Description
What is ethics?
If ethics were only a matter of rules, customs and contracts, then such questions would be relatively straightforward. We already have abundant procedures, instruments, conventions and regulations ranging from law to etiquette. But to say that ethics does not duplicate these is not to measure its importance or scope by them. Ethical issues are often grey; ethical reasoning is not as concrete (or sometimes as precise) as legal reasoning; people can differ on the subject of ethics as they may not on the laws of physics or the facts of geography. Although these are facts about ethics, they are not reasons for believing that ethics is conceptually soft or trivial. Ethics is not poor reasoning, vague law, indeterminate custom or an ideological form of social control, but one of the most important sources of motivation and guidance in human conduct. It occupies an important field of knowledge in its own right.
Aristotle gave a view of the matter in a famous passage of his Nicomachean Ethics, Our account of this science (ethics) will be adequate if it achieves such clarity as the subject-matter allows; for the same degree of precision is not to be expected in all discussions … Therefore in discussing subjects, and arguing from evidence, conditioned in this way, we must be satisfied with a broad outline of the truth; that is, in arguing about what is for the most part so from premises which are for the most part true we must be content to draw conclusions that are similarly qualified … it is a mark of the trained mind never to expect more precision in the treatment of any subject than the nature of the subject permits; for demanding logical demonstrations from a teacher of rhetoric is clearly about as reasonable as accepting mere plausibility from a mathematician.1
Ethical reasoning, according to Aristotle, is not a matter of applying the appropriate algorithm to a situation and mechanically calculating the correct moral result, the correct moral prescription. Ethical reasoning is more subtle, less precise, often more difficult. Not all ethical thinkers have agreed with Aristotle. Some have tried to put a much more precise formulation on moral duties. Nevertheless, given the kinds of debates about ethical problems in Australia, it is clear that lack of precision is not the problem, or at least not the major problem, in solving them.
In order to gain a clearer grasp of what ethics is and is not, consider the film The Godfather. At the beginning of the film we are disgusted by the violence and absence of humanity in the Mafia. As the story progresses, however, we come to see the internal rules of ‘the Family’ at work and realise that, although they are contrary to the rules of normal society, they make their own kind of sense. At the end of the film, the anti-hero, Michael, is attending the baptism of his son in a church while his henchmen systematically kill his rivals for leadership of the Family. This is how life is in the Mafia. This is what we understand to be necessary to make sense in terms of that kind of culture. The Mafia has its own ethos, its own rules and mores. This is a dark parallel to the ethical values of the wider society, and it is this parallel, rather than the ruthlessness and violence per se, that causes The Godfather to be shocking.
The film raises all kinds of ethical questions that apply equally to society and business. Is just any system of binding rules, norms and duties a system of ethics? Is it possible to say that one system is better than another? Does not moral luck determine the circumstances of people’s birth and development and therefore the attitudes they bring to life? The importance of these questions is readily apparent. If people born in Australia in the late nineteenth century believed wholeheartedly in the White Australia Policy, how can they be blamed? If a person grew up as a white child in South Africa during the Vorster regime, why is it blameworthy to have white supremacist attitudes? And who is to say that one system of social beliefs and customs, even if racist, is worse than another? These are real questions, requiring thought and careful consideration.
If cultural relativism is the case, then business must adapt to the norms and practices of the cultures in which it operates. What is unethical in Australia might be good manners in one of our trading partners. What would be poor working con-ditions here might be superior working conditions overseas. Sharp practice2 might well be the norm elsewhere. Surely it is mistaken to try to universalise our standards of right and wrong in our dealings with other countries. Or is it?