what is the furthest you’d go immorally for a fresh salary? Hell I’d work for Palantir for a nice $250k or be a manager at Evil Corporation Inc if I got a crisp $300k.
or are you a goody two shoes who will stand by your principles even if it means pain!
Interesting question.
I have (personal) ethics, I don’t have any morals: I don’t believe in good vs evil). My ethics help decide on a case by case situation what I should (not) do as there is no predefined rule in regards to earning money, nor on how to use said money once it’s earned.
I mean, would you consider it ‘moral’ to use, say, the million of dollars one may have earned speculating on Meta or Tesla stocks, or any other ‘immoral’ company like those, to support a ‘moral’ non-profit like the EFF, or the FSF?
I would not invest in say crypto to fund EFF or FSF but I would be fine with like an SP500 investments doing so even though its likely there are all sorts of bad stuff in there. Honestly if I had that type of money I would likely spend more time deciding on how my investments were done to encourage the good while not losing money and then decide on what amount to put toward EFF and FSF.
I’m gonna be a pedant here. I understand (I think) what you’re trying to express and differentiate. It’s just the words aren’t perfectly accurate.
“Personal” ethics are morals. Ethics are community based standards or principles, morals are personal standards. Some people equate morals to religious guidelines or principles, but morals don’t have to be religious (nor do distinctions of good and evil, right and wrong). Personal understanding of what is right or wrong is a moral standing. It is possible to have morals (personal belief) based on ethics (community standard), but they are still morals.
IMO, anyway.
Morals can be principally driven, and often are even in people that don’t understand the principle that underlies an ethical standard. For instance, a conscientious objector might still defend themselves or others from personal violence. In this case the underlying principle is one of, say, political neutrality, or perhaps political opposition, not pacifism. And yet the person themselves might not be able to put into words why is okay to use violence one on one, but not militarily. I’m rambling
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English is obviously not my first language, but reading the good old Wikipedia it seems to me the two are rather different (like they’re in my own native French, btw ;): ethics and moral
Neat! I’m gonna come back to this once I’ve finished work. I was using the OED definitions and understanding:
But this idea of an Aristotelian understanding of ethics vs morals is fascinating. Thank you for the link :-D
Also it is not obvious from your original comment that English is a secondary language for you <3 French is on my bucket list, but I want to learn basic German first. Both for etymological reasons primarily
You’re more than welcome.
Thx (here you might want to add a blushing emoji, if there is such a thing)
This would make sense.
Plus, ignoring any other consideration, German language has produced quite a few remarkable authors/poets/philosophers that are more than worth (re)reading. I would not want to have to decide between French and German (or English) but I can understand the desire to prioritize one above the others.