Chapter Three

Ethics and Morality

Introduction
Whenever human (berings) band together to live in fellowship, they have same sort of an
agreement or understanding of what they ought to do in order to ensure their collective
survival and of what they ought to be in their relationship even as they, individually or
collectively, struggle for a good and a better life. Without same common understanding or
definition, however facet it may be, of what they ought to pursue, and of what they ought to
avoid in the pursuit of their common aim, people, given their material conditions of life, cannot
always line in harming; .., the possibility of disrupting their social life. It is for purposes of
preventing evil discord and social chaos that there be an organized society a common ideal
which are expected to pursue, and a common standard or norm which no one should
(trausgless) and ignore. In short, it is out of the need to safeguard their social existence and
their freedom to (fasthim) in kind of life they meant for themselves and for their generations
that civilized people have their ethics and morality.

I. Ethics and Morality: Their Social Origin
Among living things, the fundamental law in self-preservation by way of satisfying
their needs so they could persist on their (oeva) being as far as they can. The instinct
to survive which (Baruck Spinoza) (1632-77) calls (covatees sese preservardi), or
which Arthur Sehopeuhauer (1738-1860) describes as the will to live, or which
Freidrich Nietzseke (1844-1900) dramatizes as the will to power, and to conquer
whatever stands in the way to their self realizationappe4a to be the essence or the
slow vital (Ilouri Bergsore) (1859-1941) of all living organizms.
Everything, says the philosopher Spinoza,( iusofor) as it is in itself endeavorto
persist in its own kind, in its own being is nothing else than the essence of that
being.
Humans are no .. to the fundamental cause of self-preservation. That man is said to
be a pleasure-seeking and a pain-avoiding animal, is but to highlight the fact that
it is in the nature of human beings that they pursue what is for their self-inherent
and satisfaction. The law of self-preservation and self-interest is what defines human
beings to (pealing) their
1- As guated ferm the ethics of Bernard Spinoza by Will (kileraunt), Story of
Philosophy, New York: Garden Publishing Comp. 1993 p.136