Reply #69: It's kind of interesting that once again ethics seems to be a

[enlightenment]

popular topic. Not just this mis-administration woo-haw, but in business and academia as well.
Yesterday, I received a notice of an upcoming forum panel at my university -- the subject: ethics and democracy. The panel is chock full of ethicists (naturally), political scientists (natch), and sociologists (presumably to tell the rest of us what we're supposed to think). No historians -- a little annoying to me, since I am one!

I think it's great that people are interested in ethical questions, but I'm afraid it's really just the latest fad -- one that will fade much faster than peek-a-boo thong panties (eww, by the way . . .).

A long time ago, in the early 18th c., many philosophers and politicians and regular people in the street believed in something they called politeness. It incorporated a lot of ideas, but was based on principles of respect, honesty, and personal integrity. It had nothing to do with religion, though many of these folks were religious. It was the way society needed to operate in order to maintain civility -- to BE civilized.

The important thing about politeness is that it wasn't external -- it wasn't about opening doors or covering your mouth when you sneezed or saying please and thank-you. Those things were an outcome of internally held beliefs. If a man held a door for a woman, but inside he was thinking, "gah. what a cow!" he wasn't polite -- because what he was doing wasn't real, it was a sham. She might never know what he was thinking, but he still failed the politeness test.

Obviously, that sort of thing took more work than many people were willing to put into it -- by the end of the 18th c., politeness had been replaced by "manners." You could read about those in a book, apply them when necessary, and forget about them in-between.

Ethics are no different. No list of rules is going to make people ethical, if they have not internalized the basic premise.

:(