Assignment 1- What I Can Remember About the Development of My Ethical Perception

After seeing the topic of the assignment, I was trying to recall memories about the

development of my superego from my childhood. And I realized that I have very few

memories of it. A few of them have settled in my mind, perhaps as touchstones or as random

permanent memories. This may be due to the fact that I was a child who did not do much

'naughty' when I was little and did not need strict reminders about ethics. There are certain

cut-off points that I remember in the development of my sense of right and wrong. If I

remember correctly, one of these cut-off points is when I started reading Nietzsche in my third

year of high school. In the remaining part before this, my knowledge about what is right and

wrong is what I learned from my family, what I learned from society and religious teachings

(I was a child who gave great importance to religious teachings until the cutting point I

mentioned). The only ethical memory I remember from that period is that one day I lied to my

father and he looked at me with a face full of disappointment and calmly asked me why I did

it. I can always remember his facial expression at that moment as if it were new. Let me try to

describe and explain what that moment taught me. I will take a perspective based on my age

that day and try to interpret it through the eyes of that child. The first thing I interpreted from

my father's facial expression was how bad what I had done was and how damaging it was to

the relationship between my father and me. I thought my father would never believe me again.

And without realizing it, I placed cause-effect relationships in my mind about the effect of

lying. Let's come after Nietzsche; After I started reading his books, my religious beliefs began

to disappear under the influence of my other thoughts at the time (This was not a process that

could be expressed so simply, but I think maybe there will be a day when I focus entirely on

this in other assignments during the semester). The 'right and wrong' limitations brought by

religion began to be replaced in my mind by a more rational understanding of ethics that tried

to be built entirely based on reason. I also had a Montaigne period around this time. His
influence was more about open-mindedness. In other words, it was a period in which I built

my own rational sense of 'right and wrong' and, in doing so, learned to respect that other

people's 'right and wrong' might be different from mine. In this text, I tried to explain some

points that I can remember about the development of the concept of ethics in me, without

being too general or too specific. I believe that I can examine these in more depth in other

assignments by blending them with what I learned in the course.

Damla Laçin

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