging and the judged self—that separates us from the beasts. It is not consciousness but self-consciousness that separates us. All animals have consciousness, and many of them are superior to us in their consciousness of the world. They often have better senses than we do. But only man has self-consciousness. That’s why only man has ethics.”