Ethical Views

What are Ethics?

According to Watsuji Tetsuro to be fully human is to be ethical which is to live in the betweenness of individuality and sociality. I believe that this incessant double negation between individuality and sociality is the foundation of my ethical philosophy. It is my contention that too many people in the West approach ethical questions without being sufficiently conscious of their social relations. What is it to live the good life? This question is about you as an individual making decisions that to determine your own individual lifestyle and ethical volition. In this ever transient and ever globalizing society of 2007 many people feel uprooted and forced to turn only to themselves for their futures. I wish people wouldn't feel so alone. It's good to have self-responsibility but we are inherently and necessarily social beings, and thus we ought to regard our social relations not as financial burdens (whether aging parents or young children) but as sources of inspirations for comfort and facilitators of personal compassion and empathy that have the potential to be extended into our wider and ever widening global community.

I want to be a bodhisattva. I want to learn through my experience and “when I get to the top of the mountain keep climbing” (Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums). My own personal enlightenment is never completed until I can share that knowledge and experience with all people. I am never there yet always there as long as I remember the intention of my journey. But I am aware of what I ought to be and more importantly of what I ought to do, the next step is to apply this knowledge and through this application aquire a deeper and more practical understanding of why I study what I study and why I do what I do. The fact remains that my ethical ideals are not static, and while I claim to know how to live ethically I cannot truly know nor internalize any ethical principle or action without living it. As Feminist Philosopher Laurraine Code puts it, "Inquiry grows out of and turns back to action, to practice" (Taking Subjectivity Into Account, 40-41). As I'm sure you will see in my entries on my epistemological views and metaphysical views, my epistemological, metaphysical and ethical philosophical positions are intimately and necessarily interconnected.

I do not believe wholeheartedly in the universal rationalism of Kant in that if there is one thing I know it is that I won't know until I am living in it, and thus ethics must be contextual and make judgments both with overarching principles yet ultimately in consideration of the particular case at hand. Therefore, I admit that I have a long way to go in my own ethical development. I have studied many ethical theories but I see absolutely no value in such theories until they can be applied and assessed in the context of their practice. For me to live a good life I must not just think critically but live critically.

I despise Political Correctness because I think it merely serves to cover over Evil and push it to another place and fuel its incessant insurgency. I am strongly influenced here by the French philosopher Alain Badiou. Let the evil have a seat at the table and let's see it for what it really is. By allowing it to show itself for whatever it is, we will be much better prepared to work with and struggle against Evil. I say work with because I would argue that Evil is everywhere, including inside each and every one of us. How can one wage a war against oneself? How can one know oneself without admitting to all of one's predicates?

I believe that justice ought to be considered socially and communally as well as individually. Sometimes individual justice and meritocracy in fact covers over the social injustice in many communities. Just take for example, the story of Sebastian Telfair who growing up in a rough neighborhood in Coney Island, NYC was able to go straight from high school into the NBA. Telfair certainly gave back to his community once he got his first pay check, and an ESPN documentary depicted the neighborhood as on the rise following Telfair's success, yet how much has really changed in that neighborhood or any neighborhood that has had one or even a few members turn pro in some sport or become a famous musician or actor. Moreover, what kind of a message does this send to children in those communities. Sure do well in school, but as I'm sure you already have gathered the school you go to ain't the greatest, so if you really want to get your family out of the ghetto you better practice your b-ball. The only way that justice can be enacted is if it is done on a social scale. People should be rewarded for their individual hard work, but they should also be granted equal opportunities to achieve such successes. As things stand now in this country, “the myth of meritocracy” serves as a most efficient illusion and impediment towards the implementation of any authentic social justice.

I believe that ethics needs to be more centered in our everyday lives, and I believe this necessarily entails a greater awareness of our social relationships and overall environment. Ethics should not be viewed in the abstract, and while such thought experiments as Kant's categorical imperative and John Rawls' original position allow one to universalize one's actions they are too individualistic in their most basic premise. I love to read the works of Kant, Rawls, and most especially J.S. Mills yet their liberal ideology presupposes that humans are from the start isolated individuals. I believe this premise that humans begin as individuals is most problematic in that the hegemonic economic logic that presupposes while we are all distinct individuals we all have an equal knowledge of the economic relationships we are entering into. We need ethics not because once in a while our individual lanes intersect (as Mill might argue) but because our lanes are shared from the start. We cannot and should not avoid social relationships because upon a close examination, we are what we are in relation to our relations. Now while we may be more than the products of our environment, no matter how individualistic we may be we can never escape our environment and the nexus of social relationships such necessarily entails. We can change this context but we can never escape it.

In my mind to live ethically requires above all things empathy. We must both theoretically reason what it would be like to be in another's shoes, as in Kant's categorical imperative, but more pertinently we must experience first hand as much as we can in order to garner a lived understanding of other's lives. I realize that I can never live the life of, for example, a black woman, but I can listen to her story. I suppose that's what my ethical and epistemological theory comes down to in one word; listening. Only by listening can we ever hope to live ethically.