Living Ethics, Living Justice, Essay Example

Introduction

As a volunteer at an elementary school, I have come to understand a great deal about how principles and ethics apply within a complex organization.  This has been an education in itself, for I believe that the setting itself has given me an unusual opportunity.  That is to say, I have not been placed in a situation where it would be expected that ethics and/or justice would be active factors.  The elementary school is, as most people think it, a place with a single purpose, and it is also largely felt that the grand concepts of ethics and justice certainly would not be obviously at play within one.

My experience, however, proves the contrary.  Not only has my work with the school given me an insight into how this organization itself translates ethics into daily operations, but it has led me to believe that all organizations must, in some fashion, do the same.  I have come to fully appreciate that, far from being removed, impractical concepts, justice and ethics are living and necessary components in anything a society does.

Personal Experience

Since beginning my volunteer work at the school, I have received a variety of impressions regarding the school’s approach to ethics.  This was not unexpected; every organization has some sort of code of conduct to follow. What surprised me more was how much of the guiding philosophy of the school is not restricted to procedures and codes, but generated from the teachers and staff.

For example, from the start I was given to understand that everybody concerned took their roles at the school very seriously.  An elementary school is all about young children, and this might make someone think that a more casual approach is made in regard to instruction.  On the contrary, however, I soon came to know that most of the teachers felt they had a great responsibility.  The learning patterns children develop early stay with them for life, and a sense of this was definitely conveyed to me.  One teacher in particular took me aside during a break in classes to emphasize this. She said that she felt that what they were doing right there would set up either failure or success for the children in later years.  I was strongly impressed by this sense of obligation on her part, although it was not related in an especially serious manner.

In reflecting upon this in regard to my readings and studies, it seems to me that this teacher, one of many in one of many elementary schools, was expressing an Aristotelian concept.  Moreover, and as is true of the great philosophical principles, it does not stand alone.  She was, in a very real sense, endorsing justice as envisioned by Aristotle. “Justice” is a word that can hold many shades of meaning, despite the fact that modern usage tends to restrict it to the sense of criminal justice.  Aristotle’s view, naturally born from his time and the wider definition the word had in ancient life, sees justice as the combination of many elements.  It is, in his view, the expression of a certain quality of character; when people in a society act in good will towards one another, and in such a way as to promote happiness for all, “justice” is created (Johnston 64).

Tied directly to this, then, is ethics, for the framework of justice cannot exist without ethical components.  The teacher was basically looking to the greater picture while seeing her role within it, and she seemed to feel that ethics required her to take such a view.  To do the correct thing in any circumstance must lead to the promotion of justice in the Aristotelian sense.

I was also, not unexpectedly, made to understand the basic rules of the school, to which I had to comply.  The administration adhered to fairly strict procedures, and I soon came to see that, as children were the focus of the organization, it was all the more essential that the adults follow the procedures.  Here, ethics dominated, if ethics themselves were not pointed to as the reasoning behind the rules.  As with that teacher’s awareness of her responsibility in guiding children, the school reflected the same concern; good habits stand the best chance of being carried on through life when they are formed early, and the regulations of the school, both humane and firmly in place, were designed to give children an appreciation of how reliable order and habit can be, and how they can aid them in life.

To me, this is “ethics as invisible foundation”, where the principles exist only through consistent practice of how they are manifested in living.  No one, for example, lectured the children on doing something in a fixed and regular way.  Instead, the children received a sense of a basis on which they could rely, merely by observing the habits laid down by the school.  As with justice, I find that this approach is echoed by another philosopher, who in turn also promotes Aristotle.  Thomas Aquinas, as have all the truly great thinkers, never removes philosophy from actual living, and he expresses how essential habit is to human beings:  “Thomas shares with Aristotle the belief that it is characteristic of human nature to receive habits.  By acquiring habits, our intellectual, volitional, and effective powers can be developed fully” (Harak 5).  We all live by habit, and an early sense of the value of developing excellent ones was perhaps the most worthwhile aim of the school.

Considering Further

It is safe to say that, before both entering into my school volunteer work and my studies in ethics, my views on them were typically abstract.  That is to say, I did not consciously think of justice or ethics as permeating life itself; I thought, as I believe do many people, that these were concepts with little application in real life, apart from legal actions.  Ethics, especially, I believed to be a vague sense of values held by myself, and hopefully in accord with the greater world around me.

I now believe that these concepts are living, evolving entities.  Moreover, I do not believe that they can exist as anything else because humanity is too diverse for them to exist as unchanging concepts.  Justice, like ethics, can only survive as a truly expansive, and expanding, quality.  There may or may not be moral absolutes, but one indisputable fact is that we all come from different places, and in terms of culture, education, and basic abilities.  This being the case, it is, as Mill held, irrational to suppose that all people think in the same way about anything at all (Scarre 116).  I feel that justice and ethics are always being created by us, every day; in the process of continually trying to come together in shared ideas of what these qualities are, we actually make them what they are.

In my own life, I believe that this view will persist and affect what directions I take in any arena, professionally or personally.  My “ethics” will adapt because they are in place to work for me, and in all affairs of living.  Kant was a firm believer in the necessity of acknowledging the “real world”, and he understood that justice, ethics, and philosophy concern people living their real lives.  People, in his view, must understand the social arenas and causal laws of the world around them; this is a kind of “practical anthropology” that recognizes how men and women cannot function well without a knowledge of the practices of their society (Sullivan 41).  This is philosophy at its best because it is philosophy that addresses actual life.

Conclusion

If anything besides “living” defines how I now view the concepts of justice and ethics, it is the other attribute mentioned earlier: expansion.  Ethics, my own or anyone else’s, vary in more than one way; the severity of belief I feel in regard to the ethics of a romantic relationship, for example, may be a great deal less than that of the same ethical principle I maintain regarding a work venture.  So, too, do I know that being open to other viewpoints will likely reshape some of my feelings.  What is alive must evolve, and ethics – and justice – are very much alive.  I believe I have come to fully understand that, far from being removed, lofty concepts, justice and ethics are active, changing, and necessary components in anything a society, or a single human being, does.

Works Cited

Harak, G. S.  Aquinas and Empowerment: Classical Ethics for Ordinary Lives.  Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996. Print.

Johnston, D.  A Brief History of Justice. Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, Publishers, 2011. Print.

Scarre, G.  Logic and Reality in the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, 1989. Print.

Sullivan, R. J.  An Introduction to Kant’s Ethics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994 Print.