Relationship Between Ethics and Social Responsibility

Ethics and Social Responsibility
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Ethics and Social Responsibility
In the article “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Justice Decision Making,” Rascão & Poças (2019) explore how ethics and social responsibility converge. This paper reviews the evolution of ethics and ethical theories as presented in the article and discusses the relationship between ethics and social responsibility.
Evolution of Ethics
The notions of ethics can be traced to curiosity about the fundamentals of human conduct in Ancient Greece with philosophers positing that the various moral principles that people follow stem from existing moral conventions. Socrates pointed out that the search for knowledge is an essential component of human virtue and a key step to achieving happiness. To this end, ethics are borne out of one’s search for knowledge on how to be good. Another Greek philosopher Plato considers humans to be political, detailing the need for one to coordinate their virtues and human activities. As such, Plato holds that morality is a product of collective relations as opposed to an individual issue. Thus, the state has a role in making sure that its citizens are ethical. Aristotle proposed the theory of eudemonism, whereby happiness is considered a product of the aspiration to do good. To this end, Aristotle holds that happiness cannot be a source of pleasure, but is found through engaging in rational activity, thought evolution, and exercise. The view is supported by Epicurus who considered the various bodily pleasures as the source of suffering and anxiety experienced by human beings. Epicurus suggests that humans can minimize disturbances by limiting their pursuit of personal pleasures.
Middle Ages saw the expansion of the ethical beliefs from Ancient Greece, with a significant influence from the church. Thomas Aquinas adapted the theory proposed by Aristotelianism to the ideals fronted by Christianism. Aquinas posited that one can only achieve happiness through contemplating God and waiting on future knowledge after one dies, which can be summed as transcendent values. Still, some philosophers noted that being ethical is not solely limited to believers. Hume noted that cartesian rationalism equips an individual with the ability to recognize values through facts and observation. Kant refused the connection of ethics to religious values, indicating that moral actions are autonomous actions as an individual is a being that is adequately equipped to determine the reason for acting in a morally upright manner. Kant conceptualized morality as rational, universalist, and secular, with freedom playing a major role in influencing morality.
Hegel contested Kantian moralists by pointing out that human being cannot ignore their relationship to culture and history and the resulting diversity from the relationship. Karl Marx built on this by conceptualizing morality as the expression of human conscience, that reflects the social relationships that emerge from work. Nietzsche posits that there is a need for humans to overcome group morality to ensure that their actions are not subject to the mediocrity of the set group virtues. Notably, the 20th Century saw...