Right, Wrong, and the Morals of Ethics

PAUL WOLPE lives and breathes ethics. He speaks with one of his ex-students and one of our editors, KASHISH KALWANI, about how we rely on ethical decision in everyday life-at work, in our families, and also for ourselves. Professor Wolpe also discusses how ethics, values, and morals are connected and how they are very rarely about right and wrong.

- KASHISH KALWANI

Q: To break the ice, tell us three fun facts about yourself.

Fact number one: My father was a rabbi, two of my three brothers are rabbis, and one of my two daughters is a rabbi. I am surrounded by spiritual people.

Fact number two: I put myself through graduate school as a massage therapist. Fact number three: I have a hang gliding license.

Q: Wow, that's cool.

How would you define ethics in the simplest way?

My definition of ethics is not in textbooks or the dictionary: Ethics is how we determine, express, and assess our values in the world. Morality is how we establish, maintain, and conduct our relationships as expressions of those values.

Q: I remember you sharing that on the first day of class. It's not about what is right and wrong, but a conflict of two rights. That really struck a chord with me.

I think we're taught about ethics incorrectly. We're taught it's about determining right and wrong, and sometimes it is.

With children, you need to set the fundamentals: It's wrong to steal, it's wrong to be violent, it's wrong to lie in certain cases. But once you've got those fundamentals down, the rest of your life is spent figuring out a different question: I have a set of values I want to express in the world, so what do I do when they come into conflict? That's what ethical dilemmas are.

They're rarely about right and wrong. We phrase it as, "What's the right thing to do here?", but what we really mean is, "What's the best right thing to do here?" because there's not just one right thing, there are many right things to do.

I teach ethics to doctors, and give them cases about conflicts of values. The patient wants to do one thing, while another thing is in their best interest; a patient's autonomy is a good value, a doctor's responsibility to take care of their patients is a good value, and they can't both be honored.