Universal Ethics
There are several ethical standards that seem to apply across cultures. The idea of a parent's duty to his child, a prohibition against killing useful members of society, and prohibition against incest are all examples of these universal morals. Most cultures also have some version of the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.A practicable Code of Universal Ethics was proposed by Enno Winkler.
Read more about this topic: Universal Code (ethics)
Famous quotes containing the words universal and/or ethics:
“The earliest instinct of the child, and the ripest experience of age, unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest part for man. Likewise this simplicity is so universal and all-containing as a rule for human life, that the subtlest bad man, and the purest good man, as well as the profoundest wise man, do all alike present it on that side which they socially turn to the inquisitive and unscrupulous world.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)