Session 5(a): Ethics, Morality and Corruption

Session 5a: Ethics, Morality and Corruption
Chair: Francesco Belfiore

Reason as Public
Mark Lawrence Santiago
National University of Singapore, Singapore

The problem of ethical pluralism poses more questions than it ensues feasible answers in an inter-cultural age. For one, as a characteristic of this age, one can no longer assume that there is fundamental agreement among philosophers and philosophical traditions as to what the right thing to do is and how we can live the good life. However, the multiplicity of the philosophers’ vision of the right and the good is not the only issue where the difficulty of ethical pluralism rests. The urgency of the question also rests upon certain practical demands that we meet in the everyday-in our moral, religious and political lives. In Southern Philippines for example, there is a perennial problem on how to engage fundamentalist believers of Islam and the Christian majority in dialogue for the sake of common political aims and social cooperation. The possibility of achieving rational consensus on ethical issues becomes more complex when contingent factors such as our religious beliefs and diverse socio-cultural baggage are taken into consideration.
On this account, this paper would tackle the problem of ethical pluralism in an inter-cultural age through a critical study of John Rawls’ Political Liberalism and Jürgen Habermas’ Discourse Ethics. Rawls and Habermas, among many contemporary philosophers have been at the helm of discussing the problem. Their works have generated enough affirmation and criticism that their ideas on the subject, so to speak, have had a life of its own in ethics and political theory. They represent thinkers who do not only clarify the status of the question of ethical pluralism. But on various ways, they attempt to render a definitive answer as to how we should proceed, as persons and societies, given this fact. Rawls and Habermas themselves have had fruitful dialogue on the subject, and their ideas complement rather than simply negate each other.
The aims of this paper, as it hopes to address a complex philosophical problem is threefold. It will try to focus on the following: (I) first, it will discuss and clarify Rawls’ conception of pluralism, as it is more deliberately expressed in his collection of essays, Political Liberalism. It will give an outline of Political Liberalism’s major ideas along with the subsequent criticisms made by representative thinkers of communitarianism (Michael Sandel), pluralist communitarianism (Will Kymlicka and Iris Marion Young) and liberalism (Robert Nozick). Thus, it aims to expose the extent by which Rawls’ ideas illuminates the subject and its limitations as well. It is for the limitations of Rawls’ conception of pluralism that it turns to, (II) a focus on Jürgen Habermas’ reading of Rawls’ Political Liberalism and Rawls’ Reply to Habermas. This section will be the turning point of the paper as it moves towards (III) a consideration of Habermas’ discourse ethics, his ethical theory on inter-subjective dialogue. It is its conjectural thesis that Habermas’ works in discourse ethics can illuminate our search for an answer to the question of ethical pluralism in an inter-cultural age.

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Does Western Ethics Demolish Morality?
Hendrik Vanmassenhove
Department Comparative Sciences of Culture, Gent University, Belgium

Ethics is not neutral to morality.
It is the science of good and evil and the study of moral action and moral language (meta-ethics). It is often concerned about foundations, theologically or philosophically. The word ‘morality’ on the other hand refers to an existing practice in a given society and culture.
As knowledge is one of the elements that affects behaviour, it is evident that ethics as knowledge of morality will influence moral behaviour, and in that way the morality of a given society. Ethics does even more than that. It demystifies moral rules and this fact weakens the impact of those rules.
Foundations however strengthen moral rules. If moral rules are God’s will they have to be obeyed, for the faithful in all respect. If moral rules can be induced from nature as in epicurean or Aristotelian ethics, they can not be called in question.
With Nietzsche’s death of God and without a substitution the apostate has only his habit to lean upon. Moreover the Greek origin of the word ‘ethic’, èthos, meant custom. With Moore’s naturalistic fallacy, moral rules can not be inferred from facts. As a consequence, without God or nature as foundations for morality anything is possible and only social control or repression can restrain behaviour.
It does not mean that moral behaviour will disappear from society, for cognition is not the only element that induces action and ethics is not an all encompassing social fact. Moreover it does not seem that religion will disappear soon, nor is there a gap between fact and morality, in spite of Moore ’s logical and linguistic analysis. The problem to face will rather be the immorality of religions and the self-contained feature of contemporary ethics. The connection to facts of morality and its necessary dependence on human capacity to judge need a close relationship to other disciplines, such as theology, psychology, social psychology, sociology, anthropology, intercultural studies.

International Corruption and Religion; An Empirical Examination
Stephen Douglas Beets
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA

The expansion of international trade and global business competition, in recent years, has been accompanied by growth in corruption. The extant pervasiveness of corruption is so significant that it may severely limit international trade and serve as a barrier to future international markets. Beyond the deleterious effects on business, however, corruption may also exacerbate poverty, political instability, and environmental degradation; the consequent result may be massive cultural and personal damage. In particular, developing nations may be suffering from the consequences of corruption as many government officials attempt to personally benefit from the flow of resources into their countries. Corruption is, correspondingly, a damaging, intercultural phenomenon about which many government officials, nongovernmental organizations, cultures, and world citizens are concerned.
While many factors may contribute to a person’s willingness to participate in a corrupt transaction, the influence of religion may be significant, and leaders of religious organizations, such as Pope John Paul II, have become increasingly vocal in their condemnation of corruption. As honesty and fairness to third parties is universal to many religions, leaders of many faiths are united in their opposition to corruption.
To better comprehend the relationship between religion and corruption, a study was conducted employing information related to religion and Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which ranks nations according to the perceived degree of corruption among public officials and politicians. The 133 countries that were included in the 2003 CPI were compared across a range of factors related to (1) the dominant religion practiced in each country, (2) perceived corruption, (3) the importance of religion to the citizens of each country, (4) religious freedom, and (5) the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Study results indicate that, when countries are grouped by dominant religion, the groups differ significantly with regard to perceived corruption, value of religion, religious freedom, and GDP per capita. Significant differences in the same factors also occurred when countries were grouped by corruption levels.