Two Concepts of Morality

Abstract

Moral assessment of behaviour can be made from two different points of view. One style of evaluation can be called ‘universal ethics’ or the ‘ethics of unblemished conscience’. The other style can be called the ‘ethics of particularism’ or the ‘ethics of self–control’. The ethics of the first kind typically uses such concepts as obligation, fault, responsibility, guilt, shame, punishment, repentance, forgiveness. The ethics of the second kind typically uses such concepts as commitment, failure, accountability, blame, regret, reform, reparation, forgetting. In the universal ethics obligations are something real and independent. In this sense it is absolutist. It must be conceded that the ethics of particularism also considers some obligations natural and unconditional but these are primarily obligations with respect to one’s children or parents, spouses or compatriots, and not obligations to the whole world or to all human individuals. The ethics of particularism interprets obligations in the light of specific relation-ships between individuals, social or professional roles, freely adopted commitments. A politician has political obligations, a researcher has academic obligations, a physician has medical obligations and an artist – artistic obligations, etc. The universal ethics sounds fake and rhetorical in a community of individuals that respect one another, accept a plurality of opinions, and are capable of tolerance and open communication with proponents of unpopular points of view. On the other hand, a hier¬archical community firmly supporting an established social and moral order, hostile to individuals who emphasize their own beliefs cannot accept the ethics of pluralism without losing its cohesion and functionality. The choice between the two kinds of ethics is therefore difficult in a society that does not possess uniform standards of tolerance and retains a social hierarchy of eroded authority.