Universal Ethics

Universal Ethics

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Universal Ethics

The debate between ethics universalists and relativists is still going on without a clear resolution. On the side of the universalists, they perceive human beings as being defined by a set of common fundamental characteristics that cross the boundaries of cultures. On the other hand, ethics relativists perceive cultures as providing context for morality and ethical principles. As a result, a practice considered as being unethical in one culture might be excused or even embraced in a different culture due to the context that culture provides for the understanding of ethical principles. However, globalization is defining how we are defining culture. Through facilitators of globalization such as technology, internet, and social media platforms, the concept of culture is changing at a rapid pace due to cultural exchanges and cultural assimilation (Hester & Gray, 2020). As a result, more cultures are overlapping. As the overlapping continues to take place, a global culture might be established in the future, in which it would be necessary to perceive ethical principles from a universal point. Despite the cultural diversities, it is possible to codify universal ethics by basing them on fundamental principles of humanity. It is such as conceptualization of ethics that the idea of globalization must be founded on for it to be successful.

Moral relativists believe that morality should be derived from culture instead of from universal ethics. For example, some consider lying to be acceptable in certain situations and others do not. The moral relativism perspective justifies that people’s moral views are based on their social and cultural backgrounds. Moreover, moral relativism argues that since individuals have different experiences and cultural upbringing, they have different views on what is right or wrong at the same time, making it difficult to set a universal standard of ethical principles (Forsyth, 2019b). On the other hand, universal ethics states that there are absolute standards that can apply across cultures because they are grounded in fundamental characteristics shared by all human beings such as rationality and autonomy. Therefore, the universal perspective helps to show how a fundamental principle such as rationality can be codified to become an applicable universal ethics. The relative application of rationality should only be maintained as long as there are distinct cultural boundaries (Hester & Gray, 2020). When such boundaries finally dissolve as a result of a meta-process such as globalization, universal ethics can be defined beyond the fundamental principles to include precise details of governing and judging actions.

By being open to the idea of universal ethics, it makes it easy to shun activities that are generally considered as being unethical. A great example is how Nazism has received universal criticism. Instead of allowing wrong actions to continue within a particular community or culture simply because relativism allows for the possibility of a difference in ethics and morals, fundamental principles such as sanctity of human life regardless of culture, race, gender, religion, or sex create a template of judging actions that are obviously unethical (Hester & Gray, 2020). It is necessary to create such principles so that it is possible to create universal ethics.

Universal ethics can be defined and applied by utilizing the concept of cultural relativism. The use of cultural relativism to antithesis those who believe that they should adhere to their culture and ignore those who are outside of the particular culture will lead to moral unification. Since a majority of people in the world are culturally unified, being able to create universal ethics based on a concept such as cultural relativism would help people develop a common conscience of morality without conflicts between cultures and values (Schein, 2020). The underlying principle of ethics is that it requires consensus of a people that is unified to agree on what actions should be considered as being right or wrong. Cultural relativism acknowledges the existence of such unification and consensus within the context of a community or a particular culture. The universal ethics perspective extends the unification and consensus to a global context.

Some people might argue that it is impossible to apply a universal set of ethical principles because they are too difficult to find a consensus upon. The universal ethics perspective eliminates the problem of ambiguity by grounding universal ethics in concepts such as rationality and autonomy that are universally shared by all human beings regardless of culture. These fundamental characteristics can be used to codify standards of moral reasoning, which in turn will reduce the probability that a person’s actions are labeled as being wrong or right simply based on their differences in cultural heritages (Forsyth, 2019a). Once a set of valid standards is established, the sources of knowledge can be used as foundations for establishing qualitative and quantitative judgments related to how well an action matches or does not match with these standards.

One of the most important benefits of universal ethics is that it creates a global consensus of morality. The existence and use of universal ethics help to ensure that all people are able to work together in order to make the world a better place, which can be argued as being the ultimate goal of multiculturalism (Beal, 2019). However, it is necessary for there to be a universal concept of ethics in place so that no one would claim that they have their own moral standards and values while ignoring everyone else’s, making universal ethics an essential prerequisite for achieving global citizenship. Furthermore, applying universal ethics toward social change can unify communities by taking away the divisive factor caused by relativism.

The viability of universal ethics can be judged from the success of democracy. Most countries are currently practicing democracy at different levels. There are countries which have governments that function almost as pure democracies. Even those countries which do not formally acknowledge practicing democracy, they have various concepts of democracy such as allowing the citizens various freedoms, rights, and protections. Based on the ubiquity of a concept such as democracy, it shows that the idea of the existence of a universal system of ethics is plausible (Schein, 2020). Such a global adoption of democratic principles has led to the development of universal human rights. Today, there are numerous human rights that protect the various aspects of an individual such as the right to life, fair trials, citizenship and privacy. These are enforced by international bodies such as the United Nations and other governmental agencies where they can be overseen (Hester & Gray, 2020). Most importantly, almost all countries support these universal human rights. Citizens of these countries accept and support these concepts where they think that these rights are beneficial to them and cannot be violated. This can be seen when they protest and cause various demonstrations at the various governmental institutions and agencies which violate their human rights.

The foundation of universal ethics can also be judged from various treaties and law. Countries which have ratified these treaties and laws are bound to comply with them. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the first universally accepted code of ethics in the world. This declaration is also supported by virtually all countries in the world where it is ratified by them. In addition, there are also global bodies such as the United Nations enforcing these rights and laws for member countries to comply with them (Beal, 2019). There are international laws that deal with issues such as terrorism, climate change, and genocide. These laws are set forth by majority vote from the members of the United Nations which make sure that most countries comply with these laws and rules. Therefore, a large population accepts that globally the concept of universally ethical behavior is a plausible concept.

References

Beal, B. (2019). What are the irreducible basic elements of morality? A critique of the debate over monism and pluralism in moral psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(2), 273–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619867106

Forsyth, D. R. (2019a). Ethics in context. In Making Moral Judgments (pp. 143–163). Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429352621-8

Forsyth, D. R. (2019b). The Geography of Ethics. In Making Moral Judgments (pp. 123–142). Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429352621-7

Hester, N., & Gray, K. (2020). The moral psychology of raceless, genderless strangers. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(2), 216–230. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619885840

Schein, C. (2020). The importance of context in moral judgments. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(2), 207–215. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620904083