Ethical relationship

An ethical relationship, in most theories of ethics that employ the term, is a basic and trustworthy relationship that one individual may have with another, that cannot necessarily be characterized in terms of any abstraction other than trust and common protection of each other's body. Honesty is very often a major focus.

Contrasting theories

No ethical tradition has failed to prescribe at least some rules for the conduct of such relationships. Carol Gilligan famously championed the role of relationships as central to moral reasoning, and superior as a basis for understanding human choices than any prior linguistic or meta-ethical concept. This perspective is now commonly called the ethics of care. Lawrence Kohlberg, famous for work on moral development as a part of human development, eventually joined Gilligan in starting a descriptive ethics of relationship conduct in what they called the ethical community or just community. This was in effect a community of practice which, at least in Kohlberg's conception, had a core epistemic community of those trusted to define and resolve the disputes between members, and to facilitate the growth of moral development, not only in children, but in prisoners and others. Donald R. C. Reed, whose book Following Kohlberg: Liberalism and the Practice of Democratic Community (1998) outlined the extension of these principles to deliberative democracy, claims that "During the four years following publication of Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1982), Kohlberg and Gilligan both revised their accounts of moral development so that they converged far more than is commonly recognized." Reed argued for "extending this convergence to include the understanding developed in the just community projects." There is also potential for application of these methods to ethical tradition. Kohlberg's student Burton Visotzky, for instance, in The Genesis of Ethics, 1997, applied the relationship approach to Ethics in the Bible. The book focuses on the choices and interactions of major characters in the Book of Genesis. Visotzky exploits much of the Talmudic, midrash and magisterium, demonstrating that these Jewish theological traditions too had often focused on the ethical relationship, not only between Man and God, but between others in one's family, tribe or community. Mohandas Gandhi, Confucius, Menno Simons and Baruch Spinoza are examples of figures in moral philosophy and political philosophy who focused first and foremost on the ethical choices made in the actual framing and encounter of moral interventions. Greens and New Confucians are two examples of modern movements that are derived in part from relational traditions.

See also

• Global ethics