Ethics
Imagine a pilot on a secret mission and his job is to drop a bomb on a seemingly quiet village. There are of coarse women, children and plenty of innocent people down there, but there is also a known terrorist that has a plan to attack a major city in America. His plan, if carried out, will likely kill hundreds of thousands of American people if he is not stopped. Should the pilot go forward with his mission? Should he kill a thousand villagers to save so many more? Some might consider this to be question of ethics. In this paper we will look at both ethics in general and ethics in the workplace. When did ethics first come to be? Where did it originate? What role do ethics play in an individual’s personal life and what role does it play in the workplace?
Ethics, according to the Introduction to Ethics for the University of Phoenix, is something very personal and also something very public. It shows to the world one’s beliefs and, in a way, one’s morals. This article even hints that an individual’s ethical beliefs could change during their lifetime. In order to get a full understanding of ethics, it may be beneficial to look back to the origin of the philosophy of ethics. Where and when did ethics make its way into the human psyche?
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the introduction of ethics could have begun, “only when human beings started to reflect on the best way to live.” (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2008) That is, societies would have to have first developed some sense or some standard for judging right and wrong. Encyclopedia Britannica continues to explain that many societies have some sort of religious or mythical origin attributing some div ...