Legal Studies 210: Corporate Responsibility and Ethics
Essay Hmwk #1 : Given that you want to serve your own interests, what do you want your interests to be? Describe the interests that you believe you should possess (using Hartman's notion of interest). Consider whether or not the behaviours needed to pursue those interests make you happy and how will your career afford you the opportunity to pursue such interests.
Reflect on the assumptions about what makes me happy. Ponder on the mistaken beliefs about the benefits of what I want.
Aristotle believes that happiness requires desires that are consistent with one another and with one's values, and actions that are consistent with one's desires.
Value = Desire = Interest = Action = Value
I am floored. It's no longer enough to say what my hobbies are. Or what I want to be when I grow up. But it is essentially, what am I so that I know what I will be? Because my core, my character is interlinked with my virtues. My virtues will determine my interests. So its no longer I do community work to develop empathy or to feel good about myself, or to feel less guilty that I bought a new sweater while that kid is starving on the road. Manners are about doing the right thing. Character is about the right desire, or the right feeling when faced with a situation, and then doing the right thing. You are socially responsible for doing the right actions, but you are also morally responsible for feeling the right thing, which are not typically voluntary. But what if I am only morally obligated to feel the right thing or have the right desires. Then all I have is second-order desires, a desire to have a desire.
So, without the right values, I can’t have the right desire to have the right interests to do the right action.
So, I need to determine what values I need to have before I determine what interests I want to have. Do I really want to be an honest person? A sympathetic person? A selfless person? A patient person? A loving person? Or do I just want to have those values because I am religiously, socially and morally obligated to have them? And if I do determine that I want my values to be selfless giving and love, then the only way I can be happy is if my actions are coherent with those values. What if I only do those actions or have those interests but not those values? Is it still possible to be happy?
Teacher...where's my ten-year-series assessment book?
2 comments:
lol.
Morality and ethics.
You will do what you feel at that moment you ought to do. And you can think about it and why all day, but it doesn't mean anything.
Character is doing what is right when you don't want to do it.
Virtues are what you believe to be true.
Your core, you, your being, can have the virtues and not the character, the character and not the virtues and any combination in between.
Aristotle was wrong :P People can do the right things when they don't want to and can do the wrong things when they want it to be right.
I wish I could reply with something intelligent. But my brain is fried. I'll think about a response when im at a club tonight.Hopefully the disco lights will inspire me.
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