Modern ethical theory.
The end of the 19th and 20th centuries became a turning point and tragic for all mankind: revolutions, world wars, the division of the world into 2 hostile camps. This, of course, was reflected in the development of modern ethical concepts. Only 2 of them became the most common: the ethics of violence and the ethics of non-violence.
Modern ethics violence. The spokesmen for the ideas of violence were: Karl Marx, F. Nietzsche and E. Dühring. Dühring and Nietzsche assigned violence a decisive role in the history of mankind. They considered justified the victims during the change of power and system, believed that a person has the right to radically change social life if it does not meet his aspirations, and those who do not want this can be forced to do what they do not want under the threat of violence. Marx and Engels, who argued with Dühring regarding the denial of violence, nevertheless became the founders of the practice of violence, elevated it to the rank of the effective law of any revolution. The destruction of people takes place when changing the social structure. The ethics of violence continued to develop in the writings of Lenin, and was applied by him directly in practice - the dictatorship of the proletariat. This ethic gave birth to the bloodiest dictatorships of the 20th century - Stalinism and Hitlerism.
Modern ethics of nonviolence. It arose in opposition to the ethics of violence, which was widespread in the 20th century. The main ethical principle of this direction is the absence of any violence against the person, both moral and physical. Through this, a person builds relationships with nature and surrounding people.
A significant role in the development of ethical categories of non-violence belongs to Leo Tolstoy. He believed that through violence people justify the presence of the most negative vices in them: evil, self-interest, envy, lust for power. But these qualities are destructive, first of all, for their bearer. You should change your moral values, come to God and accept the main principle of Christianity - you cannot respond with evil to violence.
The name of another spokesman for the ethics of non-violence, M. L. King, is associated with the opening of the Institute for Non-Violence in New York. He substantiated the basic principles of philanthropy, as well as methods for their development in himself. King understood that the implementation of these principles is not an easy task, but it is the key to human survival. Love should become the driving force of any person, even to his enemies. Hence, an important quality of education in oneself is forgiveness.
The ideas of another humanist of the 20th century, Gandhi, also gained fame. He fought for the independence of his country exclusively by peaceful means. Gandhi believed that the principles of non-violence are inherent only in strong people who brought them up through reason. The laws of love are as effective in the world as the laws of gravity - a loving person gets a lot in return. The harmony of reason and love in a person is the real foundation of non-violence.
The pinnacle of the ethics of non-violence was the direction of the ethics of reverence for life, developed by Albert Schweitzer. Education in the soul of love, forgiveness, respect for others is possible through contemplation of the perfection of the structure of nature and man by the Creator. Schweitzer's ethics is practical, it provides for the cultivation of the necessary qualities in oneself that will bring harmony into a person's life.
There are lines of morality that no one is allowed to cross. This is especially true of human health and personal tragedies. But, alas, in our world with its market relations, the anticipation of money destroys all moral foundations. Terrible proof of this were the photographs of the helpless Oleg Tabakov in the hospital, which circled the entire Internet. This act of the unfortunate journalist was sharply criticized by the musician Alexander Rosenbaum and other artists.
As you know, a few days ago, people's favorite Oleg Pavlovich was hospitalized. Friends of the 82-year-old actor and doctors say that the condition is serious. An operation was performed, after which the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov was placed in intensive care. One of the Russian TV channels decided to secretly check the health of the artist. What came of it, the editors will tell "So simple!". We will also tell you about cyberethics, which you simply need to know about in our digital world.
Modern ethics
The journalist made his way to the intensive care unit to the bed of the helpless Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov. He photographed both the artist, wrapped in the wires of the devices, and his vital signs, and then he let it all out on the Internet. When this horror caught the eye of Alexander Rosenbaum, the musician could not contain his indignation. He also asked the Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent to contact him to express his point of view on such filming.
“I was on tour when they sent me these shots. I immediately called TV presenter Elena Malysheva and said that this was a disaster. What is happening in our lives and with our conscience? It's just beyond good and evil! We have fought for many years to ensure that patients can be visited in intensive care. Allowed. This is good.
But some person walked by with a phone and filmed everything: the actor himself, and even the monitor, on which Oleg Pavlovich's life parameters are visible. Blaming healthcare workers is wrong. Bad people, to put it mildly, those who exposed these shots, hung them on the Internet, and gave them on television.
When Princess Diana was in a fatal accident, no publication published pictures of her torn body. And there were a lot of photographers there. The fact that Tabakov was shown in this form is, from the point of view of humanity, just a crime. Something needs to be done so that this does not happen in nature.
I remind you once again that we should not blame the medical institutions here, which, according to the law, open the doors for the relatives of the patient. And those who publish such photos should be blamed. A great man, a people's favorite in the most difficult condition, and in such a form, at such a time ... This is beyond human understanding.
We fully agree that such antics of journalists are inhumane. After all, this is a personal tragedy of the artist and his family, and not the property of the public. And in general, there is such a thing as cyberethics - a philosophical area of ethics that studies human behavior on the Internet and on information portals in order to develop certain rules for using them. In many countries, it is given great importance and controlled by specialized bodies. 
Cyberethics examines whether it is legal to broadcast personal information about other people on the Internet, such as current location, whether users need to be protected from false information, who owns digital data (music, movies, books, web pages) and what users are entitled to do with them, and also whether access to the Internet is a basic right for everyone.
Availability, censorship and filtering of information raise many ethical questions related to cyberethics. The existence of these issues continues to challenge our understanding of privacy and secrecy, and affects our participation in society. Cyberethics is based on the Code of Fair Use of Information. These requirements were introduced by the US Department of Health and Human Services back in 1973.
Among the moral theories of the 20th century, special attention should be paid to the ethics of non-violence, which finds an increasing number of adherents throughout the world. Historically, there has been and still continues to exist the tradition of resolving various state, national, interpersonal problems from positions of strength. The ethic of non-violence is a completely different approach to conflict resolution that excludes violence. The ideas of non-violence are formulated in the Bible, in the New Testament, which recommends that if "whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." In this case, a certain ideal was reflected, according to which non-resistance to evil is seen as a manifestation of moral perfection, moral superiority over another's sin. The non-multiplication of evil is regarded as a manifestation of good. The corresponding biblical commandments were affirmed with great difficulty in the minds of man and still seem impossible to many. The ethics of non-violence received significant development in the works of the outstanding Russian writer and thinker L.N. Tolstoy (1828-1910), who believed that the recognition of the need to resist evil by violence is nothing more than people justifying their usual favorite vices: revenge, self-interest, envy, anger, lust for power. In his opinion, the majority of people in the Christian world feel the misery of their situation and use to save themselves the means that, in their worldview, they consider valid. This means is the violence of some people over others. Some people, who consider the existing state order beneficial for themselves, try to maintain this order by the violence of state activity, others, by the same violence of revolutionary activity, try to destroy the existing system and install another, better one in its place. L. Tolstoy finds the error of political doctrines in that they consider it possible to unite people through violence so that they all, without resisting, submit to the same structure of life. “All violence consists in the fact that some people, under the threat of suffering or death, force other people to do what the raped do not want.” Violence does not create anything, it only destroys. He who repays evil with evil multiplies suffering, intensifies disasters, but does not relieve others or himself from them. Thus, violence is powerless, fruitless, destructive. Not without reason, in the teachings of the ancient sages, love, compassion, mercy, retribution of good for evil were considered the basis of moral relations. Another supporter of this theory is M. Gandhi, who dreamed of gaining India's freedom through peaceful
means, considered non-violence as a weapon of the strong. Fear and love are contradictory concepts. The law of love works like the law of gravity, whether we accept it or not. Just as a scientist works miracles by applying the law of nature in various ways, so a person who applies the law of love with the accuracy of a scientist can
perform even greater miracles. Non-violence does not mean passivity, it is active and involves at least two forms of struggle: non-cooperation and civil disobedience. Ideas of non-violence as a means of resolution
conflicts and problems finds an increasing number of its supporters around the world.
One of the most interesting philosophical concepts of the 20th century is the ethics of reverence for life, the founder of which is the outstanding humanist of our time - Albert Schweitzer. At the heart of this theory is the principle of reverence for life in any form, alleviating the suffering of all living. Reverence for life, according to A. Schweitzer, refers to both natural and spiritual phenomena, since admiration for natural life necessarily entails admiration for spiritual life. “They find it especially strange in the ethics of reverence for life that it does not emphasize the distinction between higher and lower, more valuable and less valuable life. She has her reasons for doing so. For a truly moral person, all life is sacred, even that which, from our human point of view, seems inferior,” he notes. Equalizing the moral value of all existing forms of life, A. Schweitzer, nevertheless, fully admits a situation of moral choice: “Being, together with all living beings, under the influence of the law of self-dividing will to live, a person increasingly finds himself in a position where he can save his life ,
like life in general, only at the expense of another life. If he is guided by the ethics of reverence for life, then
he harms and destroys life only under the pressure of necessity, and he never does it thoughtlessly. But where he is free to choose, man seeks a position in which he could help life and avert from it the threat of suffering and destruction. Understanding how difficult the fate of those who will follow his ideas, A. Schweitzer draws attention to the need for self-denial as a means of activity. Self-denial does not devalue a person's personality, but helps to get rid of selfishness, bias in assessing others. It is necessary to fight evil, but not by means of evil, not by revenge, by stopping the spread of evil. In this position, the views of A. Schweitzer are close to the ideas of supporters of the theory of non-violence. One of the means of preventing evil from entering the human soul, he considers the need for forgiveness, thereby neglecting evil, excluding it. This method of preventing evil allows a person to be saved from the torment of moral choice, the need to seek self-justification. "True ethics begins where the use of words ceases." This statement by A. Schweitzer has a deep meaning. His whole ethical concept calls for active purposeful activity, the preservation of all existing forms of life, selfless service to people, giving them a particle of his life, participation, love, kindness.
5. Plato and Aristotle on ethics. Ethics of Plato (427-347 BC) Plato made a seemingly incredible, but in fact quite logical assumption: if virtue is not rooted in this world, then there probably exists another world, the reflection and expression of which it is. Plato constructs a new world - in order to lay the foundation for moral concepts, to provide them with existence. He was forced to do it. Since the task was set to rationally comprehend morality, and it suddenly turned out that moral concepts were hanging in the air, homeless, then it was necessary either to abandon these concepts, which the sophists did, or to invent another world for them, to build a house proportionate to them. This is what Plato did by constructing a world of ideas in which the idea of the good rules. The world of ideas is not just better than the real world, it is perfect. It differs from the real world as an original from a copy; in relation to the latter, it is both a beginning, a cause, an image, and a model. Plato introduces a number of epistemological concretizations that he needs in order to substantiate the possibility of knowing morality. He distinguishes between two kinds of understanding (knowledge) and two kinds of pleasure. One kind of mind and knowledge is aimed at that which does not arise and does not perish, but remains eternally unchanged, always identical to itself. The subject of another kind of reason and knowledge is that which arises and perishes. The first kind of destruction and knowledge is superior to the second. As for pleasure, proportionate pleasures belong to the first kind. They are not associated with suffering, they are carefree. The lack of them is imperceptible, their replenishment is palpable and pleasant. They are weak. Their source is beautiful and virtuous. Pleasures of the second kind are characterized by immensity, bring excitement to the soul, and are always associated with suffering. These are anger, pride, fear and similar feelings. In a word, as Plato says, there are pleasures from gentle sounds, and there are pleasures from tickling. There is nothing in common between them. Only pleasures of the first kind are included in the structure of virtue, but they also occupy the last place there. The path of virtue is an ascending path of knowledge of the beautiful, which can be completed only when the soul sees the eternal, and the love of truth will not be overshadowed by anything. Ethics of Aristotle (384-322 BC) Aristotle's ethics is the pinnacle of ancient ethics. It was he who introduced the term "ethics", systematized ethical ideas and knowledge. Aristotle gave the deepest understanding of ethics for his time as a doctrine of the virtues, of a virtuous person. Unlike philosophy, ethics is a practical science. The goal of ethics is not knowledge, but actions. She teaches how to become virtuous. That is, ethical studies do not aim only at contemplation. Of course, ethics, like any science, produces knowledge. However, ethical knowledge does not have value in and of itself; they are a form of actualization of behavioral tasks and are designed to guide human activity. They turn into norms, into requirements for behavior. Aristotle has two main definitions of a person: a person is a) a rational (thinking) and b) a political (polis) being. They are interconnected in such a way that a person becomes a polis being to the extent that he realizes his capabilities as a rational being. The polis is the embodied, objectified mind. If, in general, Aristotle understands activity (practice) as the actual being of a living being, the transition of its capabilities into reality, then the policy is a specific form of human practice. And morality is simply the optimal form of the realization of reason, both when it comes to an individual and when it comes to a policy. She finds her flesh in virtues. Ethical virtues, according to Aristotle, are a special class of human qualities; they are formed as a result of such a correlation of reason and affects, when the first leads the second. They coincide with a reasonable measure in affects, and a reasonable measure (the famous Aristotelian middle), in turn, is established by correlating with the usual forms of polis behavior. Individual virtue and polis expediency mutually rely on each other. Virtue acts as a form of expediency, albeit a special one, relating, on the one hand, to the human character as a whole, and on the other, to the life of the entire polis. At the same time, the very expediency of polis life is supported by the virtue of individuals. There are three states of mind, two of which are vicious. One due to excess, the other due to lack. Vices overstep their due either in the direction of excess or in the direction of deficiency. Virtue, on the other hand, knows how to find the middle and chooses it. For example, courage is the middle of fear and insane courage; generosity is the middle of stinginess and wastefulness, etc. The striving for the middle is the content of moral freedom, moral choice. Ethical virtues begin when not a simple desire for pleasure, but a balancing mind becomes the guiding principle of behavior. Virtues act as prescribed by a correct judgment. Aristotle gives ethics and ethical virtues a secondary, auxiliary, applied character. Such an approach ruled out the very formulation of the question of mandatory moral laws, generally valid criteria for distinguishing between good and evil. The measure of the virtue of behavior is always concrete, it is specially specified in relation to each virtue, and, moreover, it is always individualized. For example, there is no such set of objective signs that would make it possible to establish whether actions are fair, because for this they must be correlated with the individual who performs them. And Aristotle comes to the conclusion that actions are just when they are such that a just person could do them. Aristotle created ethics that completely ignores the claims of morality to absoluteness, autonomy and holiness. In this sense, he rationalized morality to the utmost. He saw in it a certain dimension of a person, which he himself asks himself in accordance with his nature and the conditions of life, and which may well be under his control. It is important to emphasize that in the study of ethical virtue, Aristotle reached the point where a demonstrative judgment turns out to be impossible and one has to accept the truth without indicating its foundations.6. The concept and content of the main categories of ethics.
Morality of modern society
The morality of modern society is based on simple principles:
1) Everything is allowed that does not directly violate the rights of other people.
2) The rights of all people are equal.
Since the main slogan of Modern society is “maximum happiness for the maximum number of people”, then moral norms should not be an obstacle to the realization of the desires of this or that person - even if someone does not like these desires. But only as long as they do not harm other people.
It should be noted that from these two principles a third follows: "Be energetic, achieve success on your own." After all, each person strives for personal success, and the greatest freedom gives maximum opportunities for this.
It is obvious that the need for decency follows from these principles. For example, deceiving another person is, as a rule, causing damage to him, which means it is condemned by Modern morality.
The morality of modern society in a light and cheerful tone was described by Alexander Nikonov in the corresponding chapter of the book “Monkey Upgrade”:
“From all today's morality tomorrow there will be one single rule: you can do whatever you like without directly infringing on the interests of others. The key word here is "directly".
If a person walks naked down the street or has sex in a public place, then, from the point of view of modernity, he is immoral. And from the point of view of tomorrow, the one who sticks to him with the requirement to "behave decently" is immoral. A naked person does not directly encroach on anyone's interests, he just goes about his business, that is, he is in his own right. Now, if he forcibly undressed others, he would directly encroach on their interests. And the fact that it is unpleasant for you to see a naked person on the street is the problem of your complexes, fight them. He does not order you to undress, why do you pester him with a demand to get dressed?
You can not directly encroach on strangers: life, health, property, freedom - these are the minimum requirements.
Live as you know, and don't poke your nose into someone else's life if they don't ask - that's the main moral rule of tomorrow. It can also be formulated as follows: “You cannot decide for others. Decide for yourself." This is largely working in the most progressive countries already now. Somewhere this rule of extreme individualism works more (Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden), somewhere less. In advanced countries, “immoral” marriages between homosexuals are allowed, prostitution, marijuana smoking, etc. are legalized. There, a person has the right to manage his own life as he pleases. Jurisprudence is developing in the same direction. Laws are drifting in the direction indicated by the thesis "no victims - no crime."
All the above reasoning is actually aimed at expanding the individual choice of people, but does not take into account the possible negative social consequences of such a choice.
The increase in freedom always leads to the fact that some people use it to their own detriment. For example, the ability to purchase vodka leads to the appearance of alcoholics, the freedom to choose a lifestyle leads to the appearance of homeless people, sexual freedom increases the number of people with venereal diseases. Therefore, freer societies are always accused of "decay", "moral decay" and so on. However, most people are quite rational and use freedom for their own good. As a result, society becomes more efficient and develops faster.
If we talk about the priority of values, then the main thing for modern society is human freedom and the condemnation of violence and intolerance. Unlike religion, where it is possible to justify violence in the name of God, modern morality rejects any violence and intolerance (although it can use state violence in response to violence). From the point of view of modern morality, traditional society is simply overwhelmed with immorality and lack of spirituality, including harsh violence against women and children (when they refuse to obey), against all dissidents and “violators of traditions” (often ridiculous), a high degree of intolerance towards non-believers and so on.
An important moral imperative of modern society is respect for law and law, because only the law can protect human freedom, ensure equality and security of people. And, on the contrary, the desire to subjugate another, to humiliate someone's dignity are the most shameful things.
The Significance of Ethical Doctrines for Modern Ethics
The inadequate (not corresponding to the importance of the subject) attitude of modern society to the problems of morality can be illustrated by how we relate to the academic discipline of ethics.
What place in our education is given to ethics, we all know.
At best, it is studied in depth at specialized humanities faculties, and then it is studied as theoretical material, as a subject for further teaching and scientific activity, but not at all as the first guide in one's life.
And it is not for nothing that the word "ethics" gave rise to the word "etiquette", and from it came - "label". Etiquette is the label of a secular person, but not at all of a highly moral, virtuous person.
Thus, the science of ethics, which is part of the triad of the main disciplines of philosophy, is called upon to investigate the issues of good and evil and to look for the origins of higher justice, while remaining "normative", i.e. - “science without scientific laws”, eventually turned into a servant of secular society ...
Let us show what "ethical normativity" actually means. It is as if we were introduced to the management of a certain technological process and we were provided with the norms of its management, without explaining the principle of the process itself. At the same time, we would have a very vague idea of what would happen if we violate these norms. We almost would not see, or saw in a very distorted form, the results of this process, its “finished product”. Those. we would not know the very principles of the technological process, nor the purpose of this process. Moreover, we would be given not one set of regulatory documents, but a whole bunch of them, saying: choose for yourself - which rules seem closer to you, use them.
It is clear that the "finished product" of the process in this example is the man himself and his society. The result of such “management” is also understandable and predictable…
We must admit that in studying modern ethics, we are not really studying laws in the moral sphere, but "dead casts" from them, so to speak. We do not see the whole causal chain of life processes of a person and society, but we snatch out of a real dynamic process only a static picture that more or less plausibly reflects it. That's what "normativity" is.
Let's go back to the question we started with. If a person asks why he should be moral, modern ethics will not give an intelligible answer. But if she could clearly see the mechanisms of nature and explain how they work in relation to immoral people who, in fact, commit self-destruction, then the question would disappear by itself.
Above we spoke in defense of scientific ethics. Unfortunately, modern philosophical ethics has a somewhat alienated attitude towards science. But this does not mean that it is useless or that it is separated from science by insurmountable barriers. Philosophical ethics is a potential of knowledge relevant to the fate of mankind, which should not be underestimated. Before turning directly to modern philosophical ethics, it is necessary to consider historical approaches to it. We are talking about the ethics of the virtues of Aristotle, the ethics of duty by I. Kant and the utilitarianism of Bentham-Mill.
Aristotle's virtue ethics. A person has theoretical (wisdom and prudence) and moral (courage, prudence, generosity, splendor, majesty, honor, evenness, truthfulness, friendliness, justice) virtues. Every moral virtue controls the passions by excess and deficiency. Thus, courage controls insane courage (passion-excess) and fear (passion-lack). The goal of moral behavior is happiness. Happy is he who perfects himself, and not he who is preoccupied with pleasures and honors.
Criticism. Aristotle's virtue ethics does not know truly scientific concepts. For this reason, it is powerless to contribute in a decisive way to the resolution of today's pressing problems. Aristotle anticipated the position that the world of passions should be optimized - "nothing too much." But he described this process of optimization in an extremely simplified way.
Ethics of duty I. Kant. Man is a moral being. It is in morality that he elevates himself above his sensory world. As a moral being, man is autonomous from nature, free from it. Live according to the laws of freedom. To be free means to observe the absolute moral law, which is given to reason a priori. This law is known to everyone who has reason. So, every person knows that it is unworthy to lie. Live according to the categorical imperative: act in such a way that the maxim of your will may have the force of law for all people, and never treat yourself or another as a means to an end contrary to the duty of man. It is necessary to be honest, conscientious, sincere, worthy of your high human calling, to oppose lies, greed, avarice, servility.
Criticism. The undoubted merit of I. Kant is that he considered the question of the truly theoretical nature of ethics. With this in mind, he put at the head of it a certain principle, namely the categorical imperative. The requirement of freedom was considered by Kant in his context. Kant's idea of giving ethics a theoretical character deserves approval, but, unfortunately, in its implementation he met with insurmountable difficulties. Not knowing the principles of the axiological sciences, Kant replaced them all with the categorical imperative. He did not explain the meaning of his main postulate: each person should adequately represent humanity.
Utilitarianism(from lat. utilitas- benefit) Bentham Mill. The core of ethics is the all-round maximization of utility. It acts as the maximization of happiness and the minimization of suffering for all individuals and social groups that experience the consequences of certain actions of people. Focus your life on high quality pleasures (spiritual pleasures are more beneficial than physiological ones). You should anticipate the consequences of possible actions, both your own and others. Only that action is worthy of performance, which in a given situation is preferable in the horizons of maximizing happiness and minimizing the suffering of all people.
Criticism. At first glance, utilitarianism lacks moral loftiness. This impression is deceptive. To see this, let's turn to the main principle of utilitarianism: maximize the total amount of utility (happiness). The emergence of the maximization criterion is extremely important, because it involves a quantitative calculation of utility. How to do it, the classics of utilitarianism I. Bentham and J.S. Mill did not know. But modern scientists know this. In contrast to Kant's ethics, utilitarianism leads directly to the center of science. In comparison with Kant's ethics, in utilitarianism the metaphysical component decreases and the scientific component increases.
The ethics of duty by I. Kant was very popular in Germany until the beginning of the 20th century. But as a result of the rise of first the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger and, finally, the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas, the authority of Kant's philosophy fell sharply. This caused a significant decline in the popularity of Kant's ethics of duty. Ultimately, the above innovations led the leading German philosophers of the 20th century to the ethics of responsibility.
In the English-speaking world, the decisive events of the XX century. was the strengthening of the positions of pragmatism and analytical philosophy. Both led to a significant weakening of the position of utilitarianism, which had to give way to the pragmatic ethics of social progress. Thus, the two main philosophical and ethical trends of our time are the ethics of responsibility and pragmatic ethics. So, the subject of the nearest analysis is the ethics of responsibility.
Ethics of responsibility. The concept of responsibility was introduced into ethics in the late 1910s. M. Weber: “We must make it clear to ourselves that any ethically oriented action can obey two fundamental different irreconcilably opposed maxims: it can be oriented either towards an 'ethics of conviction' or an 'ethics of responsibility'". When they act according to the ethics of beliefs, they are not responsible for their results. When a person acts according to the maxim of the ethics of responsibility, then “one must pay for (foreseeable) consequences his actions ... Such a person will say: these consequences are imputed to my activity.
According to Weber, responsibility is an ethical act taken in the unity of all its moments. Responsibility transcends subjectivity. Unfortunately, he did not explain in any way exactly how responsibility is connected with the subjective, including consciousness.
It should be noted that after M. Weber, many German philosophers turned to the topic of responsibility. But not all of them managed to organically fit the ethics of responsibility into current philosophical systems. In this regard, X. Jonas and J. Habermas were especially successful. As a faithful student of M. Heidegger, Jonas, author of the book “The Principle of Responsibility. The Experience of Ethics for a Technological Civilization (1979) was concerned primarily with the existence of man. There is nothing more important than this, and meanwhile, as a result of the development of technology, which has become a powerful planetary factor, man has put his life at risk. There is only one way out of this situation - a person must take responsibility for both technology and nature - for everything that is involved in his nature. Do what you can to save life on Earth.
Yu. Habermas paid special attention to who and how imputes responsibility to people. A person can take responsibility for nature and technology, but will he be truly free, i.e. freed from social injustice? The responsibility of a person should not be a burden for him. In this regard, he is sure that people themselves impute responsibility to each other. Social injustices can be avoided only when they develop agreement in discourse.
Another outstanding modern German philosopher X. Lenk pays special attention to the moral responsibility of people. In particular, it is not enough to be legally responsible. The highest type of responsibility is moral responsibility.
pragmatic ethics. Its founder is J. Dewey. What is needed is an ethic that, in harmony with the transience of history, would ensure the democratic future of the people. They are always in a certain situation in which they are forced to control their behavior, which is made up of individual actions, the consequences of which are not always desirable. In this regard, intellectual behavior is necessary, which can be carried out using theory as tools, on the basis of reflection, ending with a decision. Morality has a social character, the individual is woven into the public. Only in abstraction are the social and the individual separated from each other. Ultimately, the main instance of ethics is civil society with its freedoms, and especially the sphere of education.
J. Rawls, unlike J. Dewey, paid special attention to the discursive nature of ethical norms. Like Habermas, he believes that the consent of people is necessary for the successful functioning of ethics, which is achieved in discourse.
Criticism of the ethics of responsibility and pragmatic ethics. Supporters of the two ethical systems under consideration do not shy away from science, but, on the contrary, seek to take into account its achievements. However, this accounting is one-sided. J. Dewey, and after him many other pragmatists, considers theories to be just tools for social progress. In this regard, science is not completely removed from the shadow of general philosophical reasoning.
German philosophers, unlike most of their American counterparts, are somewhat wary of science. Americans always focus directly on the phenomenon of practice. Germans tend to talk more about understanding practice. The American pragmatic ethic of democratic social progress is developed in the name of analytic philosophy. The German ethics of responsibility organically merges with hermeneutics and fundamental
ontology.
In conclusion of the paragraph, let us turn to the question of using the achievements of modern ethics. Consideration of a particular situation must always be carried out in the context of ethical systems. In this regard, the ethical theory stands out, which allows you to understand the situation as thoroughly as possible. But at the same time, one should not forget about the strengths of other ethical concepts. Ultimately, the success of deep scientific and philosophical research should be ensured.
conclusions
- Modern ethics is represented by many ethical theories. Of these, two theories are the most authoritative: the German-based ethics of responsibility and the American-based pragmatic ethics of social progress.
- The ethics of responsibility was the result of the development of the fundamental ontology of M. Heidegger and the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas.
- Pragmatic ethics was the result of the development of J. Dewey's pragmatism and analytical philosophy.
- Both the ethics of responsibility and pragmatic ethics do not sufficiently take into account the achievements of the philosophy of science.
- Weber M. Selected Works. M.: Progress, 1990. S. 696.
- There. S. 697.
