Ethical Scrutiny of Human conduct | Ethics in Human Action (GS 4 Ethics)

Ethical Scrutiny of Human conduct that is theoretically whether all human conducts are subject to scrutiny or there are conditions.

Ethics scrutinizes broadly Human conduct which is deliberate i.e. there is a concept of deliberate human conduct which has 3 important conditions:

  1. Knowledge – means a person is fully aware about his/her her action. He does it knowingly.
  2. Free will – means the person has choices for his/her action.
  3. Voluntariness – means the person is willing to act.

E.g. Preparation of civil services examination.

  • Mr.x has complete knowledge about what he’s doing.-Knowledge
  • He has choices about selecting, career options. i.e. free will.
  • He decides to prepare for this examination as he was willing to do.
  • All the 3 conditions should meet then the action will become deliberate. & that action is subject to ethical scrutiny. If any 1 condition is not meet it’ll less subject to scrutiny or theoretically, this conduct shouldn’t be scrutinized ethically.

There are many factors which influence deliberate human conduct & they make the conduct less deliberate such as:

  1. Emergency like situation
  2. Ill health
  3. Strong like / passion
  4. Temperament/habit
  5. The pressure-like situation with uncertainty

Under these conditions, a person may not necessarily act in a deliberate manner.

Ethical Scrutiny:

Although deliberate human action is taken into consideration for scrutiny of human conduct. And if action is less deliberate there’s the consideration of such a factor in ethical scrutiny such as:

  1. If a person acted but was not aware he was ignorant or action happens just due to chance. then the person is held less guilty for the consequence.
  2. If a person has a temperament problem or physically & mentally not able to act inappropriate way his action is also less subject to ethical scrutiny

Even if the above conditions are taken into consideration they shouldn’t be taken as an excuse to either justify an action or refuse to accept responsibility. Still conduct will be judged by taking into consideration:

  1. Application of wisdom
  2. Application of courage, of convection.
  3. Sincerity in action
  4. The character of a person
  5. Justification of situation
  6. Position held by person
  7. Seriousness of consequence.

Example: An lAS officer can’t say that he was not aware of the law. Officers cant gives excuses that there was a threat to life that for not talking bribe etc. In fact civil services most of the time have challenging & threatening Situations

Similarly, people holding responsible positions should behave responsibly. They can’t give excuses to ignorance/chances/any other factor.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.