ETHICS

DR. LIONEL E. BUENAFLOR

Head-Social and Behavioural Sciences Department
Head-Batangas Heritage Center
University of Batangas
 The Concept of a Good Life

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Difficulty in Philosophy
• Philosophy is difficult only to those who do not
aspire for knowledge.
• Most people considered philosophy to be more
focused on the speculative rather than on the
practical. Because of this, people would not want
anymore to philosophize due to its impracticability.
• The misunderstanding of philosophy can be
attributed to teachers who are pounding on their
pride as intellectual people instead of making the
students understand what philosophy really is.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Difficulty in Philosophy

• Because philosophy is considered speculative, it has

lost its groundedness on the life of the modern
people due to the question of necessity.
• Technological advancement has led people to seek
for tangible as they consider the intangible as
senseless and impractical. What is concrete is
proper and what is abstract is oftentimes neglected
because of its lack of groundedness in life.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Concept of a Good Life
• People are always searching for a good life.
• Good life became a problem when man started
thinking. Since the early people were living in
harmony, issues about truth, goodness, and beauty
were never a problem.
• For the eastern people, questions on goodness and
beauty were never a problem. Eastern people were
not aiming for the attainment of material and
intellectual greatness. They were just aiming for the
perfection of the self.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Concept of a Good Life
• In the east, metaphysical and epistemological truths
were not much of their concern because knowledge
on such things could only make their existence more
difficult.
• In the west, people were living in a diaspora. They
did not only barter material goods. They were also
bartering ideas or intellectual goods. Since they
were coming from different regions and from
different beliefs, people were able to realize that
their ideas of the beautiful was not anymore to be
considered beautiful when compared with others.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Concept of a Good Life

• People began to philosophize and think of the

reason why there were lives ore beautiful than that
of others.
• Material evolution led the people to discriminate
others and look down on people whose lives were
not as good as theirs. In this case, we may say that
when man becomes civilized, the more he actually
becomes uncivilized.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Implication of Civilization

• Civilization has made man think in a spatio-temporal

dimension. Human beings will always look for the
cause and effect in all their actions.
• Hence, goodness and beauty are always connected
with their daily activities.
• Goodness becomes causal and material.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Man as a Person of Goodness and Truth

• When a human person became aware of himself,

different philosophers came out, each having a
different view as regards what and who is a human
person.
• Man is an animal and yet not an animal.
• Man is the only creature who is capable of asking
about the meaning of his life.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Man as a Person of Goodness and Truth

• John Locke considered the human person

as a “thinking and intelligent being that
has reason and reflection and can
consider itself as itself.
• Every man will always search for the
good.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Man as a Person of Goodness and Truth

• Immanuel Kant considered the human

person as an autonomous self-regulating
will who is capable of making moral
decisions by and for himself.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Man as a Person of Goodness and Truth

• Viktor Frankl held that a human being is

able to live and even to die for the sake of
his ideals and values.
• Man is a being who is always in search for
meaning.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Man as a Person of Goodness and Truth

• Erich Fromm believed that conscience

enables the person to know what ought
to be done in order to become his own
self.
• Conscience became the reason why the
human person is aware of the goals of
life, as well as the norms for the
attainment of such goals.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Man as a Person of Goodness and Truth

• St. Thomas Aquinas believed that what

constitutes the human person as a moral
subject is his conscience. The human
person discovers the moral law because
of his conscience.
• Man’s conscience is also responsible for
making the human person aware of the
welfare and dignity of the other persons.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Need to Redefine Ethics
• Because of the development of science and
technology, man’s concept of goodness has
changed. Before, his concept of goodness is
related to the norm of morality.
• When man was able to taste a more
pleasurable life brought about by
technological advancements, his concept of
goodness became related to physical
pleasures.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Need to Redefine Ethics
• With his inclination to pleasure, man began
looking at things as moral if it is pleasurable
and if it prevents him from suffering pain.
• For the modern people, the basis of morality
does not anymore lie on the value judgment
but rather, on the measurement of pleasure
and pain.
• For this reason, there is a need to redefine
ethics.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 The Need to Redefine Ethics
• Plato considered Ethics as the Supreme
Philosophy, the science par excellence.
Because Ethics deals with the attainment of
man’s highest good—happiness, ethics is the
only discipline that deals with the attainment
of the ultimate goal of a human person.
• Confucius, Plato, and Aristotle held that
philosophers must be the rulers of all people.
• In the Republic, Plato held that sa society
must be ruled by the philosopher-king.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Definition of Ethics
• Ethics, or moral philosophy, is the attempt to
achieve a systematic understanding of the
nature of morality and what it requires of us
—in Socrates’s words, of “how we ought to
live,” and why.
• Knowing the “how we ought to live” could
have been easier if we have a simple,
uncontroversial definition of what morality is.
But this is impossible.
• There are many rival theories and they are
offending one another.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Definition of Ethics
• Ethics is a practical and normative science, based
on reason, which studies human acts, and
provides norms for their goodness and badness
(cf. Buenaflor 2018, 7ff).
• Actus Humanus vs. Actus Hominis
• The ideal vision of man provides for him a sense
of value. A value is what individual deems to be
useful, desirable, or significant. It sets in man an
idea of good that is inclined towards that which is
objectively the fulfillment of the being of man.
• A good action is that which imposes moral
obligation or duty.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Why Do We Study Ethics?
• Man is an imago Dei (an image of God).
Hence, he is by nature good. It is the nature
of the human person to incline himself
towards the good.
• Man will find meaning in life if he will be
doing good deeds.
• Because man has been endowed with
reason, which is sometimes inclined towards
his passion, there is always the possibility
that he may choose to turn away from
goodness.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Why Do We Study Ethics?
• Man’s inclination towards earthly goods will
oftentimes lead him to envy and despair.
Hence, he needs to study ethics to be
guided so that he may be able to fully
understand what real happiness is.
• Through ethics, man will be able to
understand that the goal of human being is
not merely the acquisition of material
goods.
• His real fulfillment is in the development of
moral quality, which places man above brute
creations.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Why Do We Study Ethics?
• Ethics provides the person with an idea of
what right living is.
• Ethics is the very investigation of the
meaning of life.
• Education can serve as the means in order to
teach the young people about what the
good really is. Hence, education should not
focus only on teaching technological
innovations and advancements.

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor

 Assignment:

• Understand the following:

1. Ethics and Its Relation to other
Sciences (pages 10-12).
2. Standards of Morality: Moral vs.
Non-Moral (pages 12-13).
3. The Divisions of Ethics (pages 14-
15).

Dr. Lionel E. Buenaflor