We explain what ethical values are and some examples of this set of values. In addition, the aesthetic and moral values.
What are ethical values?
When we speak of ethical values we refer to social and cultural concepts that serve as a guide in the behavior of an individual or a organization. That is to say, it is a question of ideal considerations, of the ought to be or of the rule socially accepted and valued of things. Therefore, they are not usually absolute values, nor universal, nor eternal, but they change as the society that respects them.
The purpose of ethical values is to keep the rules of the game of a society clear, in relation to the performance of specific functions (and quotas of power) within it.
For example, professional sectors adhere to ethical codes whose compliance is usually monitored by a college or union; but also public officials or representatives elected to public office, acquire together with the can a commitment ethical to use it for the common benefit and not exclusively for your personal benefit.
The ethics, meanwhile, is a branch of the philosophy that studies the notions of good and evil, of right and wrong, in the cultural framework of values of a society at a given time, taking into account the changes inherent in the history of the thought human and his considerations about himself. Thus, ethics is also a set of norms and values that govern a specific human group at a specific moment in its life. history and his culture.
More in: Human values.
Examples of ethical values
They are ethical values, for example:
- The Liberty, or the commitment with the self-determination of each person and the ability to think and act on their own.
- The responsibility, or face the consequences of their own actions and decisions.
- The honesty, or commitment to truth.
- The loyalty, or the commitment to one's own values or the group of belonging, beyond the specific and personal benefit.
- The Justice, or commitment to truth and the equity for the good common.
As will be seen, human societies acquire a commitment to these concepts and seek the method that is best for them (or more seduces them) to comply with them, although at the same time they can be individually or collectively violated. In that case, it will speak of people withunethical.
What are aesthetic values?
Aesthetic values are those linked to a certain sense of beauty or harmony. They are not linked to the moral or ethical judgment of things, that is, if they are good or bad, convenient or not, but simply if they are beautiful or not, taking into account that the concept of beauty varies throughout the history of the humanity and of different cultures and traditions that share time.
What are moral values?
Moral values, unlike ethical ones, start from a spiritual principle of the jurisprudence, that is, of what is right and what is wrong, and are supported by tradition: cultural, religious, ancestral, etc.
Religions tend to be, nowadays, the bastions of morals and "good customs" in contemporary societies, which is why their points of view tend to collide with the most advanced or avant-garde notions of society. Therefore, moral values are often reactionary and are often defended by thestatus what conservative.