Teaching or learning ethics in university studies brings with it the potential to use ancient theories to try and cover topics in today’s business environment. While I agree that this can be done successfully, in many ways it is becoming extinct in our globalized world. To this end I will consider John Locke in today’s Ethical and legal environment, which I am involved in at Kaplan University. General Research indicates that John Locke was born in England, in the year 1632, an advocate of the republic and the family; His parents passed away when John Locke was still young. According to Britannica, John Locke was educated in academia and medicine (but held no doctorate), spent some time in self-imposed exile, and eventually held various minor government positions.
Locke was not popular at a time when religious conformity and blackness were the name of the game; He did not subscribe to divine theories. Although he embraced religion later in life, he resisted the conclusion that we are born with morals, ethics, or precepts. born of an empty mind, a soft board (tabula rasa) ready to be briefed by experimental impressions. At the same time, he thought that “all the inalienable rights of persons are protected and these rights are given by God and present to every human being born” (eGuide to Ethics and the Legal Environment). To that end, “Locke also rejected the idea of original sin according to which humans need a strong government to control sinful natures” (William B. Turner 2007).
“Locke emphasized the right to life, liberty, and property” which focuses primarily on the duties we have toward other people: duties not to kill, serve, and steal” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Under “Locke’s rights-based approach, the only ethical view should be done to anyone in which neither the person himself nor the rights of another person are violated” (eGuide to Ethics and the Legal Environment).
Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York until March 2008, got himself caught with his pants down. From an ethical perspective, using John Locke’s Theory, Eliot Spitzer had every right to lewdly play in the country, and he arranged for the pleasures of prostitutes to serve the political elite. I assume that these ladies of the night are willing and able, and therefore in the overall ethical process Eliot Spitzer made do not kill, do not kill, do not enslave , thieves, you will not trample on someone else’s rights. I don’t know if his wife is aware of her marital mistakes over the years, but the logical deduction leads me the way ‘Of course she did, but she ignored it like most women in such a situation – Hillary Clinton is behind the political wives in these positions. Extending this thought further, Eliot Spitzer did not violate his wife’s right to my assumption of an intact conscience.
John Locke was about individualism. He argued that we all have rights, that we should be just because of the fact that we live. His theory not only influenced the thinking of the Founding Fathers, but also every John, Dick, and Crochet who came later and tried to match the footsteps of ethics against the corporate ‘me’. The study of ethics is important to today’s business and to the government of the world, because every action by its people, every law, everything it is an organization. It is based on ethics. John Locke is here to help us try to understand and affect change. We, as students, as active participants in each society, as living, breathing and working people, must not only study, but also understand what it is that makes the world in turn. At the end of the day there are individual as well as group ethics; they decide what we do, what we choose not to do, what we say or don’t say, what we accept or reject, and what we get up or stay in bed. It is ethics, pure and simple, that determines the state of the world today.
In my opinion, John Locke was not a liberal. “Liberalism is a positive, proactive philosophy that believes in progress. Rather than trying to mold political, social, and religious life into an idealistic historical model of the good, liberalism sees us progressing toward greater individualism, greater abundance, greater justice as we develop individually and socially.” (Samuel A. Trumbore, 1996) Eliot Spitzer You’re right even if your ethical stance doesn’t match your pants.
AT
References
Chapter 1, Unit 2 eGuide to the Ethics & Legal Environment, Kaplan Course Book on Ethics & the Legal Environment, March & September 2008
Peter Landry, Date Unknown. “Loke, Philosopher of Liberty.” Retrieved from Peter Landry’s website on March 31, 2008 at http://www.blupete.com/Intro.htm
Philosophy Pages. “John Locke.” Retrieved from Philosophy Pages on March 31, 2008 at http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/lock.htm
Samuel A. Trumbore, 1996. “The Roots of Liberalism.” Retrieved March 31, 2008 from the Unitarian Universalist Society at http://www.uumin.org/sam/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Date unknown. “Loke and Politics”. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on March 31, 2008 at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/
William B. Turner, 2007. “On Marriage and Monarchy: Why John Locke.” Retrieved from William B. Turner’s website on March 31, 2008 at http://works.bepress.com/william_turner/
NY Times – Spitzer
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/ethics/index.html and http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/eliot_l_spitzer/index. html
