Introduction

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Introduction to Comparative Ethics

The Unilever Ethics Centre (from 1998) at the University of KwaZulu Natal in Scottsville, South Africa.

Intent: "Helping build ethics capacity, both inside and outside the University".

Activities: courses, seminars, workshops, and research in comparative and applied ethics, consulting services, and community services.

Particular concern: to understand the ethical dimension of human existence in relation to the opportunities and challenges of three great contemporary realities:

1. Democratic transformation

2. Cultural diversity

3. Economic empowerment (Para. 7).

The Director, Professor Martin Prozesky speaks of the moral traditions that have been influencing South Africans, both in the past and in modern times.

He cites the New Zealand scholar Lloyd Geering and his proposed division of ethical traditions into

1. Ethnic moralities (original ethnic groups, which inhabited our planet for thousands of years, with little or no contact with the rest, such as the traditional African societies, the ancient Israelities, and the New Zealand's Maori people (Para. 1).

2. Trans-ethnic moralities: have the ability to spread across the world to ethnically and culturally different groups and to incorporate the old traditions of such.

3. Secular/global morality. Sshaped by human reason, by scientific knowledge, secular western philosophy and democratic ideals, and by the emergence, or perhaps re-emergence, of a belief that morality and religion are in fact distinct spheres (Para. 1-5).

South Africa's Moral Traditions

San and Khoi people ethics

Traditional African ethics

Christian ethics: Calvinist, Methodist, Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Pentecostal

African initiated religious movements and churches" (20th century )

Other: Islamic ethics (1600s), Jewish ethics (early 1800s), Hindu ethics (mid 1800s), and the Buddhist traditions. Among these, the Hindu morality, brought by the KwaZulu-Natal from India probably brought the most significant contribution with the pacifist teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, whom exercised great political impact in South Africa as well as internationally, above all in India.

Moral Convergence and Divergence

Concern for the welfare of others

Emphasis on qualities like truthfulness, justice, and sexual abstinence outside of marriage (Para. 12).