Politics: The Structure of Morals and Ethics

In class on Tuesday, PJ listed three concepts to keep in mind as we read the Woodford book, politics, morals, and ethics. I couldn’t help but think that all of these concepts, although on the outside look different, are truly synonymous. If you think of what the purpose of politics are, and how this purpose originated, the other two concepts come into play.

Woodford defines politics as “the ways people engage in collective decision making” (Woodford xii). I would agree that this is part of the definition, however, I feel there is more to it. To state my point, I wish to substitute the word “ways” in Woodford’s definition with structure. I wish to use the word structure because this indicates that there is a system built, a framework made to hold up something. What is it that politics are trying to hold up? I would say that the thing(s) being held up by the structure of politics are in fact laws.

I now ask two questions: why were / are laws even created, and why is it important to uphold them? Laws are set forth to prevent and allow actions to take place. The actions that are not allowed to take place are those that take away from the freedoms of others, or in other words are those actions that will take away a right of another. It is a law to not steal, or in other words to not take that which is not yours because it is against the law. It is against the law because there is an underlying moral and ethic that you do not take from others what they don’t give to you.

All of the laws that politics uphold, or rather are supposed to uphold, are there because there is a foundation of morals and ethics. To back up my point I wish to quote what Woodford explained to be Dewey’s beliefs, “the pursuit of democracy was an expression of love and moral obligation to one’s fellow men and women” (Woodford xiii). Democracy is a moral obligation. It is an obligation to have social equality so that there are not a select few people that are the mere dictators taking away from a person’s right to freedom.