An ethic is a combination of a group ethos, an individual inclination and some slogans that constitute a form of mental organization for religion and elsewhere that is superior in descriptive power to dogma and experience.
Philosophers strictly distinguish between morals and ethics even if in popular parlance the two are interchangeable. Morals are commands to be obeyed by all adherents or as inevitable strictures on personal will given the nature of things. The first of the Ten Commandments Thou shalt obey no other God is a moral commandment even though scholars prefer to think of some of the commandments as not really moral but a religious injunction when that first commandment has a moral injunction in that people ar being proper if they obey it because otherwise they are unbelievers and so are not part of the moral community at the least and are sacrilegious. Ethics on the other hand, are the often difficult question of how to navigate in life when what to do is uncertain and the details count and nowadays ethical matters are left to opinion columnists and professional psychologists. Kant discussed morals in the “Critique of Practical Reason” and took morals to be, like his followers, a theory of obligation, and so founded in the nature of human life rather than in religion. Kant’s ethics are found in his “Critique of Judgment” whereby people have to weigh the pros and cons of what to do, consulting practical rather than definitive advice. Spinoza remains radical in thinking that ethics can completely dispense with morals. There is just the examination of how people alter their feelings in response to other feelings and ide and inputs.
Ethics themselves, however, can also be subdivided into at least three types. There are communal, individual and credal types, the first of which is most familiar because of the association of ethics with “ethos”, which means the point of view of a collectivity, how a tribe or a nation or a social class characteristically engages in behavior and in thought, people from a different social grouping making preferences about thoughts and behavior and often but not necessarily thinking that those preferences are natural or easy or having the power of morals.
A personal ethic concerns the typical person will make a judgement about how to behave. Should I in the sense of will I forgive so as to forget or will I judge people on first impressions? Is diligence more important than creativity? Do I mind my money more than I value my reputation? Or my friends? Personal ethics, being personal characteristics, can be ranked. Catholics rank members as being more or less praiseworthy for their rectitude and enlightenment, some people more moral than others, people ranged from those worthy of a circle in hell up up mere purgatory and higher up than that to sainthood, which is a person who for at least a brief moment acted so morally so as to exhibit their true ethical nature. Troeltsch’s sectarians, the Protestants, on the other hand, are either among the saved or not, putatively equal in the congregation. Liberal secularists view the various ethical postures as different and to all be respected rather than ranked as better or worse.
A creedal announcement is a word, phrase, adage or slogan that sums up or orientates a person in their ethical behavior and so can be said to be an ethic rather than ethics as the name for a system of ethics or a personal complex of feelings which is what Spinoza meant. People can sum up their creed as “Be nice to people” or “Mind your own business” without claiming that people are by nature once or that individuality is the root of morality. The point is that such remarks are readily understood and unelaborated. They do not raise themselves to the status of theology and most believers are not guided by theology but find the slogans to be sufficient. “Buckle up is a sentiment more than a theory of Stoicism. An elementary school teacher told another student who asked about it, how could there be a trinity, three Gods in one, and was told that water could be a liquid, a solid, or a gas, and overhearing that I knew well enough even at that age that water could not be in all three states of matter at once. What she had offered, I would now say, was a weak analogy, but that may have been enough to sustain her for her entire life. A creedal point is enough, including the claim that the mysteries of religion are so deep as to surpass our understanding and so believe in the doctrine because others know better and you are attracted by the good thoughts and the fellowship.
Although Weber coined the term ethic to describe the combined characteristics that went into the Protestant Ethic as a distinct object of religion and so to be compared to James’ religious experience or Otto’s the idea of the sacred as also elemental and distinguishable features of religion and so replacing Harnack’s idea of dogma as the crucial aspect of religion, and so a revolutionary way of recasting religion. A religion of dogma requires too much study and technicalities to serve as a basis for religious engagement and the religious experience is so varied that a child’s smile and a burning bush would both qualify. Weber did not systematically define other ethics than the Protestant except to find Judaism, China and Chinese religion as customary and irrational. It is obvious that the term ethic can be applied as well to other major or current religions and to nonreligion as well.
As Weber saw it, Protestantism was distinguished by its rationalization of life whereby every moment could be assessed a success or a failure and so a testament that a person has imbibed a Christian spirit or not, that the only thing that is important regardless of dogma or ceremony other than the personal acceptance of God’s grace which liberates a person to do good work. The ethos of Protestantism is diligent work; the personal ethic is to be obedient, which Erich Fromm regarded as the evil spirit of Nazi Germany, the Germans having engaged in an escape from freedom, and the credal beliefs are adages like “a stitch in time saves nine” Weber’s own evidence for this insight was weak in that there could be other reasons for Protestants to get scientific educations while Catholic Germans studied the humanities. And Weber’s best adages like “a stitch in time saves nine” came from Ben Franklin who was, after all, an atheist. Moreover, total rationalization and this worldliness turns to materialism. In that case, the acme of religion is transformed into irreligion. But whether or not there is a hierarchy of religions, there is still left in Weber the very important insight of shifting from dogma and even experience to an ethic as the fundamental way of understanding mental organization, religious or not.
In addition to a Protestant Ethic, there is clearly a Catholic Ethic. Its ethos is obedience to authority in that the actual practical posture of congregants is to accept the dogmas and practices enunciated by the Catholic organizational hierarchy as definitive. That is very different from Anglicans, for example, who emphasize liturgy and shy away from making demands on what the various beliefs associated with Christianity are supposed to mean. Rather, Catholics are obligated not only to obey their leaders but accept the required beliefs even if inevitably they ascribe to a formula of words without understanding them or are dubious about them, such as the virgin birth or the transsubstantiation during the Mass. More technical people are allowed to provide the lead to what is to be ascertained and are urged to accept as emotionally satisfying and actual. This Catholic ethos reaches back to the adoption by the Church of its hierarchical and uniform nature of Roman government. To obey is a tone and a tendency for all Catholics and will seem to be the natural or inevitable posture of religion and so shared as a practice throughout the community even if, as a private matter, will engage in birth control as one of their to be forgiven imperfections.
The personal aspect of a Catholic ethic is to be open to supernaturalism. Miracles abound and saints are created and recognized for having interceded in the life of the world through appeals for their intercession, though there are better and worse things to ask for in that it is better to ask for the health of the sick rather than a shinier Christmas toy even though petty prayers are acceptable as being merely human. That is very different from the Protestant emphasis on religion relying on the transformation of the spirit as the vehicle for life changing events and Catholics like Malebranche will go so far as to say that every event requires a miracle to make it happen and is therefore an ordinary occurrence, essential for the economy of existence. Protestants can also indulge in miracles but often in a fanciful or ironic way such as is indulged when Santa is said to bring presents. When fully knowing that parents did that however much in the long run the bountifulness of the economy is the context for providing presents or, indeed any good fortune. A supernatural approach, however, requires a heap of logical short-circuiting because prayers may be said to result in the cure of a child’s illness only by neglecting all the cases in which prayed for children still manage to die. Credit is given to successes while failures don’t count. Nobody does a controlled experiment on prayers answered because to do so is sacrilegious.
Supernaturalism also encourages passivity. The real decisions are made upstairs and people will implore them tyo take place. The idea that God will help you if you help yourself is a Protestant idea, an emphasis on this worldly things. That is the lever most important as to Weber’s entrepreneurial spirit, more than the predestination doctrine which can also be inclined to passivity rather than a freedom to be productive because the cards are already dealt to you and so what> That is the gloominess of Scandinavian Protestantism. Other Protestants are more cheerful in thinking they can take hold of their lives because God is present in their consciousnesses.
The credal basis for Catholicism is also largely supernatural. Catholics believe in the Immaculate Conception, which cannot be disproven when so asserted, and the Resurrection, which relies on sketchy evidence of an assembly meeting the resurrected Jesus in the upper room without anyone inquiring what it was like to be dead. It is only internally that a believer can consider his or her doubts beyond the platitudes of biblical interpretation offered by both Catholic and Protestant clergy, the Catholics relying on the wisdom of the traditions and the theologians, while the Protestants insisting on Scripture being holy and binding even if not inerrant, though to be errant decreases the sanctity and reliability of the Gospels.
It is also possible to speak of two separate ethics based on American political parties and their alternative points of view. There is a Conservative Ethic whose ethos is hard work and propriety and whose personal ethic is a Protestant ;ike drive for achievement and whose creed is announced as merit driven. Millionaires earn it and te poor deserve their failures. On the other hand, the Liberal Ethos is to provide the needy and everyone else needing aid to get it from the government so as to allow people to be as free in attaining whatever are their goals. The personal ethic is to respect differentness, those people least prejudiced the best, and the creed is to walk in another’s moccasins while forgetting to walk in another’s wing tips. In a secular age, these two ethics drown out or encompass the religious ethics, so that liberal Catholics are big on forgiveness and charity for the poor and downtrodden while conservative Protestants insist that people build the character of the downtrodden so that they can redeem themselves. Conservative Catholics, I would judge, are not in the ascendency except with regard to creeds having to do with sexuality, the Second Vatican Council having defeated sexual reforms such as birth control while allowing non-Catholics to be accepted as deserving their partial religious truths and liberal Protestants are divided from their brethren by emphasizing good works and female ordination.
Indeed, the idea of an ethic s a more accurate way of describing the amalgam of behavior and belief and the connection between the personal and the collective than is ideology or dogma which are complex interrelated propositions which believers are required to attend and to which people will stray, trying to understand what they are supposed to believe, and trying to master its fine points, while ethics are actual ideas and experiences as those are combined and appreciated as such. It can be suspected that ethics as a term for an intellectual or spiritual underpinning will outlast prior ages of ideology, such as Medieval Christianity and the isms of twentieth century totalitarianism. A future ethic might replace conservatism and liberalism with, let us say, the wisdom of AI or world federalism ot the arrival of the aliens, who would lead to pro and anti ethics some accepting human inferiority or holding out for their own distinctiveness, just as the American Indians both resisted and then assimilated into the more advanced civilization.