Civics

• Civics


  The subject that deals with the rights and responsibilities of citizens or politically organized group of people
• Ethics


  A branch of philosophy that attempts to understand people's moral beliefs and actions
• Morality


  The concept of human action which pertains to matters of right and wrong
• Morality is a more general term referring to the character of individuals and community, while ethics is used to refer to the formal study of moral conduct
• Laws are norms formally approved by the state, power or national/international political bodies, while ethics are not enforced by the coercive power of government
• Goals of Moral and Civic Education

  • Instill citizens about their rights and duties
  • Promote participant political culture
  • Advance and strengthen the democratization process
  • Solve societal problems, socialize and re-socialize citizens
• Parochial political culture


  Citizens have low cognitive, affective, and evaluative orientation towards political systems, government functions and their privileges and duties
• Subject political culture

  High cognitive, affective, and evaluative orientation towards the political system and policy outputs, but minimal orientation towards input objects and self as active participants
• Participant political culture


  Members of society have high cognitive, affective, and evaluative orientation to the political system, input objects, policy outputs, and recognize the self as an active participant in the polity
• Civic education


  Education that studies about the rights and responsibilities of citizens of a politically organized group of people
• Ethics


  A branch of philosophy that deals with the rightness and wrongness of human actions
• Morality


  A set of personal and social values, rules, beliefs, laws, emotions, and ideologies collectively governing the rightness and wrongness of human actions
• In higher institutions of Ethiopia, civics is given with the aim of educating students about democratic culture, ethical values, rule of law, rights and duties of citizens
• Goal of civics and ethics

  Producing good citizens who obey the law, respect authority, contribute to society, love their country
• Civics and ethics is also aimed at creating a generation who has the capability to shoulder family and national responsibility
• Normative ethics


  Its ultimate concern is to guide us in the making of decisions and judgments about actions in particular situations
• Teleological ethics (consequentialist)


  The consequences of action determine its morality or immorality
• Ethical egoism


  Humans are not built to look out for other people's interests, proper moral conduct consists of looking out for one's own interests
• Psychological egoism


  One always seeks one's own advantage or always does what he thinks will give him the greatest good over evil
• Utilitarianism


  An action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers
• Classic utilitarianism


  Rightness and wrongness are determined by pleasure or pain that something produces
• Jeremy Bentham's utilitarianism


  The rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by the goodness or badness of the results, the only thing that is good in itself is pleasure and the only evil is pain
• Consequentialism


  The rightness or wrongness of an act is determined by the goodness or badness of the results. It is the end, not the means that counts; the end justifies the means.
• Utility principle

  The only thing that is good in itself is some specific type of state (for example, pleasure, happiness, welfare)
• Hedonistic utilitarianism

  Pleasure is the sole good and pain is the only evil. An act is right if it either brings about more pleasure than pain or prevents pain.
• Hedonic calculus

  A scheme for measuring pleasure and pain that considers its intensity, duration, certainty, nearness, fruitfulness, purity, and extent
• Adding up the amounts of pleasure and pain for each possible act and then comparing the scores would enable us to decide which act to perform
• Utilitarianism


  • Simple in that there is only one principle to apply: Maximize pleasure and minimize suffering
  • Scientific: Simply make quantitative measurements and apply impartially, giving no special treatment to ourselves or to anyone else because of race, gender, personal relationship, or religion
• Eudaimonistic utilitarianism

  Happiness defined in terms of certain types of higher-order pleasures such as intellectual, aesthetic, and social enjoyments, as well as minimal suffering
• Types of pleasures


  • Lower, or elementary (eating, drinking, sexuality, resting, sensuous titillation)
  • Higher (high culture, scientific knowledge, intellectuality, creativity)
• Lower pleasures are more gratifying but lead to pain when overindulged in. The higher pleasures tend to be more long term, continuous, and gradual.
• It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
• Happiness


  Not life of rapture; but moments made by pains & pleasures
• Act-utilitarianism


  An act is right if and only if it results in as much good as any available alternative
• Act-utilitarianism


  • We cannot do necessary calculations to determine which act is the correct one in each case, for often we must act and quickly
  • It seems to fly in the face of fundamental intuitions about minimally correct behavior
• Rule-utilitarianism


  An act is right if and only if it is required by a rule whose acceptance would lead to greater utility for society than any available alternative
• We want to have a set of action guiding rules by which to live. The act-utilitarian rule, to do the act that maximizes utility, is too general for most purposes.
• Utilitarianism


  • Single principle, an absolute system with a potential answer for every situation
  • Gets to the substance of morality, not merely a formal system
  • Well suited to address the problem of preserving resources for the betterment of future
• Utilitarianism has been criticized for problems in formulating it, requiring superhuman ability to survey consequences, inconsistency, not allowing rest, lack of publicity, and justifying immoral means
• Three-step action formula for utilitarianism

  1. Project the consequences of each alternative option

  2. Calculate the happiness/unhappiness balance produced by each option

  3. Select the action that produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number