As you cross the parking lot toward your car, you realize that the cashier undercharged you for your purchase. Do you head back to the store to correct the error?
You’ve just finished your morning coffee at work. Do you rinse out your mug and set it in the lunchroom drying rack?
Your colleagues try to draw you into their circle of gossip about the boss or a coworker. Do you try to change the subject—or do you remove yourself from the conversation?
When you reflect on your own values and behavior, do you hold yourself accountable to the same standards you expect and hope for from others?
If you answered no to any of these questions, you aren’t a criminal. For the most part, you haven’t broken the law, and you haven’t actively harmed another person in any measurable way.
But are you ethical?
Sociologist Raymond Baumhart once asked businesspeople to define ethics. Here are some of the answers he received:
Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me is right or wrong.
Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs.
Being ethical is doing what the law requires.
Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts.
I don’t know what the word means.
If we don’t know what the word means, what hope do we have of living ethical lives? Even more worrisome: If we think we know what it means to be ethical but we’re wrong, are we not on course to violate the principles of ethics despite our best intentions?
Maybe it doesn’t matter. When so many around us seem to care less about what’s right and more about not getting caught, is being ethical worth the cost and worth the effort? Haven’t we learned through experience that no good deed goes unpunished and nice guys finish last?
It often feels that way. But is that the kind of world we want to live in? Don’t we want to live in a world where we don’t feel we have to choose between being good and being successful?
At the outset of the great American experiment, the Founding Fathers recognized that because power corrupts, leaders cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of the people they rule.
What those exceptional visionaries understood is that no body of laws can—by itself—preserve the order essential for the survival of any governmental system. The endless cycle of rise and fall that describes the arc of human history testifies to the limited life expectancy of any political institution.
The Framers’ solution, therefore, was to formalize the implicit social contract described in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. They attempted to canonize a doctrine of universal truths and thereby add the flesh of social responsibility onto the bone and sinew of legislation, breathing a soul of life into the body of the law. Their creation was the Constitution of the United States, a document not of laws per se, but of elemental legal principles and ideals that provided the context for all future laws and jurisprudence.
The Framers were men of tremendous passions and disparate views. They ferociously argued the benefits of federal power versus states’ rights, of individual freedom versus communal responsibility. In the end, they arrived at a meeting of minds based upon a collective vision of the future and a fundamental agreement over core values. This was possible only because they were guided by a mutual respect for one another’s humanity and good intentions.
In other words, they were directed by a mindset of ethics.
What are ethics? What is virtue? What does it mean to do good and be good?
That is a question for the ages. And the answer is far from simple.
According to The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, “The major problem of current moral philosophy [is] coming up with a rationally defensible theory of right and wrong.”1 In their efforts to define morality, philosophers have constructed a variety of models that fall under four broad headings, all of which attempt to avoid the inherent problems of moralizing. Each model offers a useful, but imperfect, definition of “good.”2
Utilitarianism defines good as whatever provides the most people with the most pleasure or human well-being.3 However, it makes no allowance for higher virtues and objective morality. Within the framework of utilitarianism, any majority is not only permitted but obligated to enslave, oppress, or even torture a minority for no reason other than personal benefit or amusement. The utilitarian model effectively promotes tyranny by the majority.
A more immediate problem with utilitarianism is how to quantify pleasure or benefit. Consider the opposing factors faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, the virus had a mortality rate estimated between 3 and 5 percent, with debilitating and sometimes lasting health consequences for many more who contracted the disease. Medical services were overwhelmed, and burial services could not properly tend to the dead. A near-total shutdown of public activities and private services seemed the only prudent response.
On the other hand, the quarantine caused extensive hardship, both economically and psychologically. Many doctors predicted even greater long-range health consequences, as those with chronic conditions were dissuaded from refilling prescriptions and from seeking proper medical monitoring. Additionally, after the quarantine would be lifted, a second, more virulent wave was predicted for the following season.
In such a situation, what constituted the greater good: letting the disease run its course and dealing with more pain for a shorter duration, or sheltering-in-place to minimize immediate, devastating consequences while allowing for the likelihood of extended disruption to many more lives on many different levels? A purely utilitarian approach offers little guidance where outcomes cannot be measured or accurately predicted.
In sharp contrast, Kantianism defines morality according to objective evaluation and rational consistency, applying personal values to determine universal principles. Under this system, any intellectually defensible and consistently applied value or behavior falls under the umbrella of morality. When applied by thoughtful, sincere, intellectually mature people in moments of cool objectivity, this system offers a reasonable approach for establishing moral tenets and determining moral behavior.
Taken to extremes, however, Kantianism validates both the Marxist rejection of private property as a social evil and the Nazi extermination of peoples deemed dangerous to society, as long as each ideology is applied with consistency. Moreover, it promotes moral anarchy, since every individual becomes the arbiter of his own moral matrix. And what happens when my moral compass sets me on a collision course with yours? Kantianism offers no solution.
Intuitionism rejects the notion of universal moral truth except as demonstrated through social consequence. Murder is wrong because it deprives another of life; stealing is wrong because it deprives another of property. Through observation and evaluation, intuitionism attempts to build a composite of virtues based on self-evident moral axioms.
However, like utilitarianism, intuitionism fails to address higher values or internal character. Like Kantianism, it fails because the axioms it defines only hold for those who agree they are self-evident. Once again, if the individuals who form the collective cannot agree on the principles of collective morality, the approach provides society with little practical benefit. What’s more, intuitionalism fails to address—almost by definition— the morally ambiguous situations that each of us face as we go through life. It also comes up empty in circumstances where one principle clashes with another.
The fourth model is Virtue Ethics which, paradoxically, concedes the impossibility of defining virtue. Rather than attempting to articulate principles of good, virtue ethics assembles examples of admirable, upright, and upstanding behavior in an effort to teach ethics through case studies, as it were. From repeated exposure to models of virtue, we naturally absorb a higher sensitivity for goodness and organically develop into more virtuous, more ethical people. The problem is the inevitable reliance on shifting social norms, which implies no absolute standard or basis of morality.
Nevertheless, we find virtue ethics appearing in the most ancient wisdom. The model was employed 3,000 years ago, when King Solomon composed his Book of Proverbs, offering a collection of pithy, allegorical teachings to guide us in our quest to be good. It was similarly employed by the Jewish sages nearly 1,000 years later in their reflective tract, Ethics of Fathers, which remains an unparalleled guide for leading a life devoted to altruistic ideals and authentic purpose.
In my own struggle to articulate a code of universal ethics, I have found in these two sources a wealth of wisdom, insight, and inspiration. The challenge has been to adapt the language of the ancients to the profoundly different circumstances of modern times. We may not have to reinvent the wheel, but we do have to make sure our wheels are properly aligned with the vehicles of contemporary thought.
Does the collected wisdom of the ages provide an operating definition of virtue or ethics? A good place to start is by tweaking the Golden Rule: In place of do unto others as you would have them do unto you, resolve to act toward others in the way they would have you act unto them. In other words, rather than evaluating my conduct toward others relative to how I wish to be treated, I should consider my responsibility to treat others according to how they deserve to be treated. I should further contemplate how best to acquire the qualities that will make it second nature for me to respect the humanity of my fellow human beings.
Sensitivity for the impact our actions have on other people lies at the heart of the formulation offered by Hillel the Elder when asked to express the totality of Torah philosophy while “standing on one foot”: What is hateful to you do not do to another.4 But Hillel’s brief response was far more complicated than it might seem, for he appended to it one indispensable corollary: the rest is commentary; go learn it.
What Hillel meant was this: Only through the accumulation of ethical wisdom can we aspire to become ethical people.
However imperfect each model of morality may be individually, perhaps we can construct a practical system for ethical decision making by constructing a synthesis of all four. To develop your own ethical mindset, adopt the following process for cultivating moral awareness:
• Evaluate the utilitarian benefit of your attitudes and actions for the community at large.
• Apply the Kantian principles you recognize from your own experience with sincerity and consistency.
• Intuit on the soundness of your subjective conclusions by observing the objective consequences that emerge from them.
• Cultivate a sensitivity for the lessons that offer themselves up daily according to the ideals of virtue ethics.
In his classic work, Defining Moments, Joseph Badaracco, Jr., describes how, at critical points in our lives, we all confront serious ethical dilemmas that demand us to choose between competing core values. Such moments reveal the accuracy of our moral compass, test the resilience of our moral commitment, and shape the future development of our moral character. But our decisions in those defining moments are not made in a vacuum. They are themselves the culmination of all the ethical choices, large and small, that we have made from the days of our youth right up to each decision point.
Ideally, we should make every ethical decision only after deliberation, reflection, contemplation, and, where appropriate, consultation with the genuinely wise. But sometimes we need to make decisions on the spot, with nothing to rely on except our own experience and ethical intuition. Given the intensity of such moments, how can we be sure what’s right? How can we believe in ourselves and trust our ethical judgment?
Every decision we make prepares us for the next one—not so much the decision itself but the sincere effort we put into how we make that decision. Even failure in the battle to be ethical, if we have fought the battle valiantly and with integrity, strengthens us for the next battle and better prepares us to win the war.
Ethics is messy. There is no app for being ethical, no rubric or formula to ensure that we will make the right decision in response to every ethical dilemma and every ethical conflict. Ultimately, it may be less important to arrive at a definition of virtue than to apply ourselves to the relentless task of seeking virtue.
King David, in his passion to acquit himself as a faithful servant of the Almighty, cries out, “Examine me, O Lord, and test me; scrutinize my intellect and my heart.”5 The Hebrew word khilyosai, rendered in the verse as “my intellect,” translates literally as “my kidneys.” Where modern philosophers describe a perpetual conflict between the head and the heart, the ancients construed the same inner turmoil as a battle between the heart and the kidneys.
We’re all familiar with the heart as a metaphor representing the impulses of human emotion. The heart pumps the blood, which boils in anger, freezes with terror, and turns bad through enmity. Matters of the heart are those that bypass reason and rationality to connect directly with feelings and passion.
But what do the kidneys have to do with intellect?
The kidneys function to keep the blood clean. Without their ceaseless removal of impurities from the body, our systems would become so polluted that we would quickly fall ill and expire. In the same way that kidneys filter out contaminants from the blood, cool introspection and evaluation filter out the more inflammatory urges of our emotions.
What moderates the impulses of the impetuous heart, therefore, is the calculated restraint of the rational mind. It is the intellect that keeps human beings morally healthy by screening out the toxic influences of ego, sensory gratification, and foreign ideas. Just as the pure flow of blood is critical for a sound body, pure thinking is essential for a healthy soul.
This may explain why many translators have chosen to render the word khaliyos not as “kidneys” but as “reins,” relating to the renal system that keeps our blood clean and oxygenated so that our minds remain clear enough to rein in our passions.
However, the capacity of reason can itself be perverted if our hearts are not committed to what is good and what is true. That’s why the mind needs the heart as much as the heart needs the mind. For if sound reasoning fails to rein in the longings of the heart, the cravings of desire will give free rein to the power of rationalization. When that happens, instead of holding the heart in check, the mind becomes an accomplice in destructive self-indulgence.
In the process of making ethical choices, therefore, we need to recognize the natural tension between the intellect and the emotions, between logic and intuition, between cold reason and animated passion. Only when we can broker a truce, as opposed to an alliance, between these two capricious factions can we conclude with some degree of confidence that our choices are the right choices.
With this in mind, I offer the following collection of case studies that do not present ethical models but rather ethical dilemmas. Like any discipline, whether athletics, music performance, or cooking, the attainment of ethical competence requires an investment of time and effort. Only by developing the muscles and dexterity of conscience will we achieve the moral fitness necessary to make the right decisions when confronted by situations of ethical challenge.
One practical obstacle to making ethical choices is our inability, or unwillingness, to fully consider more than one side of an issue. We refuse to examine alternative points of view, either because we’re overconfident in our positions or because we’re frightened by the prospect that we might have to admit being wrong.
But aren’t we better off discovering that we’ve been wrong, so that we can start to be right?
When we face conflict with others, defensiveness prods us to dig into our preconceived notions and comfortable ideologies. We denounce competing views as misinformed or mistaken; we condemn those who hold them as extremists and fanatics. We become more entrenched in our positions and grow increasingly antagonistic toward those who don’t agree with us. We retreat into enclaves of ideology and groupthink, growing ever more calcified in our views and ever more intolerant of anyone who thinks differently.
The ethical situations presented in this book are not necessarily meant to be solved. They are meant to be pondered, debated, and chewed over. They are meant to provide an ethical workout for the mind and the conscience. As such, they will provide the greatest benefit when studied in the company of others—preferably others who don’t share all our points of view.
As a final warning, it is critical to dispel the notion that what’s ethical is synonymous with what’s legal. If we want to be ethical, we have to buy into the truism that the challenges of ethics arise predominantly in the murky gray areas—either those that reside amidst legal ambiguity or those that we create in the nether regions of our minds. Only then will we have a fighting chance to become ethical by learning how to grapple with the gray.
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1 T. Honderich. 1995. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 591–3, “moral philosophy, problems of.”
2 Ibid.
3 The conflation of pleasure with benefit or well-being may be an even more fundamental impediment to the effectiveness of utilitarianism.
4 Babylonian Talmud, Shabbos 31b.
5 Psalms 26:2.