Defining Ethics: Part 2

The quest for a definition of ethics continues. In the first post of this series, we examined a definition offered by authors Beauchamp and Childress. While their focus on the different components of ethics (metaethics, applied ethics, etc.) is valuable, defining morality as stable social norms or communal consensus raises serious concerns. One being that what constitutes consensus or even community is often difficult to determine.  

It appears then that a definition of ethics that lacks appeals to norms or consensus should be examined next to compare with the previous post. At this point in the search what characteristics a “good definition” would have is unknown, but perhaps by examining different philosophical traditions and schools of thought they may become evident. 

The philosophical tradition derived from Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas (otherwise known as the Aristotelian-Thomistic Tradition) will provide the sharp contrast to Beauchamp and Childress. An excellent English defense of the Aristotelian-Thomistic approach to ethics can be found in the 1909 volume, The Science of Ethics, authored by Dr. Michael Cronin, who was a Professor of Ethics at the National University of Ireland in Dublin.  

On the first page he states, “Ethics may be defined as ‘the science of human conduct as according with human Reason and as directed by Reason towards man’s final natural end.’” Admittedly, this definition isn’t immediately accessible to someone new to the philosophical tradition that Cronin is a part of, but fortunately he dedicates several pages to fully explain each part of this definition.  

Ethics as Science 

First, Cronin distinguishes sciences and art. The difference between the two, he posits, is that the objective of an art is to “facilitate action” while the objective of science is to “discover truth.” It is important to emphasize that when Dr. Cronin uses the word “science” he does not mean it to indicate the restricted modern sense of science associated with hypotheses, experiments, and empirical data. Rather, science is a body of sure knowledge that can be known via demonstration and these include the philosophical sciences, the historical sciences, the natural sciences, and (as he argues) the science of ethics. Since sciences discover truth and the end of ethics is to determine moral truths or “tell us what is good and evil,” ethics must be a science.  

Human Conduct 

Ethics only considers human actions and this has two subsequent implications. First, ethics has nothing to say of the actions of “anything lower than man” (animals or plants), or anything higher than man (angels or divine actions). Simply put, what constitutes the good for man will not be the same good for a tree or for an angelic being. Cronin defends this point more at length, but it would require a further defense of his theory of the good, which isn’t essential to understand the definition he offers. 

Second, the human action or conduct that ethics is interested in is deliberate acts that proceed from reason (more on that below). For example, ethics does not examine an accidental action like sneezing on someone, provided there is not gross negligence on the part of the sneezer. Likewise, autonomous or reflexive actions are not considered. 

Furthermore, the state of the self or character of the agent does not take part in the analysis since, “it is not character but action that is primarily good or bad.” Cronin argues that men can be born in such a way that pursuit of evil is easier for them, like someone who is genetically predisposed to abuse alcohol (my example). These character flaws are good or bad in reference to the action they tend toward and are not bad in themselves. However, action is not merely an external observable event. Again, from Cronin, “the only thing that is morally good or morally bad in itself and primarily is the act of the will, and the other powers in so far as they are controlled by will.” So, willing the murder of an innocent neighbor would be an action that the science of ethics could and should study. 

According with Human Reason 

At this point the explanation of the definition becomes a bit more technical. Cronin, calling on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, states that human reason can relate to the order of things in the universe in two ways. First, it can consider the order of things like the order of the heavenly bodies or the order of the growth in plants. Aquinas wrote that this relation is called Natural Philosophy. Second, reason can constitute an order, such as the ordering of premises to conclusions in logic. It is the second relation that is of importance to ethics.  

According to Cronin, reason constitutes an order into conduct, otherwise known as the ethical order. This does not mean that the ethical order is arbitrary though. The ethical order that reason sets up into conduct depends on "certain fixed and necessary laws,” and the whole objective of ethics is to discover or spell out what these laws are. It is useful to quote Cronin at length: 

We see, then, that the order which is contemplated in ethics is not one (to use a modern expression) which is given to Reason, but rather an order which Reason itself sets up in the acts of the will. Its specific object is “an order in human acts to be established by Reason.” In Psychology, on the other hand, Reason merely plays the part of knower. It tells us what are the relations between the faculties and the souls, &c. In other words, whereas Psychology treats of what is, Ethics treats of an “order” in our acts which perhaps is not, but which, if conduct is to be rational, ought to be, and which can only be set up in the will by Reason itself.  

Simply put, reason sets up, directs, or controls our deliberate human actions. When this deliberate conduct is in accord with what ethics tells us is good or bad, our conduct is rational or irrational.  

Man’s Final Natural End 

Ethics examines the “end” or the goal of our conduct. A thief may steal an apple for the end of avoiding starvation, and this is his end whether or not he is able to realize it (i.e. steal the apple). Cronin contends that ethics also examines not only what our immediate ends to immediate conduct is, but what our final end is. As we will see in the next post on defining ethics, the end is exactly where Aristotle begins. If our actions (directed by reason) point toward or aim for the final end, then they will be morally good, but if they point away from our final end they are morally evil. “The last end will be the first ground of action, since it is that which moves the attainment of all other intermediate ends.” 

Strengths and Weaknesses 

To summarize we have seen that ethics for Cronin is, “the science of human conduct as according with human reason and as directed by reason towards man’s final natural end.” Ethics is a science because it is a demonstrable body of knowledge about what is good and what is evil. More specifically, ethics studies the good and evil of deliberate human actions that are directed by reason. If the deliberate human action is directed toward man’s final end, then it is good, but if it is contrary to man’s final end then it is evil. 

To contrast with Beauchamp and Childress, this definition does not reference the consensus of a community or norms in society, so an obvious strength is the avoidance of all the difficulties laid out previously. In addition, the discussion that ethics only considers deliberate actions of the will is quite thought provoking. It seems that Cronin would contend that a woman who wills to be an adulteress then is able to be analyzed by the science of ethics, whereas a consequentialist would hold that her actions are the analyzable portion and not her will. More on consequentialism in future posts.  

Instead of consensus, norms, etc., Cronin uses concepts like good, evil, conduct, reason, and final ends. A difficulty then is that a high level of skepticism currently exists around ideas like good, evil, or reason so a significant amount of effort is needed to demonstrate that they are true. To be sure, a classical belief in reason has been critiqued often in modern philosophy. The skepticism around goodness, evil, and reason are not intrinsic weaknesses with the definition of ethics offered here however. 

Cronin’s contention that character is not primary to ethics may well be a weakness. His argument is that one can be born with a character that tends towards evil actions. Yet, doesn’t this just show how important cultivating a “good” character is? After all, character, in Cronin’s tradition at least, is something that is developed and changeable. However, his point that the goodness of a character is in reference to action is a strong one, and needs to be examined at length. 

In the next post of the defining ethics series we will explore Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, because it ties heavily into the discussion what role character has in ethics.