RT Article
T1 Civil Ethics and the Validity of Law
JF Ethical theory and moral practice
VO 3
IS 1
SP 39
OP 55
A1 Cortina, Adela
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2000
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1785691600
AB This paper aims to clarify the nature and contents of 'civil ethics' and the source of the binding force of its obligations. This ethics should provide the criteria for evaluating the moral validity of social, legal and morally valid law. The article starts with observing that in morally pluralist Western societies civil ethics already exists, and has gradually started to play the role of guiding the law. It is argued that civil ethics should not be conceived as 'civic morals' which is in fact rather 'state ethics', nor as 'public ethics' which is said to reach its perfection when it becomes law, nor as ethics applicable primarily to the basic structure of a society (political liberalism), but instead as a citizens' ethics. Subsequently the paper attempts to show what the contents of this ethics are, and which ethical theory would be able to ground its obligations.
K1 Virtues
K1 Public Ethics
K1 moral values
K1 moral pluralism
K1 Moral Obligation
K1 legal validity
K1 Law
K1 civil ethics
K1 Citizenship
DO 10.1023/A:1009958315067