Living With Ethics – Part Two In part one of Living With Ethics
I talked about Virtue Ethics, which for me is the foundation to
an ethical life. Now I would like to talk about Descriptive
Ethics. Descriptive Ethics, as I’ve already mentioned in part
one, is the factual study of the ethical standards or principles
of a group or tradition. I come from two cultures; the first is
Irish (mostly Irish on my father’s side) and Middle Eastern (on
my mother’s side). At first I thought that these cultures could
never have much in common, after all one is western and the
other is eastern and we know how well these two sides get along.
I looked at the pre-Christian and pre-Islamic cultures and I was
very surprised by what I found. At the heart of the early Irish
society there was a passion for justice, hospitality, honor and
courage. The same can be said of the early Arab society. In this
essay I will look at the structure of both societies in pagan
times and their ethics. I will start with the social structure
of both t