The Self as an Ethical Task            

One of our most important ethical tasks is to become the best person that we are capable of becoming  We can understand this as realizing our potential. A student realizes his or her potential to become, say, a nurse, doctor, accountant, teacher, lawyer, business leader, mechanic, or full-time parent. Also, as we perform acts of beneficence, honesty, courage, diligence, and loyalty, we develop good habits, called virtues, which enable us to realize our potential to be beneficent, honest, brave, diligent and loyal. Knowing what we want to become, what potential we want to actualize, serves as an indispensable tool for knowing how to act day in and day out.

Our very personhood depends on our decisions. We often hear terms such as “the human person” and “the individual,” and may think of them as given, as ready-made objects. But in reality we each begin our life with potential, and as long as we are alive some of our potential remains unfulfilled. Our “self” does not emerge ready-made like Venus from the head of Zeus. For each of us, our self presents a task to be completed. We create our selves by finding a cause or purpose to live for and by developing a life plan to reach that fulfillment. We are not limited to single cause. Our cause may in fact be a system of causes that cooperate in promoting our loyalty. We may choose well or badly, wisely or foolishly, for life or for death. The study of ethics intends to make each person a better judge of what constitutes a good choice. The burden of making the actual choice falls on each of us.

Further, while ethics permeates our individual destinies, it also has rich social dimensions, and requires acts of loyalty. Each of us depends on the various communities to which we belong for everything from our bodily life to our psychological well-being to our deepest spiritual meanings. While we depend on community, community also depends on us. Our ideas and our life plans can help to build or destroy communities.  The ethical judgment of all that we do depends on our intended impact, not only on our own lives, but the lives of others and to the communal structures on which we all depend.

In my next post I will discuss potential as the key to ethical understanding.