Quotes About Ethics

Muslim ethicists did often enjoin merchants to drive a hard bargain with the rich so they could charge less, or pay more, when dealing with the less fortunate.88

when dealing with the Absolute, there can be no such thing as debt.

What is the difference between a gangster pulling out a gun and demanding you give him a thousand dollars of "protection money," and that same gangster pulling out a gun and demanding you provide him with a thousand-dollar "loan"? In

money's capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic—and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene. The

Here we come to the central question of this book: What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? What changes when the one turns into the other? And how do we speak about them when our language has been so shaped by the market?

Violence and care, in the Wendat case, were to be entirely separated.

Pure greed and pure generosity are complementary concepts; neither could really be imagined without the other;

It's not that we owe "society." If there is any notion of "society" here—and it's not clear that there is—society is our debts.

The legal and philosophical question then became: what rights do human beings have simply by dint of being human – that is, what rights could they be said to have 'naturally', even if they existed in a State of Nature, innocent of the teachings of written philosophy and revealed religion, and without codified laws?

Good' and 'evil' are purely human concepts. It would never occur to anyone to argue about whether a fish, or a tree, were good or evil, because 'good' and 'evil' are concepts humans made up in order to compare ourselves with one another. It follows that arguing about whether humans are fundamentally good or evil makes about as much sense as arguing about whether humans are fundamentally fat or thin.

It is basically a theological debate. Essentially the question is: are humans innately good or innately evil? But if you think about it, the question, framed in these terms, makes very little sense. 'Good' and 'evil' are purely human concepts. It would never occur to anyone to argue about whether a fish, or a tree, were good or evil, because 'good' and 'evil' are concepts humans made up in order to compare ourselves with one another.

Etant donné que la valeur du travail réside désormais moins dans ce qu'il produit ou dans les bienfaits qu'il apporte aux autres que dans sa dimension sacrificielle, tout élément susceptible de le rendre moins pénible ou plus plaisant, y compris la satisfaction de se sentir utile à ses semblables, diminue sa valeur - justifiant donc un salaire inférieur. C'est un système d'une incroyable perversité.

Good' and 'evil' are purely human concepts. it would never occur to anyone to argue about whether a fish, or a tree, were good or evil, because 'good' and 'evil' are concepts humans made up in order to compare ourselves with one another. It follows that arguing about whether humans are fundamentally good or evil makes about as much sense as arguing about whether humans are fundamentally fat or thin.

Reconsider the lobster. Lobsters have a very bad reputation among philosophers, who frequently hold them out as examples of purely unthinking, unfeeling creatures. Presumably, this is because lobsters are the only animal most philosophers have killed with their own two hands before eating. It's unpleasant to throw a struggling creature in a pot of boiling water; one needs to be able to tell oneself that the lobster isn't really feeling it.

How is it that moral obligations between people come to be thought of as debts and as a result, end up justifying behavior that would otherwise seem utterly immoral?

Gradually, subtly, without anyone completely understanding the full implications of what was happening, what had been the essence of moral relations turned into the means for every sort of dishonest stratagem.

Always remember it's all ultimately about value (or: whenever you hear someone say that what their greatest value is rationality, they are just saying that because they don't want to admit to what their greatest value really is).

war, greed, exploitation, systematic indifference to others' suffering. Were we always like that, or did something, at some point, go terribly wrong?

this agonizing double consciousness: the awareness that the highest things one has to strive for are also, ultimately, wrong; but at the same time, the feeling that this is simply the nature of reality.

Usury was seen above all as an assault on Christian charity, on Jesus's injunction to treat the poor as they would treat the Christ himself, giving without expectation of return and allowing the borrower to decide on recompense (Luke 6:34

being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations

Moral envy is an undertheorized phenomenon.

It seems that whenever there's a word for something everyone agrees to be desirable—"truth," "beauty," "love," "democracy"—then there will be no consensus as to what it really means.

one man's right is simply another's obligation.