The ethics and rights debate in the helping professions

Ethics: antecedents in ethics philosophy

As a general rule, ethical counselling holds that the welfare of the client is paramount along with autonomy. I contend that if the efficacy of counselling is going to be based upon the premise of ethical practice then surely it is the roots of ethical philosophy that need to be explored before particular issues of ethics in counselling can be adequately addressed.

It should come as no surprise to the politically adept that a civil society does not promote knowledge of its hegemonic powers. Or that such a civil society almost certainly engages in creating the very problems it is aiming to solve. It is not the first time a civil society has been caught out manifesting such problems and their remedies. The previous case relates to the 18th century Enlightenment that was involved in the same issues of power it was purported to eliminate.

As things stand, no one is going to do anything to eliminate the social consequences of neo-liberalism, least of all the non-politicised counsellor. Yet, it might be worth considering that by invoking more conceptual approaches to “ethics in counselling” the would-be counsellor might be in a better position to help their clients understand the workings of an unjust and inequitable world. A counsellor might even be motivated to act towards changing it, rather than becoming its manager.

Depoliticised discourses

There cannot be “autonomy” without politicisation because personal empowerment is contingent upon the understanding of the inherent power relations (politics is power). This is not to throw dispersions on well meaning counsellors. Rather, to alert them to the existence of false consciousness. The “Third Way” transcendent and depoliticised discourses - where working through conflicts gives way to processes of mediation - are usually a compromise at the expense of the powerless.

Mediation treats all conflict as negative when a lot has been learned via conflict, including the body of knowledge we now call ethics.

This leads to a further question: why have we embarked upon a discourse of ethics and not a discourse of rights? It is evident that the current ethics discourse serves to undermine the rights discourse. No one asks: why do we need an ethics discourse? What is so wrong with society that we do not have universal justice? Why is it that most individuals cannot be empowered to have happy fulfilling lives? These are the political questions that need to be asked before we embark on any system of ethics. The fundamentals need to be fully understood. There are no ethics without enlightenment.

Ethics: from Plato to utilitarianism

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that borrows heavily from Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics. Plato’s Republic can hardly be described as best (ethical) practice. It advocates the view that some men are born to rule and others are born to follow.

In Plato’s view you are only deserving of “ethical” treatment if you are a citizen not a slave.

We have not shifted too far from this view. Plato viewed ethics as so strongly embedded in the social nature of man that he decided to investigate it through the characteristics of a good state, but this wasn’t a real state, it was a figment of Plato’s imagination; a fantasy. Hitherto, all those who have followed the Platonic path have built their dreams and aspirations on delusion.

In modern psychiatric terms, we might think about it as a psychosis. We have to wonder then about the virtues of ethical decisions that are still largely grounded in the Platonic moral legacy.

Ethical philosophy has “occurred throughout a history of speculative thought”. Indeed, ethics was born out of a conglomeration of conflicting ideas: “Heraclitus and Democritus, Antisthenes and Aristippus, Zeno and Epicurus, Descartes and Gassendi, Cudworth and Hobbes, Reid and Hume, Kant and Bentham”. During the period referred to as the 18th century Enlightenment Descartes and Kant posited ideas on ideal ethical behaviour. Johns Stuart Mills, Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer and others attempted to ground the abstract idealism into a concrete body of ideas called utilitarianism.

Today, utilitarianism is still a common branch of ethics and philosophy, which, I contend is significantly flawed.