In the present essay, reference will be made to the etymological origin of the words Ethics and Morals, in order to find the similarities and differences between the two concepts from there. Afterwards, the relationship between Politics and Ethics will be seen and it will be concluded with the proposal to generate universal norms that integrate the public and the private from a collective intellectual.
Ethics comes from the Greek: êthos, place where you live, is what Aristotle called a way of being, character; something that the person can build, mold. Human beings can shape their character, their way of being.
The individual is not fatally determined to live by always being the same; he can then build his way of being, to put it like the Greeks, his êthos. Using the Socratic method let us ask ourselves now, how can êthos be shaped? By creating habits, which comes to constitute our way of being.
Moral, from the Latin: moralis which means custom, repetition of acts. Plus the difference between Greeks and Romans is that the latter linked the word to the rules governing actions, hence, despite the similarity of the two meanings, they have different meanings.
In every society we find actions allowed and actions that are prohibited, and are those that define the morale of each people. Morality comes to be the norms of behavior that acquired by each person, regulate their behavior; clarifying that not all society has the same value judgments on such behaviors. Thus, in order to live a social freedom, one must observe moral norms; That was the conception of the Romans and it is what makes the difference between the words Ethics and Morals. That is to say, the level of Ethics is different from the level of Moral since that one, deals with the study of what originates the norm.
The following sentence by Mahatma Gandi clarifies well the difference between Moral and Ethical: "I have disobeyed the law not because I want to lack authority, but because I obey the most important law of our life: the voice of conscience." Gandi failed Morality, disobeyed the English Law, but acted in accordance with Ethics. It was Ethics that took care to indicate to him that the origin of the norm was not fair and to be ethical, to be consistent with justice, with his conscience, he had to break the norm of the English.
Politics and Ethics. Both refer to the praxis of man, to his actions, to what we do with the exercise of our freedom; what differentiates them is that Ethics deals with the judgment of intimate value that the human being makes of his praxis, while Politics is linked to the norms and institutions that regulate the life of man in society, for which reason it must take into account the will, obligations and rights of others.
The duty of the relationship between Ethics and Politics proposed in this essay is that the collective must be capable of generating universal norms that integrate the public and the private, which can only be achieved with the construction of a new order, with a society committed to the alternative of no longer promoting the differences and divisions between the interests of the associates. It is the Ethics that the collective intellectual demands. This is an invitation to reflect on the relationship between the world of politics and the world of affections and interests.
