Curated playlist
Concepts in ethics
- VirtueThe word virtue grew out of the Roman word for man. In Latin it once covered strength, civic duty and morals.
- GreedIn 1986, financier Ivan Boesky told Berkeley graduates that greed is healthy. He was later charged with insider trading.
- Value (ethics)Some values are so protected that people refuse to trade them for any benefit.
- JusticeDoes justice come from God, nature, a contract among strangers, or the strongest? Thinkers have argued it since Plato.
- Free willFree will asks whether blame and praise make sense if earlier causes fix every act.
- FriendshipMaking a basic friendship reportedly takes around 20 to 60 hours together. A close one takes more than a hundred hours.
- CorruptionKaunas, Lithuania paid roughly 150,000 euros for a 2009 outdoor toilet. A similar one nearby cost 4,500 euros.
- MoralityPeople in at least 60 nations think morality is declining, but a study calls that an illusion.
- Trust (social science)Building trust takes repeated good behavior, but one act can destroy it. Once broken, it is very hard to regain.
- DignityWhy does dignity, a word central to law and medicine, still have no agreed definition? Kant tied it to free will.
- HappinessAsk two different happiness questions and you get two different winners.
- LibertyThe word liberty traces back to a root meaning 'people'. It links freedom to belonging to a people.
- ViolenceThe World Health Organization says a threat can count as violence, even with no visible wound.
- Good and evilSome religions teach that evil does not exist at all. The Baha'i Faith calls it a lack of good, like cold lacking heat.
- Moral blindnessAdolf Eichmann's 1961 trial startled observers with how ordinary he seemed. That led to research on moral blindness.
- AhimsaAfter the Kalinga War, Emperor Ashoka turned ahimsa, nonviolence, into state policy.