What is ethics  (Page 3/6)

Deontological simply means the study (or science) of duty. Kant did not believe that humans could predict future consequences with any substantial degree of certainty. Ethical theory based on a guess about future consequences appalled him. What he did believe was that if we use our facility of reason, we can determine with certainty our ethical duty. As to whether or not doing our duty would make things better or worse (and for whom), Kant was agnostic.

Duty-based ethics is enormously important for (though consistently ignored by) at least two kinds of folks: politicians and business people. It is also the key to a better understanding of our responsibilities as members of teams. Teams (like work groups or political campaign committees) are narrowly focused on achieving very clearly defined goals: winning the election, successfully introducing a new product, or winning a sailboat race. Sometimes a coach or a boss will say, “Look, just do whatever it takes.” Ethically, “whatever it takes”, means the ends justify the means. This was Kant’s fundamental criticism of the Utilitarians.

For Kant, there were some values (duties) that could never be sacrificed to the greater good. He wrote: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thy own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.” Fellow team members, employees, campaign staffs, customers, partners, etc. are always to some extent means to our various goals (ends), but they are also persons. And persons, Kant believed, cannot be just used, they must also be respected in their own right, whether or not the goal is achieved. He called this absolute respect for persons a Categorical Imperative.

In any team situation the goal is critical, but treating team members with respect is imperative. Teams fall apart when a team member feels used or abused (treated as less important than the overall goal itself). Great leaders carry the double burden of achieving a worthwhile end without causing those who sacrifice to achieve the goal being treated as merely expendable means. Persons are never merely a means to an end. They are ends in themselves! We owe that understanding to Immanuel Kant.

It is one thing to understand that there are duties which do not depend on consequences; it is quite another to develop the character to act on those duties. This is where Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) comes in. Aristotle wrote the first systematic treatment of ethics in Western Civilization: Nicomachean Ethics.

Today we call his approach to ethics virtue ethics . For Aristotle and other Greek thinkers, virtue meant the excellence of a thing. The virtue of a knife is to cut; the virtue of a physician is to heal; the virtue of a lawyer is to seek justice. In this sense, Ethics becomes the discipline of discovering and practicing virtue. Aristotle begins his thinking about ethics by asking, “What do people desire?” He discovers the usual things— wealth, honor, physical and psychological security—but he realizes that these things are not ends in themselves; they are means to ends.