ETHICS OF CONSCIENCE PDF

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1 Ethics of Conscience: A Discourse on Igbo Concept of Uze-ezumezu Prof. A. F. Uduigwomen and Okeke, Jonathan Chimakonam University of Calabar, Nigeria. [email protected], [email protected]. 1. Introduction In the beginning, in the naked times of mankind, there were no societi...

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Ethics of Conscience: A Discourse on Igbo Concept of Uze-ezumezu

Prof. A. F. Uduigwomen and Okeke, Jonathan Chimakonam University of Calabar, Nigeria. [email protected], [email protected]. 1. Introduction In the beginning, in the naked times of mankind, there were no societies, no laws and no high cultures. Men were wanderers and isolated creatures. So soon a boy grows into adult age would his father drive him into the wild away from his colony and from his women that he may not come to rival him. The only child that must stay was the female but she too had her own plans soon after breasts sprout from her temple. For like her mother, she must constantly be on the lookout for a wandering stranger. If her father lived on the highlands away from the beasts, then he had good conscience and never drove away the wandering man but rather nourished and hospitalized him for a few days before sending him forth with provisions. He too was a wandering man in his early days. It is to such a hopeless man that a tender maiden abandons her home and runs after in the cover of the dark. But if her father lived in the forests among brutes, he had a bad conscience and drove away any wandering man from his colony. To such an unlucky maiden, she must be coy and crafty, to find her own man by becoming a wanderer. As you must know, the lines of the earth’s planes were furred by forests and these forests were infested by brutes of all kinds, many of which fed on human flesh and drank from the red spring of human blood. To the fangs of this army of brutes, a large portion of humanity had perished, many a maiden and many a wandering

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man counted more in this great number. In those times, there were also no moral laws except for the human conscience. A man ruled himself and his little colony as he pleased. He answers to nobody; he was in fact the god of his world. So vast was his freedom and yet so deep was the responsibility accruing from it. He must live his own life and die his own death. If a man lived in the highlands, away from the regular threats and brutality of the beasts, he had a good conscience. He saw himself in the wandering man; he taps gently on his own temple, wafts a smile and speaks silently to his soul: “That is my brother man”. Such a man felt his loneliness and wanted more of his kind around. But if he lived in the lowlands among the brutes where he must fight off the beasts night and day and season to season, where he sometimes returns from his scavenging to find the bones of his offspring licked white or crushed into bits by hungry beasts, who had bad consciences; he too had to have a bad conscience like his neighbours the beasts. He felt his insecurity and exposure in a vast heartless world. He thirsted for more privacy, he longed for greater loneliness. He therefore saw the brute in the wandering man. To such a man, there was no morality! Such was a world ruled by the brutes. However, when men learned to feed on the flesh of the brutes and drink their blood for refreshment having developed techniques and weapons which helped them destroy the beasts; the number of humanity who trod upon the earth began to increase. In time, the spaces among men and their colonies began to narrow down and the need for clannishness stirred the ancient man in the face. The world was his to rule! It was however, men with good conscience who lived in the highlands that first thought of founding a society. Gradually, they persuaded the men with bad conscience who lived in the

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lowlands to join. Soon after, a problem arose: fewer resources, women counting in this number. And the need for laws to govern the newly founded human society arose. Because the primary challenge was how to share humanity’s scanty resources, the first law that man made for the first human society was the law of justice with the following clauses: 1.

All men who have colonies are equal

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Treat everyman the way you want to be treated

3.

Give everyman his due

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Never take unfair share. The problem with this law quickly revealed itself; there was no clause for punishing the

offender. As a result, men with bad conscience who wanted everything to themselves refused to abide by this law and considered “survival of the fittest” as the only true law. They forcibly took other men’s women and their daughters and coveted their own. They usurped food gathered and beasts slain by others. There was no property right; any man had anything if he could protect it. In time, the newly found human society was in chaos and men began to slay themselves. However, since men of good conscience could not kill one of a kind, men of bad conscience killed them. In time, evil men began to multiply while good men diminished in number. When after sometime, evil men realized that they constituted threats to themselves too, they reorganized the society and made new laws which contained clauses for punishing the offender in order to protect themselves from one another. That law code became the conscience of the society. Because men trusted their consciences very little, they made laws they could all trust. Now, the sources of morality became two: the human conscience and the conscience of the society (laws). In the sections to follow, I shall investigate these two sources of moral judgment and

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chronicle their paternity with two-valued logic. In doing this, I shall expose the basic problems with these two and posit a third source to make up for those problems. In the end, it is my hope that the ethics of uze-ezumezu as I shall dub it will lead mankind to the end of civilization, a time when men will live in a community as gods-knowing good and evil, but doing only the good.

2. Ethics of the Two-valued Logic Logic enables us to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect reasoning. Among the elements of incorrect reasoning is contradiction. Contradiction occurs when what is stated to be true is found to be false. Two-valued logic like most classical logics are said to rest on the principle of non-contradiction mean which in line with what we have stated above, something that is not, can be said to be or what is, said not to be. A classic representation of this can be found in Aristotle’s Metaphysics (10 11 b 26): To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true. What this means is that if A is asserted, then ~A cannot be asserted at the same time. It is from this that the principle of non-contradiction as a law of thought is drawn. If a thing is not, then it is not the case that it is and vice versa. Also, when we talk of “values” in logic we do not mean by the term, everything that an ethicist will mean by it neither do we mean all that an aestheticist will mean by it, but rather a quality resulting from the rigour of demonstration. Hence when the logician talks of truth and falsity as his values, an aestheticist will talk of beauty and yet an ethicist will talk of good. When a logician speaks the truth, it is not in the same context as when the ethicist speaks the truth, and neither is his idea of truth the same with that of an aestheticist. An ethicist’s idea of the truth

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might be any statement which is uttered in accordance with a certain moral law but a logician’s truth follows of consequence and implication. While for the aestheticist, to say the truth might be as simple as to speak of a work of art as beautiful. A two-valued logic therefore, is a logic that thrives on the value judgments of truth and falsehood. Such forms the standard for testing the soundness and validity of arguments. Each proposition of this logic is either true or false and nothing else. We say that a proposition is true if it follows of consequence and false, if it does not. In propositional calculus no two statements shown to be diagonally opposite by the square of opposition can be both true otherwise, a contradiction will result. As Aristotle puts it in his “On Interpretation” (19b, 10, 35): Yet here it is not possible… that the propositions joined in the table by a diagonal line should both be true …

This means two basic things: that a proposition in two-valued logic which is adjudged true cannot also be adjudged false at the same time; and that besides the value judgments of truth and falsehood, there is no other “values” like we have in multi-valued logics. These are the characters of two-valued logic. The third, if I must add is that any proposition that is neither true nor false is inadmissible in two-valued logic. Any such propositions or the argument containing them is non-logical and metaphysical. For many centuries, the two-valued logic was the standard of reasoning and explanations in many a field of learning, ethics or moral philosophy not excluded. Whatever that will be meaningful in all the sciences, must comply with two-valued logic as a research standard, otherwise, such an effort will not result in anything that could be called knowledge. It is in keeping with this standard of two-valued logic that many moral philosophers

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developed their theories of moral standard and sources of moral judgment. In the classical times, Plato built his ethical philosophy around two sources of moral judgment: knowledge of the good and lack of this knowledge. If one had knowledge he would do good, if he lacked it, he would do evil. It is not possible for one to have knowledge which is virtue and do evil – this will amount to a contradiction. Knowledge for Plato is therefore not just power but “the strongest of all powers” (BKV, 171). This is because, it alone enables one to make the right moral choice in life. Aristotle in his Nichomachean ethics posits two moral standards: the middle course or what he calls the golden mean and the two extremes namely excess and deficiency. As Aristotle states (NE, BK 11): It is in the nature of moral qualities that they can be destroyed by deficiency on the one hand and excess on the other … and they are kept alive by observance of the mean. Aristotle’s position above is that an action is adjudged morally right if it follows the middle course and otherwise if it follows the extreme course. This again corresponds to the ethics of two-valued logic. Also, the utilitarians play by this rule. For them pain and happiness rule mankind, when the effect of any action or moral rule produces pain or happiness for the greatest number (the principle of utility), such an action or rule determines what is morally right or wrong. Writing in his An Introduction to the Principles of Moral and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham states: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other hand, the chain of causes

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and effects, are fastened to their throne … by the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question (33 – 34). Bentham also goes on to say, “The principle of utility-employed by me … [is to] be designated by the name of the greatest happiness principle” (37. What Bentham means in the above excerpts is that what should count as a morally right action is that which produces an effect that bring happiness to the greatest number of those whose interests are in question. Similarly, when the effect of an action produces pain for the greatest number, it is to be adjudged morally wrong. John Stuart Mill in his work Utilitarianism also explains that: The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the greatest happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure (257). In the above, Mill tries to expatiate on the work of his forerunner Bentham in articulating what he calls the creed of utility, the Greatest Happiness Principle. What we want to point out in this theory is that it complies with the standard of two-valued logic like those before it. For Fredrich Nietzsche, the sources of moral judgment are also divisible into two in line with the Western tradition of two-valued logic. These two sources are “Master Morality” and “Slave Morality”. While the former is a source of personal moral excellence, and represents strength; the latter is a mass movement and represents weakness, what qualifies as a morally

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upright action must comply with the master morality standard. An action is adjudged morally wrong if it goes by the standard of slave morality. In a plain language, there is only one truly upright man and that is the Ubermench or the superman. His opposite is the weakling. Again, we notice the ethics of two-valued logic in Nietzsche thoughts. Also, Henri Bergson in his book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion identifies two sources of moral judgment. These are, the closed and the open societies. While the closed society consists of moral norms which govern a given society, the open society consists of moral norms given by certain moral heroes which exert no obligations but appeal to act in such ways proven to be morally upright. In line with the ethics of two-valued logic, actions complying with the above sources can be adjudged morally right while the ones that fail to comply can be adjudged morally wrong. On his part, Joseph Fletcher in his book Situation Ethics (1966) developes his theory of situation ethics otherwise known as the new morality. This theory holds that the morality of any action is determined by the situation in which the action is performed. It is not the nature of the act nor the consequence that determines whether the act is right or wrong but situation. What Fletcher puts forward here in line with the culture of two-valued logic is that an action is morally right given a favourable situation and wrong if the opposite is the case. Indeed, all known ethical theories to this day can be made to fit into this paradigm of two-valued logic. We will not go through the entire list as this is not the focus of this paper.

3. Sources of Moral Judgment Of all the laws of men, there should be no rigidity, for they live generation by generation, all in different times. Circumstances in their turn, come upon each generation with varied

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disposition so how might one rigid law suffice? Jesus said: “I have not come to abolish the laws but to fulfill them” (Math 5:17). What Jesus recognizes in the above is that the laws of Moses were no longer sufficient for his generation who did not share similar disposition and circumstances with the Jews of Moses' time. And so it can be reasoned that the ethics of twovalued logic is no longer sufficient for the times we live in and the men who live in such times. It has been said in the past that life giving acts are morally good and life taking acts are morally bad. But in our times, we have seen many a life giving acts that are adjudged morally bad e.g an illegitimate pregnancy. Many religions and governments insist on officially celebrated marriages where certificates are signed before any union is morally sanctioned. And a man may not take more than one wife at a time. In many cultures of old, these rules did not apply. Also in our time, we have seen many life taking acts that have been morally justified. A Catholic Priest somewhere in Nigeria was said to have shot and killed a member of an armed robbery team that attacked his house. This life taking act by a custodian of the law that says “thou shall not kill”, was tagged morally good because (they brought in another clause), it was done in self-defense. So we see in our times, a morally bad action can become morally good with reasons, and vice versa. Since this is granted, the ethics of two-valued logic obviously can no longer suffice. In 1994, the Hutu tribe rose in an act of genocide against the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda. Over 800,000 Tutsis were massacred in the ethnic cleansing (Anderson and others, 479). During the course of this genocide, a man named Robert, a Tutsi together with his daughter Miriam were the only surviving members of their clan. In the place they were hiding, it was only a matter of time before they were fished out by the Hutu Militia and killed. But their good neighbour who was a Hutu offered to save Robert’s daughter by taking her to his house and pretending that she was his

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wife. This would be feasible as Miriam was born in Kigali and speaks the Hutu dialect fluently and also did not have the peculiar facial features of the Tutsis. Robert accepted this offer but there was one more puzzle to be pieced together: where they come from, the greatest abominable act was to allow for the extinction of the clan. Now Miriam would survive but genetically, she cannot produce the next generation of the clan, since she was a woman. It takes a man to do this. But Robert, Miriam’s father was the only surviving male of the clan. To sear his daughter would amount to a morally wrong act namely, incest. Both of them knew it, yet they also knew the grave moral wrong it was to allow their clan to be extinct. So a decision had to be made. Incest was morally wrong, but the one committed under this circumstance was not. To save the clan from extinction was the greatest moral good under the circumstance and any morally wrong act committed in order to achieve this was by participation, a morally good act. Under this judgment, Robert seared his daughter and sent her to their neighbour. In a matter of days, Robert was found and slaughtered by the Hutu Militia but Miriam survived the genocide. Within months, she was delivered of a set of twins – two boys. Commenting on this, a Tutsi elder said: “The heavens and the spirit world are full of joy for the rebirth of that clan”. What this shows is that the ethics of two-valued logic no longer suffice in these times. As a result, we commit to proposal in this paper, an ethics of three-valued logic. Since it is now proven that at times what is good is considered bad and what is bad, sometimes good, it means that in-between the two extreme values, there is another where the two are reconciled. The ethics of two-valued logic is insufficient for our times, and it will therefore be wrong to judge a man’s actions based on such standard. The ethical theories which we shall put forward in this paper shall be based on three-valued logic-the third value being “circumstance determined” and a reconciliation of the first two.

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It is our understanding after a detailed study of mankind, his society, his beliefs and his culture that the bastion of all his moral judgment is “Uze” (conscience). Whatever action that will be considered good must be approved by conscience. But conscience has types which in turn mark the sources of moral judgment they are: 1.

Uze-obodo (conscience of the society)

2.

Uze-mmadu (conscience of man) Above are two sources of moral judgment corresponding to the ethics of two-valued

logic. When an action is performed, individual members of a society judge the moral quality of the action with the uze-mmadu. If this does not suffice they will judge the action with the Uzeobodo. Now, in many occasions, these two usually do not suffice. This is why in these our times, many people feel dissatisfied by such judgments of their actions, not necessarily because the judgments do not favour them, but because they feel all sides to the matter are not considered. Usually, men’s uze-mmadu varies almost from individual to individual but the uze-obodo of any giving society is one. This is why Uze-obodo is rated higher than Uze-mmadu. A man...