Promote choice, wellbeing and the protection of all individuals

Promote choice, wellbeing and the protection of all individuals

Introduction

Profoundly interlinked, with one critical nexus lying in the question of how humans should act towards each other, how they can possibly trust others different from themselves. This is a fundamental moral question. This paper proposes a new moral framework that addresses these issues. The proposed principle focuses on intentional choice in accordance with stated objective criteria of good and evil. The criteria themselves are universal: the good aims to benefit all without exception, whilst the evil aims to harm even a single innocent. As a principle of willed action, there is no inconsistency with the fact that the imperfect world may prevent achievement of the goal of the good choice, and may bring about the circumstance one is trying to avoid in rejecting the evil choice.

But these criteria provide concrete guidance: in personal living, in relating within and amongst groups, and in designing laws and social systems. Also, in a world that practised such an ethic, personal identity, security, and belonging are enhanced for each individual by their trust in the universal care practised by others. This paper explores how the goodness principle works in practice to fulfil this promise. (Finnis 2003)

Discussion

Many of our greatest thinkers have maintained that there is much more that unites us than divides us. The names of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi spring to mind, but there are many more. Unfortunately it has been all-too-often that communities have listened to the siren-songs of the dividers than to the soft voices of the reconcilers. Those of us taking part in this congress are finding a myriad views and perspectives to show how it is not a hopeless task to overcome the divisions. One cause of division is fear, and a cause of fear is uncertainty as to how others will act towards us. But what if we knew that a stranger of another race, religion, and nationality was no more likely to hurt us than our own best friend? Would not such knowledge about that stranger help us to overcome our fear and defensiveness towards that stranger? And what if the stranger knew the same about us, that we in turn cared for that person's welfare, even though we had never met them before? What if there was a universal ethic, a fundamental principle of moral behaviour, that we all shared, and that principle required us to care for all others? And what if that principle were already hinted at in all the great religions? And what if it were a perfectly practical principle, not merely a grand emotional exhortation?    

One can make headway in understanding the Principle by comparing it with utilitarianism. It can be argued that utilitarianism and other consequentialist ethics are popular moral principles of our time. What, after all, could be better than making as many people happy as possible? Consequentialist theories may be regarded as making a statement of the (Mascaro 2003)form: “One's moral duty is to maximise measure of welfare X”, where X differs between variants of consequentialism, and where “maximise” is shorthand for the tedious “maximise, or, where that is impossible, ...