Transcript The Four Ethical Experiences

The Four Ethical Experiences
Four Types of Ethical Experiences:
• #1 The Experience of Personal Response
(The Scream) There is a spontaneous decision to
help – it is not a decision that you make
There is an automatic response which urges you
to you not to think but to ACT
You are aware of your responsibility to the
“other”
4 Types of Ethical Experiences:
#2 The Experience of the Other
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All face to face encounters are ethical because
they remind us of our responsibility for others.
The other person takes you hostage as they
evoke a response from you (it can be guilt) and
make you responsible
The face stays with you even
after you decide what to do
– he or she is inside you while
you are busy defending your
decision to give or not to give.
4 Types of Ethical Experiences:
#3 The Experience of Obligation
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This experience of feeling obliged to obey a
rule or law has everything to do with your
ethical side. You are forced to respond.
You feel an intrinsic duty to oblige (i.e. To
follow parent’s rules). The “right thing to do.”
The order or wish from an authority figure can
invade our consciousness, change our
ethical framework and demand a
response.
If you choose to ignore the ethical
response, the unrest stays with you.
4 Types of Ethical Experiences:
#4 The Experience of Contrast
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This experience occurs when you feel outraged by
something blatantly unjust or unfair happening to
yourself or to others. In contrast to what we expect of
fellow human beings.
When you feel overwhelmed by the unjust suffering
of others, the indignation you feel is an experience of
contrast with what the world should look like.
These experiences lead us to thoughts of “That is not
fair!” or “This must be stopped!” or “This is
intolerable!”
How we believe things not “ought to be”.
Can cause a change that opposes this
destruction.
4 Types of Ethical Experiences Summary
• We all have an ethical core – We are called to react in one way or
another when confronted with a dilemma. Whether this desire to react
is
- embedded in our genes (innate) or
- programmed in our psyche after years of listening to
moral authorities (learned) or
- is evidence of the divine within us, its up to you to decide.
• What one person believes is duty, guilt, intolerable contrast, etc. will be
different for every person in every circumstance and cannot be
translated into ethical position that applies to everyone at all times.
• Early philosophers noted such experiences and reflected on them. From
them we have inherited different theories that seek to explain ethical
experiences and to translate them into a practical wisdom of living.
Case Study: “Too Young to Wed”
• Watch the documentary, “Too Young to Wed” and
identify how the experience of the Other directly
relates for the Ethical Experience assignment
distributed in class.
The Four Ethical
Experiences
Experience of Personal
Response
Experience of The Other
Experience of
Obligation
Experience of Contrast
Demonstration of the Ethical Experience from the
documentary. (Describe an event in the documentary and
connect to the given description of each “experience”)