70 likes | 326 Views
Ethics & Integrity in Professional and Personal Contexts. Dr. Nancy A. Stanlick Department of Philosophy University of Central Florida stanlick@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu. What is Ethics? . Ethics? Rules (lower level, externally imposed) Reasons (higher level, internally determined)
E N D
Ethics & Integrity in Professional and Personal Contexts Dr. Nancy A. Stanlick Department of Philosophy University of Central Florida stanlick@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
What is Ethics? • Ethics? • Rules (lower level, externally imposed) • Reasons (higher level, internally determined) • Sources of Ethical Concepts • Transcendent • Cultural • Individual • Does the Origin of Ethical Concepts Matter?
What is Integrity? • Stephen Carter, Integrity (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 7: “The word integrity comes from the same Latin root as integer and historically has been understood to carry much the same sense, the sense of wholeness: a person of integrity, like a whole number, is a whole person, a person somehow undivided…. The word conveys … the serenity of a person who is confident in the knowledge that he or she is living rightly…. A person of integrity lurks somewhere inside each of us: a person we feel we can trust to do right, to play by the rules, to keep commitments” (bold emphasis added).
Ethics and Integrity • What does it mean to say that a person is “whole” or “undivided”? • What is it to “live rightly”? • What is the connection between these questions, and the conceptions of ethics and integrity, to the social context in which we live?
Wholeness of a Person • What is it to be a person? (Persona, Mask, Appearance and Reality) • Knowing Oneself and Others • Trusting Oneself and Others • This concept leads to an understanding of the notion of trust in a community of persons. • The community of persons is composed of individuals, their interests and needs, and the competing interests of the community • “The very stress on individualism, on competition, on achieving material success which so marks our society also generates intense pressures to cut corners” (Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, New York: Vintage, 1999, 244). • How can the competing interests converge?
Converging/Diverging Views • Individual and Community Ascendancy • In which type of society do you wish to live? • Individual Ascendancy: present orientation, hedonism, duty to self • Community Ascendancy: future orientation, takes responsibility, duty to others • ***From Kibler, Nuss, Paterson and Pavela, Academic Integrity and Student Development: Legal Issues and Policy Perspectives (College Administration Publications, 1988).
Relationships to Others, Individual Value and Community Value • Personal Relationships on the Model of Friendship • From Aristotle’s Ethical Theory • Pleasure • Utility • Mutuality • Ask yourself what your relationship is to others with whom you work, how they see you, and how you see them. • Can a community really survive without mutual trust? • “Trust and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain. They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity” (Bok, 249). • What is lost for the individual AND the community when trust is broken? • Self Respect? • Respect from and for Others? • And why does this matter?