DAVAO CENTRAL COLLEGE, INC.

Juan dela Cruz Street, Toril, Davao City

Landline No. (082) 291 1882

Accredited by ACSCU-ACI

GE ETH 1
Week 1: Ethics: Its Meaning and Scope

Learning Outcome: at the end of this topic, the students will be

able to:
1. Interpret the concept of ethics

Concept Digest

Introduction

What is good? What is bad? Are good and bad subjective or relative?
Is there an objective and absolute basis as to what is good and
bad? If there is, then where and how can we find it? What makes
good—good? And what makes bad—bad? And how do we we recognize that
what we do is right or wrong?

A brilliant author in the name of Robert Fitch put the whole tragic
and lamentable fate of today’s morality:

“We live today in an age when ethics has become obsolete. It is superseded by science, deleted by
psychology, dismissed as emotive philosophy. It is drowned in compassion, evaporated into aesthetics
and retreats before relativism.”

For morality to have sense and come alive again, there must be
some kind of an anchor— where everything is objectively grounded—
where our actions (as free and rational beings), either good or
bad— have to be held ultimately accountable.

Ethics is essentially and mainly about right and wrong, good and
bad. Properly taught and understood, the subject of ethics, teaches
us what we “ought to do;”, to do the “right thing;”, to be moral
and to be good persons, in the truest and finest sense of the word.

Let it be clear, though, that no book or manual on Ethics or

Morality has all the answers (much more the correct ones)— to the
perplexities and complexities of the moral life, especially in
today’s highly scientific age of modern information technology.

This, however, should not discourage us to go on and stop trying

for here lies the beauty and challenge of being human, gifted with
reason and will. To be human is to constantly search for better
ways to be good at being human.

Ethics: Its Meaning and Scope

Etymological Meaning of Ethics

The word “ethics” is derived from the Greek “ethos” which can be
translated in English as customs or a particular way and manner of
acting and behaving. Thus, customs would also mean as a form of

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 DAVAO CENTRAL COLLEGE, INC.
Juan dela Cruz Street, Toril, Davao City
Landline No. (082) 291 1882

Accredited by ACSCU-ACI
behavior or character. The Latin equivalent for custom is “mos” or
“mores” where the root word for the term “moral” or “morality” is
derived.

In what sense the word character is used here?

Character used to refer to how a man behaves or acts. Further, it

pertains to something that one is used to do and has been
continually doing to the point that it already has become his
distinction mark.

The same holds true to custom. The term custom is generally used
to refer to beliefs and practices whose roots are buried too deeply
in time and on one’s memories to the point that they have already
lost their meaning and significance. We simply do these beliefs
and practices because they are “traditional”.

Question: Does it mean then that the things that we are used to do
are the ones that constitute what is ethical or moral? Is being
“used to” the measure of the morality of an act?

Answer: The morality of an action is not dependent upon the

frequency of doing the act in question.

Point: The ethical justification of an act is not found in its

being “used to” but in its accordance to man’s rationality. Lying
for example is not either right or wrong not because we are used
to doing them but because an honest evaluation according to our
rationality says they are wrong.

Ethics as a Discipline

Ethics is one of the seven major branches of Philosophy along with

metaphysics, theodicy, cosmology, (rational) psychology,
epistemology and logic. In order to understand Ethics in its proper
context, let’s have a brief discussion on the basics of philosophy.

Philosophy as held by Andronicus of Rhodes, comes form the Greek

word philo (love) and the Latin sophia (wisdom). In the context of
Pythagoreans, wisdom is the practical knowledge— the knowledge
that is used in day to day living. Essentially, philosophy is
defined as the “science which inquires into the ultimate reasons,
causes and principles of all things in the light of human reason
alone”.

Ethics is a science as it meets the two fold criteria for a

discipline to be a science, being (1) a systematic body of
connected data and (2) being able to provide an explanation for
its claims. In Ethics, we do not only say that an act is good or
bad, more than this, we study how come and why an act is good or
bad.

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 DAVAO CENTRAL COLLEGE, INC.
Juan dela Cruz Street, Toril, Davao City
Landline No. (082) 291 1882

Accredited by ACSCU-ACI
Furthermore, Ethics being a philosophical discipline, is best
studied using two fold way in dealing with philosophy, (1) studying
philosophy and the (2) philosophizing. In studying philosophy, one
becomes a specialist, the learner only studies everyone about and
gains master over the subject matter; he is not obliged to give
his assent or commitment to it. In philosophizing, one becomes a
generalist, the learner brings everything he has learned through
the study and finds its application in different contexts. By doing
so, he can now give either his assent and commitment to the subject
or simply rejects it.

Ethics being a philosophical science does not only give rules or

norms for good conduct; more importantly, it digs into the ultimate
principles behind the rules and explains why the rules are stated
as they are.

Objects of Ethics

Ethics has its object of study of inquiry (1) material object

*human act/human conduct* and (2) formal object *goodness or
badness* of the said act.

Example:
Stealing (material object), a philosopher will be interested in
the moral justification of stealing, or the lack thereof (formal
object).

References:
Fernandez, Ambong, Grumo, Emmanuel and Reambonanzjo, Eric. 2012.
Ethics Basic Concepts, Theories & Cases. Davao City: MS LOPEZ
Printing & Publishing.

Atacador, Rey, et, al. 2015. Intoduction to ETHICS with Social

Philosophy and Values Information. Malabon City. Mute Publishing
House, Inc.

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