Gethics: Introduction

Prepared by Oscar Sison

What does it mean to love wisdom?

• Four ingredients
1. passion: fervent desire, persistent goal
2. honesty (authenticity): being true to oneself and others
3. choice: to constantly choose the good
4. action: to commit one's life to an ethics/ life philosophy
Passion: the pursuit of wisdom takes
a lifetime
• Story of one hand clapping
• A long time ago there was this eager young man who
wanted to reach wisdom or enlightenment.
• So he went to a monastery to study under a certain
Master.
• The Master says to him, “Enlightenment is the sound
of one hand clapping.”
• He meditated on it and after a few days, went back
to the Master saying, “Master, I already know the
sound of one hand clapping.”
• He did the usual gesture for clapping but with just
one hand and receives a slap from from the Master
Passion: the pursuit of wisdom takes
a lifetime
• Undeterred by his initial failure, he meditated for several
days and then went back to the Master with a new answer.
• Like in the picture, he snapped his hand to produce some
clapping sound with one hand.
• The Master slaps him even harder. After this
disappointment, he left the monastery.
• But so many years later, he went back to this Master (who What then is the
was already on his deathbed). sound of one hand
• Standing beside his Master, he said, in a calm mature clapping?
voice, “Master, I already know the sound of one hand Why the Master's
clapping.” response in the
• To this the Master said, “Very good.” ending?
Lessons from “One hand clapping”
• What is the sound of one hand clapping? The obvious answer is silence
for it takes two hands to clap. Others would say it is the sound of one's
heartbeat, while some say it's the silence in the face of ignorance.
• More important that the answer, the one hand clapping question (by
having no precise answer) makes the student ponder, explore, imagine,
continuously search for answers.
• In the ending, it is not the answer that mattered, but the student's whole
lifetime devoted to the pursuit of enligtenment.
• There's a story where Jesus was supposedly asked why he gives answers
in parables, to which he replied, “So that wonder be born in their hearts.”
Honesty and Authenticity
• Wisdom is not only about
knowledge/ information
• “Wisest is he who knows he does
not know.” - Socrates
• Socrates was considered the wisest
man in all of Athens not because
he knows more than others but
because he knows and accepts the
things he does not know.
Choice: both a priviledge and
obligation
• “Man is condemned to
be free.” - Jean Paul
Sartre
• Since human persons
are free, they have no
choice but to make
choices in every
situation.
Choice

• Ethics as a choice to live in

the best way possible is thus
inescapable.
Action: One lives the truth that one
proclaims
• From wisdom to action
• “For the material of carpentry is
wood, of statuary brass, so of the
art of living, the material is each
man's own life.” - Epictetus
• It is not in examinations where we
display what we have learned in an
ethics class but in our own actions,
in our own lives.
Outcomes Based Education: Seneca
Style
• Stoic philosopher Seneca was ordered
to commit suicide by Emperor Nero
• Before he died, this was what Seneca
said to his friends:
• ...he bequeathed to them the only,
but still the noblest possession yet
remaining to him, the pattern of his
life, which, if they remembered, they
would win a name for moral worth
and steadfast friendship.
• In other words, “an example of a
virtuous life”
Perspectives: Half-full or half-empty?
• Someone who adopts a more
optimistic perspective could see
the good in a situation and
perceive the glass as half-full.
• Someone with a more
pessimistic perspective may
dwell on the negativities of a
situation and see the glass as
half-empty.
A perspective can limit the way we
“see” things
What did the snail say to
the turtle while riding on
the turtle's back?
• So slow? Walk faster?
Answer: Look at it from the snail's
and not the human's perspective
Widening one's perspective: Think
outside the box
• Rules: Connect all the nine dots
using just four lines or less.
• It's easy to do it in five lines but
it takes one to think outside the
box (that is, overcome the usual
presuppositions and
expectations) to solve it in four
lines.
Answer
Make the cow (or dog) face the
other way!
• Rules: You should be able to do
it in just two moves or by just
moving or changing the
positions of two lines.
Make the cow (or dog) face the
other way!
• This is on a different level of
shifting one's perspective
• In Filipino, nasa level na ng
pagka-pilosopo. :)
Predominant Orientation of
Philosophy Periods
• Pre-Socratic - Cosmocentric
• Socratic/ Hellenistic - Theoretical
• Medieval - Theocentric
• Modern - Anthropocentric
• Contemporary - Various
Approaches (historicism,
philosophy of language, cultural
approach, Computationalism/
Computational Theory of Mind)
Faculty of Wonder
Moral dilemmas
• Moral dilemmas are special situations that force us to make a moral
decision and of course, to justify it.
Moral Dilemmas: An example
• You've been on a cruise for two days when there's an accident that forces
everyone on board to abandon ship. During the evacuation, one of the boats is
damaged, leaving it with a hole that fills it with water. You figure that with 10
people in the boat, you can keep the boat afloat by having nine people scoop the
filling water out by hand for 10 minutes while the 10th person rests. After that
person's 10-minute rest, he or she will get back to work while another person
rests, and so on. This should keep the boat from sinking long enough for a rescue
team to find you as long as it happens within five hours. You're taking your first
brake when you notice your best friend in a sound lifeboat with only nine people
in it and he beckons you to swim over and join them so you won't have to keep
bailing out water. If you leave the people in the sinking boat, they will only be able
to stay afloat for two hours instead of five, decreasing their chance of being
rescued, but securing yours. What do you do? (Source: Listverse)
Freedom as Autonomy: It's role in
ethical life
Nuremberg Trial: “I was only
following orders”
• During WW II, the Nazis were
responsible for the extermination of
about 6 million Jews.
• Jews from all around Europe were
taken from their homes, transported
to concentration camps, their
possessions taken.
• Here they were worked until skin and
bones and finally systematically killed
in gas chambers.
• These were some of the shoes of the
people killed in one of the camps.
Nuremberg Trial: “I was only
following orders”
• When the Allied Forces finally
took control of Germany, the
captured Nazi officials were
placed in trial in the German city
of Nuremberg.
• Many of the accused did not
take responsibility for their
actions, claiming that they were
only following orders.
• Obedience over ethics/ morals
Adolf Eichmann
• Eichmann portrayed himself as an
obedient bureaucrat who merely
carried out his assigned duties. As
for the charges against him,
Eichmann maintained that he had
not violated any law and that he
was “the kind of man who cannot
tell a lie.” Denying responsibility for
the mass killings, he said, “I
couldn’t help myself; I had orders,
but I had nothing to do with that
business.”
The Importance of Philosophy
• Happiness is not to be
identified with material
possessions (e.g., wealth,
gadgets, specific persons, or
even power, positions)
otherwise it will not be
accessible to everyone.
• The picture depicts the meeting
of Alexander the Great and
Cynic philosopher Diogenes
Diogenes: The happiest man
• As the story goes, Diogenes was known as the happiest man.
• Yet he does not own any substantial possessions besides his clothes, staff, a
bowl for eating, and a big barrel where he lives.
• When Alexander the Great was passing by the area, perhaps the most
powerful man of the time being the leader of the Macedonian Empire, he
went to see Diogenes early in the morning when the philosopher was
soaking the sun in front of his barrel.
• Like a trick question, he asked Diogenes, “Is there anything I can do within
my power to make you happier?”
• To Alexander's surprise, Diogenes replied, “Yes, move aside. You're blocking
my sun!”
The Importance of Philosophy
• “The unexamined life is not
worth living.” - Socrates
• Finding the meaning of Life
• Living a virtuous Life
• Here's a short video on what
Socrates means by the
unexamined life.
• https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=Ccwmn5T3-54
The Importance of Philosophy
• Care for the self/ soul
• In a better translation of the
qoute on the right, instead of
“because the search for
mental health is never
untimely,” it says, “for it is
never to early or too late to
care for the well-being of the
soul.”