Why Ethics?
- Jul 12, 2021
- 4 min read
Written by: Roberto R. Bravo, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Recently, there has been a growing interest in Ethics in the financial, industrial, and business sectors. This ancient, and ever-renewed philosophical discipline is attracting the attention of some progressive and innovative economic groups around the world. The revered intellectual subject is moving out of the academy and into the street, into the world of business. Why? What does Ethics have to do with stock markets, the foundation of companies, the invention and development of products, the expansion of markets? What is Ethics?
Ethics can be defined as the science of what ought to be. To understand what Ethics is and why Ethics, we must therefore ask ourselves about what ought to be, and to do so, it will be necessary first to deal with being, and perhaps also with science.
The question of being appears, at first sight, very profound. Very philosophical. If we ask anyone in the street what being is, or more precisely, what their being is, we will hardly get a simple or even coherent answer. Most likely, the unaware passer-by will not understand our question in the first place. But if we do not use the word being in abstract, as a noun, but as a verb, the answer will readily emerge: What are you? We will surely get a great diversity of answers: mechanic, tradesman, baker, engineer, pilot, dentist... Hardly anyone would say that he or she is a man or a woman, or a human being or even a biological organism (even less, probably, will they define themselves basically as a mind, or a certain consciousness unless, of course, he or she is a guru or a professor of philosophy). Instead, everybody will answer according to the activity they carry out. Ask a child what he wants to be when he grows up, and he will say fireman, truck driver, or astronaut.
In other words, people define themselves by what they do. As concerns man, it would seem that being is defined by doing.
The ought to be is, therefore, an ought to do. But do what? The old Latin adage, "Age quod agis" gives us an answer: "Do what you do." Ethics begins by discovering what we do, by finding the core reason why we define ourselves as bankers, politicians, teachers, lawyers, or businessmen, to realize those characteristics consciously in ourselves so that the term by which we say what we are can be properly applied to us.
This may sound like an easy task, but there is hardly anything quite as difficult. The reason? There are just a few.
Our social nature leads us to consider what we do not merely as individuals but with regard to our role in the community, which is precisely where the activity one performs makes sense. (Robinson Crusoe, alone on his island, need have been all those things simultaneously, or none of them.) The development of commercial, financial, industrial, and business activities has been immersed since its distant origins in a complex social context. And the benefits originating in those activities are by no means alien to that context — a fact that has been particularly evident in the face of the current global pandemic, which is compelling us to reconsider, among other things, our social-economic activities and relations. Today we are witnessing a renewed interest in Ethics in the economic, business, and political fields because it is becoming increasingly clear, within the increasingly interrelated world of today, that economic, political and social well-being cannot be achieved in the individual without regard to the whole social group. What we do, we cannot do without taking in the whole of society. Otherwise, we won’t be what we ought to be. Progress and improvement at the individual level are not possible to the full extent without progress and improvement for all. Hence, the growing interest of the progressive and driving sectors of the economy in the general social development. This is why what at first sight might appear to be an academic discipline of purely theoretical interest is reaching out of the academic sphere (where it has never belonged exclusively, by the way) and attracting the attention of those concerned for the well-being of all, as a most effective way to define properly what we are ― and what we want to be.
The discovery, or rediscovery, of Ethics is a necessary first step in making the society we want. One that will lead, among other things, to better understand the issues involved in decision-making processes today and the social (not only economic and business) responsibility that goes with them. That is why Ethics.
Robert R. Bravo, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Besides his long experience as a researcher and lecturer on Ethics, Logic of Science and Philosophy of Language in Universities of Spain and Latin America, Roberto R Bravo writes and teaches on management skills in the areas of language and argumentation, coaching, leadership, and conflict management from a philosophical standpoint. Member of the editorial board of some academic and non-academic journals, he has published a number of essays, short stories, books for children, and translations. He is currently working on several books, both fiction and non-fiction.
