Teaching or learning ethics in a university setting carries with it the potential of using theories of old to try and cover topics in today’s business environment. While I will agree that this can be accomplished successfully, in many cases the theories are outdated in this global world of ours. To that end, I will assess John Locke in today’s Ethical and the Legal environment, a class I am involved in at Kaplan University. General Research indicates that John Locke was born in England, the year 1632, to a country lawyer and a housewife; his parents passing away when John Locke was still young. According to Britannica, John Locke was ‘educated in academia as well as medicine (but he held no actual degree as a Doctor), spent some time in a self-imposed Exile and eventually winded up holding several minor government positions’.
Locke was not popular during a time when religious conformity and pessimism was the name of the game; he did not subscribe to the “Divine Right Theory. Although he eventually did embrace religion later in his life, he resisted the implication that we are born with innate morals, ethics or precepts. He believed, and insisted, that all human beings “are born with an empty mind, with a soft tablet (tabula rasa) ready to be writ upon by experimental impressions. Beginning blank, the human mind acquires knowledge through the use of the five senses and a process of reflection”. (Peter Landry, Date Unknown) At the same time, he held the view that “all persons’ inalienable rights were protected and these rights were God-given and were present at the birth of each individual” (eGuide to Ethics and the Legal Environment). To that end, “Locke also rejected the account of original sin according to which humans need strong government to control their sinful natures” (William B. Turner. 2007).
“Locke emphasized the right to life, liberty, and property he was primarily making a point about the duties we have toward other people: duties not to kill, enslave, or steal” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Under “Locke’s rights-based approach, the only ethical decision for anyone to make is one in which neither the person themselves, nor the other person’s rights are violated” (eGuide to Ethics and the Legal Environment).
Eliot Spitzer, the New York’s governor until March 2008, got himself caught with his pants down. From an ethical perspective, using John Locke’s Theory, Eliot Spitzer had every right to frolic about the countryside and avail himself of the delectable offerings of prostitutes lined up to serve the political elite. I assume that these ladies of the night were willing and able and therefore, in the overall ethical process, Eliot Spitzer did not kill, enslave, steal or trample on any other person’s rights. I am not sure if his wife was aware of his marital wanderings over the years, but logical deduction leads me down the path of ‘I am sure she did but she ignored it like most females in such a position – Hillary Clinton being the poster child for political wives in such positions’. Expanding this line of thought further, Eliot Spitzer did not trample on his wife’s right as long as my assumption about her awareness remains intact.
John Locke was about individualism. He advocated that we all have rights that we are entitled to just by the pure fact that we are alive. His theory not only influenced the founding fathers line of thought but also every John, Dick and Crochetta that came along later and tried to balance ethics against the corporate ‘me’ track. The study of ethics is important to today’s business and government world because every action by its people, every law and every regulation is based upon ethics. John Locke helps us here, to attempt to understand and affect change. We, as students, as active participant in our respective societies, as humans living, breathing and working, need to not just study, but also comprehend what it is that makes the world turn. At the end of the day its individualized as well as group ethics; they determine what we do, what we elect not to do, what we say or not say, what we accept or decline as valid and what we rise up against or remain on the couch for. It is ethics, pure and simple, that determines the state of our world today.
In my not so humble opinion, John Locke was a liberal. “Liberalism is a positive, forward-looking philosophy that believes in progress. Rather than trying to shape political, social, and religious life into an idealistic historical model of the good, liberalism sees us progressively moving forward toward greater individualism, greater productivity, greater justice as we evolve individually and socially” (Samuel A. Trumbore, 1996). You go Eliot Spitzer!!! You have the right even if your ethical rhetoric did not match the position of your pants around your ankles.
AT
References
Chapter 1, Unit 2 eGuide to Ethics and the Legal Environment, Kaplan Course Book for Ethics and the Legal Environment, March & September 2008
Peter Landry, Date Unknown. “Locke, The Philosopher of Freedom”. Retrieved from the Peter Landry website on March 31, 2008 at http://www.blupete.com/Intro.htm
Philosophy Pages. “John Locke”. Retrieved from the Philosophy Pages website on March 31, 2008 at http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/lock.htm
Samuel A. Trumbore, 1996. “Watering the Roots of Liberalism”. Retrieved from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship website on March 31, 2008 at http://www.uumin.org/sam/
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Date unknown. “Locke and Politics”. Retrieved from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website on March 31, 2008 at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-political/
Turner William B., 2007. “Of Marriage and Monarchy: Why John Locke”. Retrieved from the William B. Turner website on March 31, 2008 at http://works.bepress.com/william_turner/
NY Times – Spitzer
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/ethics/index.html and http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/eliot_l_spitzer/index.html
