Ethical Principles, Criteria, and the Meaning of Human Values

Loneliness and intimacy depend on value-laden life choices. The chapter focuses on ethics. Both Hume (an empiricist) and Kant (a rationalist) distinguish the Ought from the Is, Values from Facts, and Morality from Science. The author offers an exhaustive matrix of ethical principles and criteria in Western thought, from Relativism to Absolutism, available for the choosing. The deterministic sciences of psychology, behaviorism, neuroscience, sociology, and politics are incapable of dealing with human values. There is a variety of ethical first principles available for the choosing, including three forms of ethical relativism, Descriptive, Normative, and Metaethical. By contrast, there are four forms of ethical absolutism, grounded in Empiricism, Rationalism, Fideism, and Existentialism. And two forms of Existential principles: Theistic and Atheistic. Critical to the discussion, Freud, a determinist, is contrasted with the foregoing thinkers as he connects the ego’s sense of personal identity with narcissism and sadism as natural to man. But whether one chooses ethical relativism or absolutism, all these choices are value-laden. As William James contends, ethical choices are momentous, forced, and unavoidable, just as a man who delays forever whether to marry his sweetheart has in effect chosen not to marry. There are no agnostics. Science is the denial of values and idealism is its affirmation.

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Notes

Cornford, F. M., Plato’s Theory of Knowledge: The Theaetetus and the Sophist of Plato (London: Percy, Lund, Humphrey’s & Co., 1964), 245E–246E; 228–232.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Philosophy, California State University Dominguez Hills, Carson, CA, USA Ben Lazare Mijuskovic

1. Ben Lazare Mijuskovic