Ethics and the Process of Human Acting

Ethics is knowledge concerning the moral life as lived, and reflects on the actions of the moral life. Ethics, then, in the first place has as its point of departure personal experience, and only secondarily a reflection of practical knowledge which becomes normative for me. Let us look at a simple example. Experience tells me that I should not look for food in the trash can, rather at the supermarket. This custom then becomes normal for me and I never look for food items in the dumpster. I thereby learn what I should do: I begin with experience and this becomes a norm.
Ethics[1]  is the part of philosophy that studies the objective and rational foundations that allow us to distinguish human behaviour as good, right, or morally licit with respect to behaviour held to be bad, morally inappropriate, or downright illicit. One can even define ethics as the search for one or more criteria that allow the individual to adequately manage his or her own freedom.
It is often also called moral philosophy insofar as its object is moral values that determine human behaviour.
It is custom that makes the distinction between the term “ethics” and “morality”. Even though these are often used interchangeably, one normally uses the term “morality” to mean the whole of values, norms, and customs of an individual or a certain human group. The word “ethics” is reserved for the reference to the rational intention (that is, philosophical) of founding a morality recognised as a discipline.
Ethics can be descriptive if it describes human behaviour, or it is normative (or prescriptive) if it provides indications.
It can also be subjective when it deals with the subject who acts, independently from actions or intentions, and objective where the action is related or compared to common values and institutions.
Today one[2] speaks of the “two radically different ways of conceiving of ethical knowledge (and the moral life):

1. The first, precisely of the order that today is called ‘first person ethics’ or even ‘virtue ethics’, holds that ethics is and must be the study of the universal human good, or the good of human life taken as a whole. Ethics unfolds, then, as a discussion of different lifestyles, of different ways of living (virtue and vice), and not of individual acts (these are secondary, even if still important). The discussion would lead to pointing a finger at that life which is best and should be desired and lived out.
2. The second ordering, called ‘third person ethics’ or ‘normative ethics’, holds that ethics is and must be the study and foundation of rules and moral norms to observe, that is, rules and norms concerning individual acts. The problem that must be addressed is not how one must live, but whether or not act x is licit. Here is a situation: ‘John Doe has carried out act x–did he act well or badly? One calls this, then, ‘third person ethics’. From this perspective it is not possible to investigate the ulterior desire nor lifestyle that would be desirable. The judge of another’s actions (third person) judges acts, not desires.”[3]

From this perspective of leadership and its relation to ethics, I think that a notion of third person ethics can only help us up to a certain point. It might encourage us to do or not do certain acts, not because they are technically perfect from the leadership point of view, but because they are licit or illicit–that is, there is a norm that permits or prohibits it. Rather, a conception of first person ethics allows me to freely make the right choice, even from the perspective of leadership, in that I maintain that making a certain choice is the right thing. It is in line with my principles, my lifestyle and the model that I have as my point of reference. In other words, I advance closer toward that ethical principle which guides my lifestyle.

To better grasp what has been sad thus far, two things ought to be explained: first, the distinction between the school of character leadership and, second, the school of technical leadership. The latter, according to the article cited above,[4] is the anthropological process of human freedom when one makes choices.
As we said before, ethics also aims to help human beings use their freedom. Morality’s fundamental objective is to understand human freedom and precisely the way in which it is expressed through moral acts. The free act represents the culmination of a complex process that possesses a kind of circular quality. At least five fundamental elements can be analytically distinguished in this process.

1. Desire: Here I am not referring to intentional desire, rather to simple inclinations and tendencies.
2. The Good: What it is that one pursues, which can be present or absent.
3. Affective Reaction “(sentiments, emotions, passions): a person reacts positively or negatively according to meaning (…) If the tendencies are like an impulse that exits the subject and projects itself on the world, ordering one’s pursuit and perception, emotions and sentiments that are the interior resonance of tendencies that follow from perception. The answer that comes from the world in the midst of the interrogation contained within tendency is taken in and evaluated in the emotions, or sentiments.”[5]
4. Deliberate Choice: Governed by the intellect and moved by the will.
5. Moral Habit: (virtue or vice) This is what predisposes the subject to accomplish future acts in a sense of being positive or negative. That is, they come back into the process inasmuch as they modify inclinations and tendencies.

Even if one greatly simplifies the internal process that lies behind every human choice, the above-mentioned outline can give us an idea of the importance that education plays in our habits for the future exercise of personal freedom, in general, and leadership in particular. The following diagram is a visual representation of everything we have just discussed.