Cohen's Ethical Beliefs
In a public speech archived as a podcast on the New York Times podcast website, Cohen outlines his personal beliefs about ethics as being ultimately dependent on a person's immediate circumstances, while dismissing the notion that personal moral character might influence an individual's ethics.
Cohen categorically rejects the idea that individual people are inherently good or bad, asserting that in his opinion all individuals have in them the capacity to do good or bad at different times, in different contexts. In Cohen's view of ethics, individuals are all more or less the same with respect to ethics, but society is often to blame for the very existence of an ethical dilemma, which aligns him (by his own admission) with many of the beliefs of the Society for Ethical Culture; a fundamental premise of this ethical framework is that humans are morally obligated to promote changes in society so all people can lead more ethical lives.
Read more about this topic: Randy Cohen
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