Ethics as an Active Self-construction of the Human

Abstract

This paper will attempt to clarify the clear tendency, in our contemporary world, to look at ethics as something that “cures” all wrongs, all unbalance, and all evils from the political, environmental, to the business ones. For this reason, there is nothing better than to turn to ethics in order to “moralise” the system and the world, when the numerous news of fraud, injustice, and scandals are a part of everyday life in the business world and in our society. But, is this the role of ethics? Can we reduce the aim of ethics to a mere technique? In this paper, it is argued that ethics needs to be replaced in the epistemological scale of knowledge, where until now it has occupied a place at the top. Ethics needs to be repositioned in a different level of knowledge where we may find the roots of its foundation. It is also discussed that it is at the core of being that the experience of the action takes place and develops and in it, ethics takes root. Furthermore, it is suggested that understanding ethics from this point of view presupposes a new ethos around a relational poietics which privileges inter-subjectivity, self-creation, and an active and dynamic construction of the human and of the world.