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A Question of Ethics
To be an ethical person requires you to think carefully about decisions, says philosopher
BY DEIRDRE HEALEY
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| Prof. John Hacker-Wright says teaching ethics has an important place in education. Photo by Martin Schwalbe |
Philosophy professor John Hacker-Wright knows what it takes to be a good person. In fact, he has it down to a theoretical science.
Hacker-Wright, who joined the University this summer, has been studying human virtues for the past six years.
“I've always been interested in examining issues at the fundamental level and then trying to look at these issues in a different way,” he says. “In the same way that people who like physics become physicists, people who like abstract fundamental issues become philosophers.”
Courage, temperance, justice and honesty are the traditional human virtues defined by the great philosophers such as Aristotle, he says. These are the traits deemed to be the basic ingredients of an ethical person and ones everyone should be striving to achieve.
But over the last three decades, philosophers have been pushing to add the characteristic of caring to the list, and Hacker-Wright is a strong supporter of this movement.
“The labour that goes into a mother caring for and raising a child is not recognized,” he says. “But this caring is essential to creating an environment where people can develop into good human beings.”
The original list is based on a “male-dominated and traditional” philosophy created at a time when a person's ability to be successful in war was highly valued and the ability to nurture and care for another human being was not even recognized, he says.
“Caring has been neglected because of patriarchy. It's a trait that's been taken for granted.”
Hacker-Wright's current research involves crafting arguments that support incorporating caring into the original list and showing how neatly this new addition fits into a set of ideas that have existed for hundreds of years.
When he isn't wrapped up in his ethical theory research, he's teaching courses on ethics from biomedical to business to environmental.
In his teaching, he's faced with the challenge of taking these abstract ideas and theories and applying them to current issues his students will understand, such as capital punishment and abortion.
Hacker-Wright, an MA and PhD graduate of State University of New York, Stony Brook, says teaching ethics has an important place in education because it encourages people to become more articulate and explicit about ethical decisions, which ultimately makes them better at making such decisions.
“We often have feelings about ethical decisions but not always the vocabulary to explain our thinking.”
It also helps people recognize the different positions that exist in any ethical decision, he adds.
Although Canada is behind in ethical discussions, particularly when it comes to scientific and technological developments, says Hacker-Wright, it's definitely an area growing in popularity, especially when it comes to environ- mental ethics.
“Instead of simply filling their car up with gas, people are more likely to think about that action and what impact they're having on the environment. To be an ethical person requires you to think carefully about decisions, and I think that is happening more and more.”