Ethics is our basic knowledge of what is good and what is bad. From the very childhood, we all are taught the general rules saying that we must not steal, tell lies, or hurt someone. When we grow up, we can see that ethics applies to all aspects of our life (religion, politics, medicine, law, and personal relations) on the level of basic rules or in a more complicated and developed form. Ethics is very important in our lives as it determines our attitude towards other people and the way we treat them. It is impossible to imagine the world without ethics and the society will fall into the era of crimes and egoistic behavior without the knowledge of the basic notions of ethics.
The death penalty is the highest measure of punishment for the most severe crimes but from the point of view of ethics, it is just another murder. I have read a story of Judy Kerr whose brother was cruelly killed and she wanted the murderer to be found and punished. However, I have noticed that this woman had an inherent understanding of ethics, as she does not wish capital punishment for the murderer. Judy says, ‘I have never and will never support the death penalty. I know now, more than ever, that killing is wrong. Revenge will not bring my brother back and it will not bring me peace’ (Kerr par. 5). She explains that this new killing can only bring more suffering and pain.
Another controversial ethical issue is euthanasia that is the ending of the life of a terminally ill person on his or her request with the purpose to get rid of pain and suffering. Some people think that it is unethical, religion views euthanasia as a sinful suicide or murder when it is done by someone else. From the point of view of the law, this question is still unsolved as in some countries euthanasia is considered to be the inherent right of a person to decide the outcome of his or her life, in others the doctors and government officials refuse to accept this right. However, in the states where assisted death is already legal the cases of abuse may take place, so the procedure of voluntary euthanasia is to be thoroughly controlled by the authorities (Mattlin par. 6). Everyone must decide for himself about what is ethical and what is not.
Ethics was never exhaustively defined, the philosophers in all the times tried to give a clear definition to this concept and no one managed to give the universal wording. Actually, ethics does not relate to one of the aspects of life in society. One would say that ethics comes from religion but in this case, ethics would only apply to religious people. Others will argue that being ethical means obeying the laws of the country you live in but laws can deviate from ethics just the same way as human emotions, or maybe ethical behavior means following the general customs of the society but those customs also can seem unethical (Velasquez par. 4).
There are many different opinions and all of them are somewhat true but all the thinkers agree that ethics predetermines the freedom of choice with a full understanding of the consequences of the made decisions.
References
Kerr, Judy. n.d. The Death Penalty Will Only Cause Me More Pain. n.d. Web. 2012.
Mattlin, Ben. “Suicide by Choice? Not so Fast.” New York Times. 2012: A31. Print.
Velasquez, Manuel. “What is ethics?” Issues in Ethics 1.1 (1987): 21-22. Print.