Came across this in a book I'm reading at the moment, The Ethos Effect by L.E. Modesitt Jr. I found it interesting simply because it talked about something I consider often lacking in a lot of people. That is, standing to even a considered code of ethics and morals.
Quoting Chapter 11:
What is 'ethical' or 'moral'? A general definition is that actions that conform to a 'right set of principles' are ethical. Such a definition begs the question. Whose principles? On what are those principles based? Do those principles arise from the reasoned development by rational scholars? Or from 'divine' inspiration? Does it matter, so long as they inspire moral and ethical behaviour?
For some, it does matter, as it did for the ancient author who claimed that without a deity, every action is permitted. In practice, with or without a deity, every action is permitted unless human social structures preclude it. Yet, on what principles are those social structures based? Ethics and morality?
Such questioning can quickly run in circles, especially since most individuals wish to think of well of themselves, and it is difficult to think of well of oneself if one defines one's own activities as immoral or unethical. For example, genocide can be rationalized as an ethical means to racial purity, or as a means for societal survival, and both purity and survival can easily be rationalized, and have been throughout history, as ethical.
Are values and behaviors that perpetuate a given society ethical per se? Are values handed down by prophets and religious figures as the word of a deity necessarily more ethical than those developed by ethicists and scholars?
Theocracies and other societies using religious motives, or pretexts, have undertake genocide, torture, and war. Ideologues without the backing of formal religious doctrine or established theocratic organizations have done the same.
The obvious conclusion is that 'moral' values must be ethical in and of themselves, and not through religious or secular authority or rationalized logic. This leads to the critical questions. How can one define waht is ethical without resorting to authority, religious doctrine, or societal expediency And whom will any society trust to make such a judgment, particularly one not based on authority, doctrine or expediency?