Introduction

Abstract

Ethics or moral philosophy, a major discipline in philosophy, is in a deep crisis. It has withdrawn from its central task, to formulate guidelines or norms for our actions and behavior. Aristotle spoke of eudaimonia and areté, a fulfillment of our gifts, our given capacities. The crisis arrived late, in the twentieth century, and it applies first of all to Europe and the United States as well as philosophers in Africa and Latin-America who are educated in the West. We are operating in the backyard as it were, analyzing various types of ethics, f. inst. deontological ethics or teleological ethics. Meta-ethic also belongs to this group. It deals with the presupposition and the logic of language of morals (Hare) or when they speak about “what we are going to do”. This is part of the ethics. Ethics should guarantee the acknowledgement and respect of everyone, and at the same time strengthen the job expediency.

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Ethics or moral philosophy, a major discipline in philosophy, is in a deep crisis. It has withdrawn from its central task, to formulate guidelines or norms for our actions and behavior. Aristotle spoke of eudaimonia and areté , a fulfillment of our gifts, our given capacities. The crisis arrived late, in the twentieth century, and it applies first of all to Europe and the United States as well as philosophers in Africa and Latin-America who are educated in the West. We are operating in the backyard as it were, analyzing various types of ethics, f. inst. deontological ethics or teleological ethics . Meta-ethic also belongs to this group. It deals with the presupposition and the logic of language of morals (Hare ) or when they speak about “what we are going to do”. This is part of the ethics. Ethics should guarantee the acknowledgement and respect of everyone, and at the same time strengthen the job expediency.

Difficulties with normative sentences in analytical philosophy are obvious – except where they (f. inst. B. Russell ) speak about their own method: “It is good”. This may be part of our background for some critical remarks of the analytical method by analytical philosophers themselves. In the series Philosophical Problems Today, Vol. 2, Language, Meaning, Interpretation the Australian professor John A. Passmore has pointed to some of the critical remarks: Even the well-known philosopher Hilary Putnam wrote in 1993 an article entitled “Renewing Philosophy”. Earlier the logician Hao Wang wrote an article “Beyond Analytic Philosophy” in which he criticizes sharply the analytical philosophy. The same applies to Simon Blackburn . As a summing up of his critical remarks in “Can Philosophy exist” he speaks of this philosophy and “its end-of-the-millennium Sisyphean conclusion”. Perhaps are we condemned to enact a perpetual tragedy? Philosophical reflection must be practiced, therefore it can be practiced. But except in the small, not successfully, at least, not if there is a point to the process outside itself. As Passmore remarks: “Blackburn ’s final remarks are no doubt accentuated by the failure of analytical philosophy to make any contact with the general culture of our time” (Passmore , ibid.: 18). To phrase it differently: Analytical philosophy has no words of wisdom to offer the general public. This is, as Passmore remarks, the result of intense professionalism. This is an institutional definition. However, it disguises the weakest point in institutional definition, the fact that anywhere the analytical philosophy exists, it is erected as an intellectual Berlin wall (Passmore , ibid.: 18) – for other philosophers and for the general culture.

We must certainly acquire some new knowledge of what we are doing. However, when it comes to the basic normative question of “How I should live” and “What guidelines for actions should I follow?” these philosophers have nothing to say.

1 The Value Commission

The same applies to courses in Ethics at the universities. Various types of meta-ethics are dominating the lectures. Afterwards, the students have no advice to offer a public audience. The same applies to the so-called value commission, erected by the Prime Minister in Norway in the 1990s (Bondevik ). I was asked to write the basic documents for the meetings. To raise the commitment to values in the entire Norwegian population, I thought, is itself a normative project. I started therefore with friendship and the family, central institutions of any society. In other writings I focused on the role of leadership in various branches and pointed to their responsibility to create a safe and inspiring working environment. The task is to enhance the commitment of each worker to each other, and thereby also to enforce their goal-directed activities. “The leader is a friend of the employees.” This is the message of the most important entrepreneur in Norway, Sam Eyde , the founder of the world-wide known Norsk Hydro and great power plants.

The first action taken by the Value Commission (about 18 members and their council of nearly 40 members) was to cancel the documents. They were much too normative for the members of the commission, most of them professors and scientists. There are strong reasons to believe that the truth values of the natural science have influenced Humaniora and prevented norms and normative questions to be posed. The members of the Value Commission wrote a report after dozens of meetings, spread to most committee members asking them to start a discussion – hardly with any result.

Value Commissions should be appointed in many countries and regions of the world if we are to follow several descriptions of the state of the world by some of the contributions to the present volume. Especially Jean-Godefroy Bidima is direct in his description. He even begins his article by clearing up the word Ethics (Nettoyer le mot “Éthique”). Raising the commitment in a population requires norms in every member and institution of the society. We have still a long way to go – despite the fact that all great religions and humanistic societies entertain one and the same value, usually called The Golden Rule : “You should only do to others what you want them do to you”. This topic is thoroughly dealt with in the contribution by Ruben Apressyan . Also in Islam you find the rule stated in the book Woman in Sharia: “Man and Woman are equal to Allah”.

The fate of the Value Commission is remarkable. If I may mention it, I have given numerous lectures in and outside the university, including schools, administration and business companies, and also abroad, and have always been normative. I have told how they should behave towards each other, and help creating an inspiring working place. The working place becomes so stimulating that you long to go there every day. This is the story of a man that in former days had fastened stamps on letters. He was asked by his friends, how he could stand such a boring job. The answer was simply, I think it is ok, because we have such a wonderful friendship on the job. It is of course important to have a nice and stimulating working environment in order to be an effective worker. On the other hand, one should not have it that fun at work that, as the first Norwegian computer company experienced, the company forget the market’s demand for innovation.

2 Ethics and Politics

The needs for “cleaning up” the word Ethics are many. Ethical training is usually a personal and individual affair. Jean-Godefroy Bidima opens his article by pointing to the regime of finances in the present world, the crushing of the individuals by the all-embracing technology, the removal of entire populations (as in Africa), the desperate cry of the poor, the murder of entire groups of people and the dissolution of the social network all over. In addition, Bidima points to a number of social shortcomings, all of which put a serious challenge to ethics: distribution of wealth. The United States are one of the worst countries in need of a total redistribution. In a tv program in the beginning of December 2012 we are told that around 20 Americans have built up fortunes worth thousands of billions of dollars. The economic theory lying behind, so it was mentioned, comes from the writings of Ayn Rand . Her social and economic theory is not the only one that cripples individuals’ social responsibility in a population. The slogan “be yourself” can also have the same effect of preventing you from taking part of the community.

We are persons of many capacities. The basic notion in Ethics is care, referring to the definition given by Berenice Fischer and himself: […] le care soit considéré comme une activité générique, qui comprend tout ce nous faisons pour maintenir, perpétuer et réparer notre ‘monde’ de sorte que nous puissions y vivre aussi bien que possible.

Our moral attitudes are tested every day. The gravest test may be towards Africa. Are we acknowledging and respecting them in our trade with them or are we doing business with them just in order to get hold of their resources?

3 Ethics and Cultural Traditions

An equally important problem is taken up in Marietta Stepanyants’ article “Traditional Values in the Time of Globalization ”. The author draws attention to the tension between past and present, with special focus on the history of India. India was earlier, through the British occupation, dominated by Western values. However, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, India developed into economic power, at the same time as European and especially Scandinavian youths were attracted by the Veda and later on the Buddha culture of wisdom and meditation. The old Indian values came to dominate a great number of youths in Europe.

The author points to the distinction between Mahatma Gandhi and the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Gandhi was strongly against modernization and looked at the traditional local agrarian community as an ideal, also for the future. He was against modernization when he saw the consequences. Tagore recommended the development and regarded it as necessary to employ the achievements of modern science and technology. Indian researchers have themselves greatly contributed to the development. However, the Indian cultural identity can only be preserved by keeping the Indian traditions alive. The commitment to ethical values can best be upheld by transmission of the past.

This view on tradition and moral values, however, has its limits. The author sides with Tagore . Her proposal to find the Golden Rule and in the end to further the complete elimination of poverty and inequality is to strike a balance to be a highly modernized power and at the same time, not to lose its own cultural identity. In the conflict between Gandhi and Tagore , she points to an important author who helps to understand the need for a “middle path”, Krishna Chandra Bhattacharya . The question, however, remains: Will the cultural traditions and moral values survive in a dominant modern culture?

Most European countries together with the United States appear to approach the answer, no. The idea of learning related to the local community has been removed from the schedule of education. Wherever history is being taught, it becomes knowledge without commitment, with no binding force.

The quest for “the middle path” applies to every country. Maybe India is better off with its long and binding history of 4,000 years bc. It is just to remember that the modern or post-modern culture is very powerful and has already weakened the key property in many individual’s knowledge of moral values. In the basic Indian wisdom , the Vedas “moral values were a serious concern” from the beginning, according to Bhuvan Chandel .

The author gives an excellent overview over some of the wisdom and rules of conduct in the Vedas, called dharma . Truth , taken as words of wisdom , “exalts the mind”. She speaks of non-violence, truth is word, non stealing, abandonment of theft, regularity in life to be lived according to the moral prescription.

The ethical codex involves ten recommendations:

• 1. patience

• 2. forgiveness

• 3. piety

• 4. honesty

• 5. keep internal purity

• 6. control of the senses

• 7. to develop reason by acquiring knowledge

• 8. knowledge of all substances used for the benefit of life

• 9. truth – to know a thing as it is, and

• 10. tranquility – to give up anger or similar passion, and to attain tranquility and other peaceful virtues

To obey dharma in Vedas is the conduct of life in accordance with strict moral principles. These principles are valid also for the rulers and for the four social classes. It may be difficult to understand that freedom is achieved by basic detachment – a detachment which is attained through a withdrawal into the transcendent self. This is the reason why in Indian ethics a man “is respected for what he does, not for what he is”. The translation of Vedanta by Swami Vivekananda is called “The voice of freedom ”.

This line of thought is by no means alien to readers with some knowledge of the history of philosophy. The emphasis on what a man does, is stated in Confucius ’ Analects. That freedom is related to the transcendent self. The transcendent self is free from external influence, as in the “self” in the Cartesian ego cogito.

My lack of knowledge of Sanskrit may also inflict upon my reading of the next article on Buddhism by D. P. Chattopadhyaya . He also poses the question of ethics and cultural tradition. Buddhism is a much later system of thought, partly known in Europe from the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer . Morality in Buddhism functions as “a sustaining agent of social life”. It is supposed to bind people together. The question is, will the moral teaching of Buddha and his schools survive modernization in India and elsewhere?

The teaching of Buddha refers in the beginning to the classical Indian wisdom of the Vedas, and uses consequently the term dharma to signify the entire moral code. There are two well established theories which explains “co-variance” between the naturalistic and the normative perspective. Co-variance means that nature is the starting point for a description of what thinking about morality , just to end with a systematic formulation of “moral conduct” and “moral ideas” (Chattopadhyaya ). This school takes the existence of suffering as a great moral evil. And the evil causes attachment to things in the world. Freedom is consequently to be attained by freeing oneself from worldly things. We are in Buddhism warned against admiring the importance of some experience. If we do, we do not have the opportunity to free ourselves. The physical world is continually changing and cannot be said to be permanent. The self does not exist because it has no form. And none of the sense organs can be said to be the self. Nothing that is continuously changing can be a permanent self. Therefore one has to shift from the changing concrete to the abstract and the spiritual, a Vedic influence on Buddhism. The abstract and the spiritual level.

The negative process of the liberation process finally may lead to the nirvana , the final step of mental purification. Nirvana is the positive quality that remains. To reach nirvana the Buddhist, we are told, “gladly renounces the world”. Detailed ethical rules are established in relation to the former liberation process, presumably as a condition for succeeding in their process.

Buddhism recognizes the reality of the empirical world, available to sense and science as well as the transcendent nirvana . We are ourselves, encompassing both stages, making it necessary to follow the ethical rules. It is compared to the famous dictum, the sensible world is empirical, real but transcendentally ideal.

My lack of knowledge of Sanskrit greatly hampers my presentation of both Hinduism and Buddhism , although the presentation to the authors is fascinating. The view of the sensible world and the idealism and transcendental are well known from Platonism onwards. But the exact content of the two sets of notions is difficult to decide without intimate knowledge of the Indian language. As far as ethics is concerned, there are obvious differences. Modernization has turned on acceleration of time. Due to the competition, everything has to be produced in a hurry. There is hardly room for the Hindi ethic of patience. Moral values in India and everywhere else are in need of patience and slowness. Personal relations guided by moral values are incomparable with someone always in a hurry. The modernization has also led to a closer integration with the sensible and technical world. Any process leading to the liberation from it is out of the question. We are all entangled.

How do we take care of our cultural identity in a modern era? Bhuvan Chandel answers: Through our cultural history. I am quite sure that India with its long history and its contemplative mindset will last longer than many others. I know that Buddhist and Hindu meditation have a strong grip on many people all over the world. I have myself been trying it in Calcutta and in Sweden. I noticed it at a conference in the Indian Institute of Management when we had to listen to a course given by Professor Chakraborty , the Head of the Institute. The topic was on the integration of business in Hindu. The audience counted over 150 people, some from Europe and the rest from India. During the presentation of the Vedas teaching, I noticed that the audience, with some exceptions, fell off. Most of them appeared not to be unfamiliar with the relation of their business company to the Hindu teaching. The second day the reader came to the consequences of the integration. It turned out to be remarkable for their business achievement. And the entire audience began listening carefully. The time until dinner, during dinner and a couple of hours afterwards, no conversation was allowed. The message should have time to make its imprint on our minds.

A similar story is to be found in Max Weber ’s description of the origin of Protestantism in the weaver industry in Holland in the eighteenth century, the beginning of the modernization period. It turned out that women from pietistic homes had a higher ethos than other women. They were more effective workers, better on sale of products, more precise in accountancy and hardly away from work. They got their daily training of concentration through prayer to a transcendent entity.

In support of this line of argument I shall simply quote part of the foreword written by A. L. Basham (Professor of Asian Civilisations anu in Canberra) to The Hindu Ethos and the Challenge after Change by the well-known Subhayu Dasgupta , ma in Philosophy, ma in Economics, ambim (London), Postgraduate Certificate in Industrial Administration (Manchester), (Cosmo Publication, New Delhi 1990). First a preliminary comment.

In common with many other nations, Asian and otherwise, India is faced with the problem of adapting and adjusting her ancient cultural heritage to a set of new rapidly altering conditions brought about by the immense technological changes of recent decades. The tempo of change seems to become faster and faster as the years pass by and no cultural system has more than two alternatives: it must either adapt itself to the new conditions or doggedly resist them. The latter alternative had hardly any chance of success in the contemporary world, for it presupposes a rigid isolationism which is now virtually impossible.

It is thus up to India to decide how much of her tradition she intends to preserve, how much to adapt and modify, and how much to abandon completely. In writing that it is ‘up to India’ I do not imply that India, or any other nation, possesses a collective mind or will. ‘India’, in such a context, is just a convenient abbreviation for over 500 million conscious individuals who come under the jurisdiction of the government ruling from New Delhi. It is the consensus of their individual choices and decisions which will decide the future of India’s cultural and social system.

Their decisions will be vital for future generations of Indians, and indeed for the whole world, because India’s impact on the world at large, both cultural and political, is increasing and is certain to increase further. For that reason this book is an important one, for it may have a great influence on the future. […]

The preface should be placed in all material dealing with the encounter between the traditional cultural and ethics and modernization. I have a strong intuition, having studied together with an Indian student/engineer in London for a couple of years, that the heavy Veda tradition, due to its long history, still has a hold on the Indian mindset. Those countries that have shorter or even a short history, are worse off. Norway may be one of them.

4 The Golden Rule

Are we dependent on tradition for having moral theories and norms? The answer is probably, yes and no. That we have ethical theories, are easily ascribed to tradition. Norms shaping our attitudes do we still have, although they in many respects are different from the earlier ones. The basic ethical norm, however, is still the same, the principle of mutuality or The Golden Rule . This is the answer to Ioanna Kuçuradi requests for a universal rule. I have elsewhere pointed to the universality in all the great religions. The Golden Rule should be a matter of course to everyone: Being born means to be within a family and a community. If I want to have good life, I have to behave according to the rule of mutuality. A good life is only possible when the people around you also have it. Or, as Aristotle once said, having in mind his Eudaimonia , no one can be happy unless others are happy too, a statement everyone should ponder upon.

Ethics, as Kuçuradi remarks, are much more than the Golden Rule . Our behavior and actions need guidelines – even if the principle of mutuality are basic to all, even to those that are self-centered. This is why my behavior inflicts upon the feeling and thoughts of others.

This is, however, not the issue at present. The primary issue is the position of the Golden Rule and the norms in general. The answer suggesting itself is that the norms are built upon already existing praxis . Everyday praxis is in other words, the starting point for the formation of moral theory.

5 The Primacy of Moral Praxis

In his article “Communicative source of moral normativity”, Ruben Apressyan takes as his starting point a ‘forgotten’ passage on Locke ’s An essay concerning human understanding: “– they establish amongst themselves what they will call ‘virtue’ and ‘vice’. This is even written in the law of opinion and reputation”. We are living in a society and our thoughts and actions are of necessity adjusted to each other. The Golden Rule is the result of the common agreement. He adds that the experience of “communicative experience”, the judgment “are incorporated into the tradition and culture of the given community”.

Apressyan refers to Michael Oakeshott , who in “The Tower of Babel” develops a morality similar to Locke . Morality , he holds, exists in two forms, “a habit of affection and behavior” and secondly “the reflective observance of moral rules”. It was important for Oakeshott to show that it is man’s sense of dignity that in the end guides our actions and secure our moral qualities. He starts with accepting the inner heterogeneity of the moral phenomenon, to show that it is partly non-rational, non-universal and non-autonomous. He thereby wants “to extend the space of morality beyond the boundaries” put forward by Kant .

In addition, Apressyan refers to several instances from ancient cultures. A situation from the Iliad by Homer is among them. Priam is the Trojans’ ruler, Achilles’ enemy. In Homer there is no civil law. Achilles is acting in accordance with custom and tradition of the Greek. In the meeting with Priam addressing Achilles as his father, wanting Hector’s body, Achilles acted in accordance with the Golden Rule and gave him want he wanted. Other instances are from the Assyrians in the seventh century bc, and from Aristotle ’s thoughts on friendship. Both confirm the principle of mutuality.

Due to the much faster pace of our modern and post-modern culture, it is a question whether anyone has sufficient time to chose “the soul” with someone else. All of us, living in an often multi-cultural society, often are required to follow the Golden Rule .

There are several requirements to register the presence of moral phenomena. The Russian philosopher A. A. Guseynov points to several of them. I shall mention only two. One is the statement that individual actions have to be personal. This sounds as a matter of course. But it is not. There is a difference between acting out of one’s own free will and an action forced by others. Secondly, in a society focusing on impersonal knowledge alone, without emphasizing the importance of wisdom , every individual is running the risk of themselves becoming impersonal. The economist Max Weber (1864–1920) pointed to the danger already in the beginning of the end of the nineteenth century. The danger of becoming impersonal has been becoming increasingly imminent in our century. The culture of entertainment, especially in the media, has been a threat to the uniqueness of an individual. If we happen to ask who someone is, the answer is nowadays usually: He or she has such and such knowledge. One has to admit that a morally just and morally acceptable action can be the expression of a collective will. The history of class conflict provides examples.

The second test is the observation that moral qualities are more distinct to conscious in the case an action is prevented from being performed than in other cases. The requirement is, of course, that the voice of mutuality is strong enough. It certainly applies to most people in the world. But it certainly doesn’t apply to all. In the newspapers and other media we daily read about fraud, stealing, corruption in many ways, all over the world. It points to the strengthening of moral education. Even a meta-ethical discipline like philosophy should join in. It can help in sharpening the awareness of norms, included the Golden Rule . Moral norms should be discussed in the family, kindergartens and in all classes in school.

“What is most missing, is most discussed”. This popular saying may have something to it. When Ioanna Kuçuradi started publishing Ethics in 1977, she remarks “Ethics was among the less cultivated disciplines of philosophy”. Since then, she adds, “Ethics has become fashionable”. The interest in ethics almost in every field signifies that something is needed. Meta-ethical studies abounds. Courses in ethics and meta-ethics are flourishing. What is even most remarkable is that business companies and administrative units nearly all have long since written their documents on value-based leadership. One reason certainly reflects the quality requirement from the market. The quality of their products and their decisions should satisfy the customer and the public. Another major reason is illustrated in the Guardian some years ago. A research fellow in the Asian filiation of Oxford University, Martin Jacques , published a full page in the newspaper with the title “A selfish, market driven society is eroding our very humanity”. “Eroding our humanity” means isolating the individuals from each other. Loneliness is the new illness. The upper half page is an illustration: Over hundred individuals stand on their tuft of grass, isolated, with no opportunity to reach each other. Each person is expressing deceit, anger, longing and resignation. They all express, in various ways, the lack of relations, which is synonymous with the lack of moral values, that is, lack of mutuality. That is what moral values are about. Values following from the Golden Rule are all relational rules (respect, equality, forgiveness, justice). To write and lecture about these values is a direct contribution to ethics. It is normative ethics. Meta-ethics is the philosophy of how to do it, of its foundation and the history, analysis and justification of ethical propositions and norms.

Kuçuradi also takes into account the development of ethics, and begins with the ancient Ethics: Aristotle , how should one live to achieve Eudaimonia , happiness or blessedness. It cannot be achieved directly, as a goal in itself. Eudaimonia is achieved by fulfillment of one’s capacities. Kant ’s deontological Ethics or Value Ethics (Wertethic) by Max Schuler and Nicolai Hartmann hold that values have an objective existence. The moral norm can be recognized as such, especially in Hartmann , which is Kuçuradi ’s own view.

She distinguishes between three different categories of ethical views. Under the first category she mentions Socratic schools, views like utilitarianism and Camus ’ altruistic individualism and the views of Hans Jonas , E. Levinas and John Rawls . As a second category, the so-called Ethics of discussion. Thirdly, one will find theory of justification.

The author raises, of course, the question of a universal ethic , as does the German theologian and philosopher Hans Küng . If the question points to an answer other than the Golden Rule , certified by all religions and humanistic views, it may be difficult to find.

As every reader will understand, Ioanna Kuçuradi will do as an instructive manual for most occasions. A final question will be, does the fact that ethics has become fashionable mean a lesser dignity in each individual’s action?

That ethics and politics are closely related phenomena is obvious from the first articles in this volume. The political system has to be such that it allows for individual free choice of action. This is a condition to be labeled moral or unmoral. Herta Nagl-Docekal has chosen Kant as an important theoretical basis.

Kant ’s categorical imperative shows the two sides of an individual: it can act to achieve some goal, often dicted by others, and at the same time, be an end in itself. An individual is valuable in itself. It is autonomous and has a dignity in itself. The idea of human dignity reflects of course a long history. Pico della Mirandola ’s booklet from 1484, De hominis dignitate, is but one stage out of many. Imago Dei (Genesis 1:27) is another. The dignity of man should take care of the relation to others (“I should be my brother’s servant”) and to the moral quality of actions.

In a dominant secular society the idea of dignity of man runs at least into two difficulties: Economy has taken a dominant position in the modern society. Adam Smith ’s theory spoke of workers as a mean to the relief of poverty. The dignity of man was reserved for the churches and philosophical faculties at the universities. Now we are left with a population of means to an end. Karl Marx saw already in 1848 that man was reduced to “a payer of bills”, and added that all what is holy has been made profane. It should be added that great human tragedies are still able to call forth the dignity within us – for a while. Maybe that the program of value-based leadership in the long run would succeed in reintroducing the dignity of each individual again, in the workplace. Kant ’s categorical imperative may be a guideline.

The author cultivates the ability to listen to others. To listen to understand them is to take them seriously. It is to re-establish our own dignity in relation to others. This applies especially to women, who more often than not have been overheard by men. The restoration of women’s history is a heavy burden on men. Much has so far been achieved. Much remains. The American feminist, Adrienne Rich , deserves to be listened to, not only Simone de Beauvoir .

Freedom is a difficult notion. Kant advocates also freedom of the speech. But free speech has its limit. As part of a communication the participants are each other’s moderators. For this reason a liberal discourse can also have a moral function. Political liberation is necessary as a basis of moral discourse.

In this case, freedom is not to choose whatever one wants. Freedom is freedom on the basis of duty. Duty towards one’s neighbor is a necessary element of freedom . The danger is that behavior can be stretched too far. Kant allows for liberation, puts, however, also limits to it.

Kant also points to moral behavior towards oneself, “make yourself more perfect than nature has made you”. The author also points to social obligation towards others. Irrespective of the political system, everyone can be kind to another. This is often as possible the closest one can come to happiness.

“Society” is a most honorable word. It denotes a group of people that in one way or another have found and belong to each other. Society is the opposite of loneliness. The reasons that people fall apart, are many. A poor communication is a vital one. Total lack of communication is even worse. For some years I passed a group of youngsters at the nearby school on my way to the university. They were certainly talking, but none listened. Whenever they said something, it was primarily to announce their presence. Some people were also silenced due to an addiction to the culture of visual entertainment. Quite a few seem to have forgotten the basic principle for all communication, the enlargement of your knowledge and emotions. Professional enlargement will always be needed, but it is hardly enough. No society, be it a friendship, marriage or a philosophical society, can ever be established by professionalism alone. Professionalism is not the same as qualified communication.

6 Ethics and General Education

Jure Zovko introduces the German Bildung , and refers to a number of German philosophers, first of all Gadamer and his predecessors Heidegger , Dilthey and Hegel . Bildung has no direct translation, but it has to do with taking care of our traditions as a basis for future actions. General cultural education may catch the meaning of the German term. Besides being the specific task of the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), it also to some extent solves the problem of communication. And communication is dialogue. And dialogical training is to strengthen the role of listening and consequently each individual’s dignity in action. Looking at the face of another person involves also the strengthening of moral values. This is not only entertained by Levinas . It means that communication, dialogue, is in itself a moral exercise. This is why “Bildung” is itself a contribution also to enforcement of moral values.

The value documents of administration and business companies are only focusing on professional values. I have collected between 30 and 40 of them. None of them takes into account the Golden Rule and its values. The Golden Rule enforces the relations between people and consequently the professional values.

The general cultural education also strengthens the judgment among people. Zovko points to the example given by Gadamer : “False diagnosis and false subsumption in medicine are not because of failure of science, but as a rule, at the expense of the personal power of judgment”. It depends on his training, but also on application of his general knowledge of the concrete life situation. A patient is not only a patient. He is primarily a “whole” human being. Applied to professional knowledge, the old Roman master of rhetoric, Quintilian , remarked that effective use of professional knowledge requires that you know more than your profession. And he adds, without the general knowledge it becomes a degeneration of praxis into technique.

It remains to be said that the ethical problems ahead is considerable.

7 Eco-ethica

“Eco-ethica ” is a new type of ethics proposed by the Japanese philosopher Tomonobu Imamichi . The research team appointed covers a great variety of topics related to the new technology. The nuclear technology and communication and information technology are important issues. The main question to the research team was: How can we “live better” or “live together with each other” in our systematized, technological age. It is a task which should be asked every now and then.

Communication technology invades all of us. The invention of the mobile phone should improve the relation between people and consequently the moral quality. A mobile phone could easily be misused by listening to music by oneself and waiting a message, hour after hour. Selfishness and the destruction of one’s ability to concentrate are the effect for many.

“The ethical community” has to be established in subject relations, whereas overuse of the new technology contributes to the isolation of the individual. An ethical relation to animals and the nature in general depends on the moral quality of the community. I side with philosophers like Spinoza that holds nature to be part of ourselves.

When the powerful earthquake happened in Tokyo together with the destruction of the Fukushima Nuclear Facilities, the mobile phone was of no help, because everyone tried to call each other at the same time. The system was overloaded.

The new technology presents a cluster of ethical problems, especially in the energy production. I am sure that technology will solve it. Hashimoto ends with a list of moral and technological questions to be solved in the future. The main problem, however, remains, how to create the community we want. The old view on Eudaimonia is a goal still to be achieved. We are becoming ourselves through others.

8 Ethics in Business Management

Managers of business companies are usually not among those writing about ethical issues. There are two reason for this. One is general, the other specific. The general reason is the view that craving for revenues for the owners and for himself, disregarding the employees, usually makes a company short-lived. To earn money is of course important both for the owner and for the community at large. However, to earn money begins by caring for the employees and also for their families and for the local community. It is to become their friend, as the founder of the world-wide Norwegian Hydro. As their friend, you can put demands on them, to be correct and conscious in their work. First of all, a manager should behave such that he or she deserve their confidence.

The special reason is that the author of the contribution, Tor Dahl , besides having had great success as a manager of the Norwegian and Scandinavian branch of the American firm Manpower, has written just a book and article (in Norwegian) on value-based management. His starting point is the present knowledge society. The value-based management helps people develop personally and professionally to the benefit of themselves and the organization. No wonder Manpower has been recognized for its great respect for and confidence in people. He quotes the writer Charles Garfield , who points to the difficulties in counting values: “Everything that counts, cannot be counted, and also that everything that can be counted, does not count”.

It goes without saying that a professional leader, having a value-based leadership style, must have other qualities than being professional. Some business education is not enough. The leader must be conscious of his or her own personal mental self-development, and be inspired by, and learn from art and culture like literature, theatre, film and music. He/she should also have friends other than business associates. In other words, a leader should have a rich personal identity, enabling him/her to listen to and acknowledge people. Creativity has many sources. Jure Zovko has tried to show the importance of a general, cultural education for the improvement of moral qualities. Rich social relationships and creativity in work should belong to every employee’s identity. We have still some way to go.

Pico della Mirandola wrote in 1484 his well-known book De hominis dignitate. As I said earlier, this idea occurs today only in churches and at the universities. Most people are living under the slogan “useful to achieve something”. Maybe that an enforced value-based leadership style is able to restore also the workers’ value in themselves.

9 Ethics and Architecture

Most of us are victims of architectural praxis , often without knowing it. We are happy to get a roof over our head. Ethical qualities are seldom within our awareness. We register of course whether the flat or house is conveniently organized. However, through its history architecture now and then has self-critical voices – even back to Vitruvius ’ De architectura, written in the first century ad. The famous Vitruvius tried firmitas, utilitas and venustas. The first two of them have professional, the third professional and cultural qualities. An architect, Tom Spector , states in the introduction to his book The ethical architect (2001): Architects live and work today in a functioning but weakened profession that lack a dominant design ethics.

Beata Sirowy turns to phenomenology, to Edmund Husserl , Martin Heidegger and to hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer . The key terms are “lifeworld” (Lebenswelt) praxis (the Aristotelian Phronesis ) and “interpretation”. Architecture should take care of the lifeworld of the individual. A careful “phenomenological” study of the local site and its history and environment is necessary. Thus architecture should help recovering the collective memory of a community, because as Mockbee holds, contemporary commitment culture and modern technology alienated people from their collective memory. Gadamer adds: What man needs is not the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now.

Sirowy uses the example of the “Rural Studio” presented by its founder Samuel Mockbee . In co-operation with Thomas Goodman he quickly established a reputation for innovative design through the utilization of local material to create works referring to vernacular motifs. An architect is a person that “exemplifies an ethical commitment”. It should be added, in agreement with Heidegger that the inhabitants should be “capable of dwelling”. This may require an introduction to the new architecture.

It should be added that moral values may be identical with a certain kind of knowledge. Spinoza from the seventeenth century, f.inst. in his major work Ethica mare geometrica demostrata from 1677 never mentions the term Ethica, but discusses instead three kinds of knowledge, knowledge by sensation and opinion, knowledge by reason and by intuition. These types of knowledge are closely related to Bonaventure ’s famous expression Itinerarium mentis in Deum. Spinoza uses the term “perfection”. Maybe that the last two kinds of knowledge have to do with the education towards capability of dwelling. Heidegger (and Augustin ) uses in a sense the same type of ethics.

10 Ethics and Medicine

The history of medicine has a promising beginning. Over 400 years ad, Hippocrates entertained a philosophical view on man’s body, regarding it as a whole, an organism that could be divided into parts. A physician should be personally and professionally a whole person. One of his successors, Galen , was also a Greek physician. Galen, famous for his intersections of animals, was also inspired by Plato and Aristotle . Later on, the history of medicine predominantly is a professional development. It is quite understandable that the discourse of medicine, particularly from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Harvey, Sydenham, Pasteur), was so absorbing that philosophical ethics had no place in their research – apart from their general education.

Up to the 1960s Valérie Gateau and Anne Fagot-Largeault hold that ethics in medicine was an internal affair within medicine. In the period 1962–1971 arises against scientific research a vague revolt. This new discourse in medicine, especially in bio-ethics, violated human rights. In the period from 1970 three basic principles for bio-ethical medicine, initiated by theologians, philosophers and jurists: (1) respect for the autonomy of the person; (2) beneficence, and (3) justice. At the end of 1980 all institutions had appointed their ethical committee. Empirical method of the social sciences lead to a variety of ethical rules, also for the clinics.

The authors have also referred to Martha Nussbaum , who in turns advocates Amartya Sen ’s idea of “attentive care”. This is even applied to the responsibility with the family. “Bio-ethics is an ethic of care” is a view found in many authors. The authors raises the most difficult and at the same time most important question: How are all the results from the empirical, social research as well as the Déclaration universelle sur la bioéthique et les droits de l’homme been turned into norms?

Kant asked the same question and answered: The good example. The trouble arises when the media think that all the bad instances should be known to everybody. In addition, few persons have had the opportunity to succeed on their own. Other institutions have long since taken over. Your are certainly able to lecture about values. But you cannot lecture about the main property of norms and Declarations that is commitment. I know at least one additional argument that can create norms: To change Kant ’s categorical imperative into hypothetical laws: To ask oneself whether or not one wants to be respected and treated with justice. If you do, you should exercise the same qualities towards others. In every branch of education, not only in the medical profession, this question should be dealt with repeatedly.

With this question the highly advanced medical profession may, philosophically speaking, be on its way to the beginning of its history.