Ethics


 * Definition**

Etymology: Old Greece (1259), Aristotle’s work “Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics” (Aristotle,1980,pp. 46-8).
 * 1259 Aristotle defined “Ethos” as a characteristic spirit
 * 1581 Arab poetry illustrated “Ethicke” as relating to moral
 * 1589 the English poet Puttenham defined “thick” as involving the moral questions, and of ethics as a science
 * 1602 Woods, the professor of the University of Oxford argued “Ethics” as the science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty.
 * 1690 Temple, Historian, defined “Ethics” as the whole field of moral science, including the science of law whether civil, political, or international.
 * 1837 Donovan, Michael, America, economist, “Ethics” involves the moral principles by which a person is guided (Materialism, n.d.)

In addition, the difference between ethics and morals includes several approaches, Cullity (2009, p.583) defined morals as involving personal character, while ethics stress a social system in which morals are applied. In other words, ethics point to standards or codes  of behavior expected by the group(s) to which the individual belongs. This could take the form of national ethics, [|social ethics], company ethics, professional ethics, family ethics or several of these types of ethics (Wasserman & Rao, 2008, pp. 164-70). So while an individual’s moral code is usually static, the ethics he or she practices can be other-dependent. For example, one might face conflicts between one’s ethics and morals. Abortion is legal and therefore medically ethical, while many people find it personally immoral. Fundamentalists, extremists, and even mainstream theists have different ideas about morality that impact our lives, even if this is done so indirectly through social pressures or legal discrimination .


 * Disciplinary History:** **Ethics in Political Studies**

Durkheim (1996, pp. 15-8) recognized that politics was the theory or practice of government  or administration, and that politics could also be the science or study of government and the state. One subfield of politics is public ethics, meaning the branch of moral philosophy dealing with the state (Davies, 1999, pp.127-35)


 * Ethics in Economic Studies**

Baumhart (1961, pp. 6-9) indicated that business ethics is the applied ethics discipline that addresses the moral features of commercial activity. Moreover, this academic field focuses on the philosophically-informed part of business ethics, and most particularly on the constellation of philosophically-relevant questions that inform the primary conversation  and ongoing disagreements  among academic business ethicists. It covers:
 * 1) The history of business ethics as an academic endeavor;
 * 2) The focus on the corporation in academic business ethics;
 * 3) The treatment of the employment relation in academic business ethics;
 * 4) The treatment of transnational issues in academic business ethics; and
 * 5) Criticisms of the focus and implicit methodology that underlies academic business ethics (Arnold& Norman, 2003, pp. 221-5)


 * Research Traditions:** **Ethics and Journalism**

The ethics issue concerning practices in journalism focuses on agreements  and disagreements concerning ethical principles by developing a theory of universals  that is responsive to differences in media <range type="comment" id="422865824_13">cultures</range id="422865824_13"> and <range type="comment" id="422865824_10">societies </range id="422865824_10">. Some researches that seek to find common ground between theoretical positions that are sometimes thought of as being opposites, such as universalism and postcolonial theory (Ward, 2005, pp. 12-5). The aim is to find a theory of universals that avoids both (a) an ethical imperialism that imposes principles on <range type="comment" id="422865824_17">cultures</range id="422865824_17"> without regard for differences and (b) an extreme relativism that rejects global media ethics as impossible and undesirable. This part of sentence introduces the possibility of a form of global ethics based upon a rich dialectic between sameness and difference, the global and the local (Christians, 2008, pp. 6- 9).


 * Ethics and Feminism**

Feminists have developed a wide variety of gender -centered approaches to ethics, each of which addresses one or more of the five ways in which traditional ethics has failed or neglected women. Some feminist ethicists emphasize issues related to women's traits and behaviors, particularly their care-giving ones (Jaggar, 1983, 121-6). In contrast, other feminist ethicists emphasize the political, legal, economic, and/or ideological causes and effects of women's so called "lower" status. Despite these differences in emphasis, all feminist ethicists share the same goal: the creation of a gendered ethics that aims to eliminate, or at least ameliorate, the oppression of any group of people, but most particularly women (Jaggar, 1994, pp. 18-23). In the other words, ethics as represented in feminist thinking is an attempt to revise, reformulate, or rethink traditional ethics to the extent that it depreciates or devalues the moral experiences of women.


 * Ethics and Cultural Practice Value**

According to Christians & Nordenstreng (2004) universal ethical principles of media and mass communication studies include: Social responsibility, human dignity,truth telling, and avoiding doing harm (p. 3-8). Further, Andersen (2003, pp. 18-22) also suggested that the media have the responsibility of helping their societies to promote excellence; this is to say, theoretically, every resident has the duty to contribute to their living environment. However, in practical situations, the ethical value would differ in different cultures.

For example, in Chinese culture, collectivism is the core value of Confucianism. The virtues of Confucianism focus on the interdependence of every human in collective groups and the priority of group goals over individual goals. Collectivists focus on community and society, and seek to give priority to group rights over individual rights (Johannesen, 2002, pp.35-7). In other words, traditional ethics in Chinese culture is that every individual should contribute to society for the purpose of creating harmony in the social environment even though they should have to sacrifice as individuals. The same principle appears in Catholicism, Philosophical individualism and so-called ethical egoism, and is recognized as being the ethics principle in most of west countries (Christians, 2003, pp 75-9).

Sub- Categories; Super- Categories __**Words Family:**__ Ethicalism, Ethicality, Ethically, Ethicalness,Ethician, Ethicism, Ethicist, Ethicize __**Sub- Categories (Communication and Media Research)**__: Social Responsibility, Human Dignity, Truth Telling, No Harm in Innocence

__**Synonyms**__**:** Moral, Moralistic, Chaste, Righteous, Incorrupt __**Antonym****s****:**__ De- Ethicize, Debauched, Degenerate, Degraded, Dissipated, Dissolute, Libertine, Profligate, Riotous, Scandalous

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 * References**

Arnold, Denis G. & Norman E. Bowie. (2003). “Sweatshops and Respect for Persons,” Business Ethics Quarterly 13(2): 221-242.

Andersen, K. E. (2003). Recovering the civic culture: The imperative of ethical communication. Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture presented at the 2003 annual convention of the National Communication Association, Miami, FL.

Aristotle. (1980). The Nicomachean ethics (D. Ross, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Baumhart, Raymond. (1961). “How Ethical are Businessmen?,” Harvard Business Review 39(4): 6-9.

Christians, C. G. (2003). Cross Cultural Ethics and Truth. In J. Mitchell and S. Marriage (Ed.), Mediating Religion: Conversations in Media, Religion and Culture. London: T&T Clark.

Christians, C. G. & Nordenstreng, K. (2004) “Social Responsibility Worldwide” Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 19 (1): pp. 3-28.

Christians, C. (2008). The ethics of universal being. In S. J. A. Ward & H. Wasserman (Eds.), Media ethics beyond borders: A global perspective (pp. 6–23). Johannesburg, South Africa: Heinemann.

Cullity, G. (2009). Ethics Done Right: Practical Reasoning as a Foundation for Moral Theory. Ethics, 119(3), 581-585.

Davies, M. (1999). Considering ethics at the local government level. In P. E. Salkin (Ed.), Ethical standards in the public sector: A guide for government lawyers, clients, and public officials (pp. 127-155). Chicago: American Bar Association.

Durkheim, E. (1996). Professional ethics and civic morals. London: Routledge.

Jaggar, A.M. (1983). Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Totowa, NJ.: Allenheld.

Jaggar, A.M. (1994). Living with Contradictions: Controversies in Feminist Social Ethics, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Johannesen, R. L. (2002). Ethics in human communication (5th ed). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.

Materialism (n.d.). In Oxford English dictionary. Retrieved from [|http://dictionary.oed.com]

Ward, S. J. A. (2005). The invention of journalism ethics: The path to objectivity and beyond. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Wasserman, H., & Rao, S. (2008). The glocalization of media ethics. Journalism, 9(2), 163–181.