Ethics without Morality , Morality without Ethics — Politics , Identity , Responsibility in Our Contemporary World

Ethics without morality and morality without ethics are the characteristics of two distinct eras: modernity and post-modernity. The duty to obey the law is an ethical act, but not always moral. Morality in fact is something more: a principle of responsibility and an index of humanity. This paper aims to explain the historical relationship between morality, ethics and politics up to the present day. The erosion of the nation-state, global capitalism, bio-economy leads us to rethink the meaning of ethics, morality and politics. A utilitarian ethics and a necessary morality may be the new frontiers of our contemporary world.


Starting from the Map of Norberto Bobbio
Our modern world is presented as very complex and articulated.The pressing scientific progress, the continuing social changes and economic instability not only represent new challenges to ethics and politics, but also to morality.Over the centuries, the study on the relationship between ethics and politics is central to understanding human action.Society itself, in fact, is designed as a structure that supports and contains in itself two reference systems: two autonomous spheres that explain human behaviour.Ethics and politics become areas in which the human acts both as an ethical individual and as a political one.But, we know that this distinction is not always present in human history because it undergoes a separation process that obscures the moral sense.This means that at some point of history morality suffers a codification and is reduced to ethics which is a specific law to follow.For example, in ancient Greece ethics and politics are not separated but together they make the purpose of the polis.The main cause of this union is just the lack of codification of morality in a single ethics.In ancient Greece, in fact, there are many morality and the citizens of the polis living their ethics in the same political nature: in the pursuit of the highest good which is ethical and political order together.But, with the advent of the modern age, on the one hand, the state asserts itself as autonomous political entity, on the other hand, the Church as the centre of moral theology and, therefore, as an institution capable of creating a regulatory system: one and only one ethics.Thus, morality enters the Catholic ethics and is circumscribed within a legal system.For this reason Max Weber, when he refers to the relationship between ethics and politics, prefers to speak of two ethics: the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility.This means that morality is considered as ethics of conviction and politics as ethics of responsibility.The action becomes moral when it starts from the ethics of the principles which must follow a certain norm.Politics, however, must look at the results, at the politically valid and righteous principles which must serve the common good.The classical example of the autonomy of these two spheres individual rules is Machiavelli's theory.He believes that the prince must be clever as a fox and cunning like a lion and must use any means to achieve the political goal.But Machiavelli is not the only example of the necessary separation between ethics and politics.If we think of the most recent philosophy, we find Benedetto Croce, who considers the political integrity as a political capacity.He gives the example of the surgeon: a professional who just needs to be good to do his work as a physician and should not necessarily be an ethical individual.We think to even the famous Sartre's work "Les mains sales" which considers the political as that man who can not do without getting his hands dirty.These are just some examples of how politics and ethics are both seen as two laws that man must follow.Two spheres of law separate and distinct from the birth of the modern state and the church as an institution.
To better understand this distinction and its possible links, it is useful to refer to the classification made by Norberto Bobbio (Bobbio, 1999).The reference to Bobbio seems to be dutiful since he is the Italian political philosopher who revealed the true meaning of political philosophy and created a general theory of politics.When Bobbio refers to ethics and politics begins from the modern age and highlights the contrast between the two terms.It is a dualism that Bobbio associates with the opposition between Christian morality and political action because Christian morality generates an ethical system that can be opposed to the political one.For this Bobbio draws a map that places the main theories regarding the relationship between ethics and politics.The map is divided into two major theories: monistic and dualistic theories.Within these two groups stands E. PALESE a rigid and a flexible monism with a real and an apparent dualism.In rigid monism Bobbio inserts those authors who prefer a single reference system: politics or morality.In flexible monism, however, Bobbio places the authors that support only a single reference system, but there are also special cases as exception.Dualistic theories are divided by Bobbio into real dualism and apparent dualism.The real dualism brings together authors who are convinced of the existence of two distinct spheres: ethics and politics.In apparent dualism there are authors who believe in a separation between the two terms, but also in a possible hierarchy.To better understand Bobbio's theory is necessary to explain with examples.We start with the monistic theories.We argued that the monistic theories admit a single reference system: that of ethics or politics, or that of the ethics on politics.With regard to the reduction of politics on morality we can refer to the Christian prince of Erasmus of Rotterdam, for whom the assignment is to be honest, to be a man ethically valid.Another example can be done with Kant who considers the politician as the one who interprets the principles of political prudence so that they coexist with morality.But, within the rigid monism there are also those who prefer politics to ethics.In this case we refer to Hobbes that is the only author for whom there is no distinction between prince and tyrant.Hobbes eliminates any possibility of a conflict between ethics and politics, since the state is the only entity truly autonomous and right: even the church to exist should be entitled by it.As regards the flexible monism, however, Norberto Bobbio in order to explain it refers to the theory of waiver.Although you prefer morality over politics, there is also an exception in special cases.For example, the moral precept do not to kill can be overcome if there is need for self-defence.Monism, therefore, both rigid and flexible allows only one reference system.But, we now turn to the theory of dualism, that is, of those theories which refer to two spheres: the ethics and politics.The dualism is divided into apparent and real.We talk about apparent dualism when we do not consider two opposite but two distinct ones in hierarchical order.In this case falls Benedetto Croce that while considering both politics and morality, in fact, hierarchizes morality on politics as morality belongs to the Spirit and therefore is superior to politics.On the contrary, Hegel believes that there are two reference systems, but the political one is superior because reasons of the state are higher than those of morality.A real dualistic solution without the possibility of hierarchy is found through the ideas of Machiavelli, who clearly distinguishes the final actions and the instrumental ones.The final actions have an intrinsic value, instrumental actions, however, are valid only for their intended purpose that must be achieved.The Machiavelli's thought is important because, through the distinction of the actions, totally separates politics from morality.The politician must be an amoral individual, because politics has its own ethics and follows a precise set of rules.From this form of dualism we can understand that morality and politics become in the course of history two sets of different rules to follow or, as Max Weber, two distinct ethics.The ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility correspond to moral and political actions that follow established principles (especially the Catholic Church), and the actions that follow political purposes sometimes amoral.The map of Bobbio provides us to understand the significance of the relationship between ethics and politics over the centuries, and to understand the codification of morality from the conflict between church and state.But, we wonder if morality is simply ethics or something more.

Ethics of Modernity and Morality of Postmodernity
Throughout the modern age, be ethical means obeying a law both moral and political, because ethics is a set of norms: moral norms on the one hand, and political norms on the other.But we can not deny that in the course of modernity there are events not moral but anyway defined as ethical because they are able to follow the law of ethics.It is the case of the holocaust of the Jews: their executioners defined themselves as ethical since they obey the law.But can we define them also moral?This means that modern ethics is a code of behaviour imposed on men regardless of their will.This particular type of ethics aimed in fact at the perfectibility of the individual, the idea of a perfect social order which, however, considers individuals as mere pieces of a mosaic.There is not the principle of humanity, the freedom that highlights the morality of the individual.The modern age is characterized by an ethics without morality, because morality is an autonomous principle and internal to man.Morality is not corporate, is not born with the institutions.The moral comes first.It is social and not societal.Man is a moral being because he naturally associates to other men and chooses for the other, in favour of the other.The modern ethical encloses the moral of the codification and opens the contrast with politics through institutional distinction between church and state.But there is a shift: from modernity to postmodernity.Postmodernity inaugurates the end of institutional certainties, the end of the cataloguing of the individual, which rehabilitates his ambivalence and his humanity.Postmodernity is, on the contrary, morality without ethics as the ethical law, to which to trust, becomes principle of the oppression of humanity as supposed to create a social order deporting Jews, cripples, and all individuals other than the idea of perfectibility.Morality means freedom of choice, ability to choose what is believed as naturally right since the choice is much more than mere obedience to an ethical law.The choice is a moral action, a sign of responsibility and consequent freedom because it places man in the dimension of his individuality and uniqueness.All of us can be considered as equipped with an ethic until we respond to the duty to adopt a certain conduct and the law imposed on us by a given context.However, to define ourselves as moral beings it is required responsibility that is freedom and ability to choose for the others, not only for themselves.In fact, duty makes a man as his neighbour, but responsibility defines and differentiates it from the others.This is the fundamental distinction between modern ethics and postmodern morality.One way to better understand this difference is to refer to two myths: the myth of Moses and the myth of Adam and Eve.The biblical myth of Moses is the symbol of modern ethics.He comes down from the mountain with the tablets of the law in hand carved directly from God.Everyone has the duty to follow those laws as imposed from above.Being moral means for this myth an unconditional obedience.Instead, the myth of Adam and Eve opens the door to the postmodern conception of morality.Eden individuals live in the uncertainty of their choice because being moral means choosing between good and evil.Being free to choose between good and evil means that the responsibility takes the place of duty and moral ethics.In addition, the responsibility signals the freedom of the individual who through his free choice and his inner sense of right and wrong, is char-E.PALESE acterized as a human being.The morality goes beyond the mere law and codification and shows itself as social but not as societal.This means that the morality exceeds even the institution, the structures of society and differs from ethics.Being moral means to go back to the natural authenticity of man who is a rational, social and political animal as Aristotle theorized.
The social man is not the societal man and the ethical man is not the moral man.Responsibility, in fact, is not like duty.It also refers to the other that is to say my neighbour.For this being moral means being together in a supportive relationship: I choose freely according to moral principles, but I do not choose for ourselves.I choose also for the Other, for the sake of the Other.I build my being through being for the Other, which is a selfless act.The Other is regarded as different from me: as the face of E. Levinas who asserts that "the fundamental experience is the experience of the Other.The Other is disproportionate compared to the power and freedom of the ego.The disproportion between I and Other is precisely the moral conscience.The moral conscience is not an experience of values, but an access to the external being [...] the freedom that lives thanks to the conscience is inhibited in front of other, when I firmly determine without deceit and subterfuge, his eyes disarmed absolutely unprotected.Conscience is precisely this rectitude.The face of the Other calls into question the happy spontaneity of the ego, this joyous force that goes" (Lévinas, 2002: p. 66).This is the real difference between modernity and post-modernity: between an ethics without morality and a morality without ethics, which rehabilitates the freedom of choice of the individual, who is himself by nature plural.And this plurality can be traced in the relationship with the Other meant as different from me, that-through its very diversity-is part of the project of everyone's life for the construction of the self (Pieretti, 2010).Being for the Other means to be moral and therefore directly responsible for the free choice that is carried out for the Other meant as face, that is, not as Other-similar, but as dissimilar as it is characterized by its different attributes to me: Other is "the weak, while I am the strong, it is the poor, the widow and the orphan [...] or is the stranger, the enemy, the powerful" (Lévinas, 1986: p. 87).

From Ethics without Morality to Morality without Ethics: The Illusory Transit
But the restoration of man's ambivalence opened by postmodernity has some problems in the "modern age".If on the one hand it is recovered the plurality of man, on the other hand lack the necessary conditions to ensure that the individual pursues his morality.The erosion of the nation state, global capitalism, the exasperated privatization of every aspect of human life, create a climate of insecurity.In addition, the current urgent institutional crisis refers not so much to the state-in an era paradoxically called age of hyper-Status (Preterossi, 2011: p. 7): think of Brazil, India, China-as the model of the European nation state (and European democracies, which in the form the nation-state were born and developed).In this particular condition the individual is afraid to choose and find a sheltered place by choice.This means that in our contemporary reality we see a paradox: on the one hand the possibility of exercising our responsibility in the name of freedom and morality, on the other hand a situation of instability that threatens man and generates fear and discomfort.But where does this discomfort come?Mainly from the policies of the global market, which threaten the state itself.Politics, in fact, is local and the power is lost in the global economy.It is an invisible power that acts on individuals by forcing them to choose certain actions mandatory.In this way a new kind of ethics is generated and is associated with utilitarianism.This is the ethic of the market: a set of new rules to which all must adhere in order to be accepted in the contemporary world.Indeed, it seems that after centuries the discussed and criticized Jean Jacques Rousseau's prophecy has come to pass, that men should be forced to be free.Knowing and be able to choose means today to be responsible for our own individuality, self-assertion, "be suitable" to be includedand then-accepted in a global society that sees the market for consumer goods as the sole holder of sovereign power, to which is delegated-by the state itself-the task of establishing wants and needs, but also the parameters of exclusion and inclusion of the subject.The result is that each individual runs frantically towards the construction of the "self" according to that model, which in turn is generated by the policies of the impersonal market, and that catapult us in a misleading reality.
We delude ourselves to be free, to be able to exercise our morality, but in reality we have a new duty to follow the economic power that acts on our identity.The policy fails to contain this dynamics and delegate responsibility to the private citizen to be admitted in the global economy.For this reason we seek refuge from the choice as the responsibility is no longer that of moral freedom, but that of the "ethics of the market".Everyone is responsible for its inclusion or exclusion.Everyone has the duty to adhere to the global norm.The moral sense that leads to be the other turns to be for themselves as the contemporary reality requires a suitable self-construction.The relationship between ethics and politics no longer exists because the state sovereignty itself seems now eroded.But there is not even the moral sense since there is no true freedom and responsibility of choice.The obligation to choose is confused with the freedom of choice.This is the paradox of globalized existence which is characterized by the abnormal expansion of markets, and a rampant consumerism which-in turn-has produced a forced modification of cognitive, behavioural, economic and social schemes of wider and wider areas of the globe (Bonvecchio, 2011: p. 13).The change is even more problematic when it falls on the identity of the individual, who must change its corporeality to look for a suitable subject for the global economy.In the global society, in fact, are welcome those who are able to "upgrade" their body based on models that go on forever.Consider, plastic surgery, which, by now, has nothing to do with the elimination of a physical defect or with the attainment of an ideal form denied by nature or fate.It is connected with the need to keep up with standard which change rapidly, with the maintenance of its market value and the elimination of an image that has exhausted its usefulness or its charm, in order to replace it with a new public image in one package with a new identity.Indeed, it seems that the body is the main instrument in the confused and sometimes fragmented search for identity.And this research generates fear because you are not sure to make the right choice.For this we turn to plastic surgery experts, technology and all the means that can be reliable and provide a guarantee of success.Morality itself, considered as the principle of free choice, is lost in the ways of power that-a closer look seems to be a bio-power linked to a bio-economy.The bio-economy seems, in fact, to go beyond Foucault's biopolitics that is characterized by the direct relationship between politics and life: the state has a direct effect on the life of the E. PALESE individual normalizing and regulating its existence.According to Foucault's thought, in fact, bio-power is a modern panoptical power.
A Form that refers to the idea of the philosopher J. Bentham, which designs an ideal prison-the Panopticon precisely -with radiocentric structure and one central tower from which guards can keep in view all monitored people: Indeed I think that the panopticon can have a very wide application and this for the reasons that will soon manifested.In a word, I think that could be applied, without exception, in all buildings where a number of people must be kept under control in an area not too vast to be covered with or dominate other buildings.It matters little if the purpose of the building is different or even opposite: whether to punish the criminals, monitor the insane, reforming the vicious, isolate suspects, employ the idle, maintaining the poor, heal the sick, educate those who want to enter into various sectors of industry, or provide education to future generations: in a word, whether it deals with prison for life, in the chamber of death, or prison isolation before trial, or penitentiary, or house correction or workhouses, or factories, or asylums, or hospitals, or schools.It is obvious that, in all these examples, the purpose of the building will be more fully achieved if individuals are to be monitored as assiduously as possible under the eyes of people who should control them.Ideally, if this is the purpose to be achieved, requires that each individual was at any time in this condition.Being impossible all this, the best you can hope for is that at every moment, having reason to believe guarded, and not having the means to secure the contrary, believed to be (Bentham, 1983: pp. 36-37).
Just because of these characteristics, the panoptic model is taken in different of history to highlight the power relations.We can think about the "Big Brother" of the novel "1984" by G. Orwell: a totalitarian reality, where every aspect of life of every individual is controlled by "the eye" of the omnipresent state.Or we can consider M. Foucault as well, who -thinking as feature of the twentieth century a disciplinary power of control that acts on both the individual and population -approaches the structure of the Panopticon to biopower.
But, if the power of panoptic control is careful not to evade the monitored, the new form of power-whose main tool for monitoring are data banks-selects taking care not to let in anyone who is not in possession of certain credentials.Here, "being in the global" means being able to choose and to have what it takes to join the list of those who count, who is "equipped" or "suitable".Contemporary reality looks like, in fact, the "Città degli uomini finti" by Bontempelli, in which all are transformed by wearing a "mask" to adapt to a life contrived to get away from the sense of unease, alienation, and to pursue some form of happiness.This is the bio-economy that gives top priority to the power of the market by removing power to politics itself.If bio-politics is characterized by a direct relationship between politics and life, today there is the mediation of market power.This particular phenomenon is the result of globalization, which is-first of all-an economic event realized by those who hold the political and social monopoly.In fact, the true meaning of the policy is lost because it breaks the relationship between politics and power.Politics is no longer able to contain the power.This means that the individual is given the task of being a global citizen.The responsibility of the individual replaces the responsibility of the state.The contemporary individual has to create its identity and must follow precise global standards.If the citizen in the modern age is part of the model of perfect social order because it follows the ethics of the state, the law of the state, contemporary man becomes the individual only following global ethics which is an utilitarian ethic.Post-modernity is revealed, in fact, as an illusion because it seeks to re-establish the freedom of the individual in the name of a natural morality which leads to spontaneous social gathering.The passage from ethics without morality to morality without ethics, that is, the transition from the modern to post-modern age, shows its problems and illusions.In contemporary times, in fact, this step is cancelled and is created a utilitarian ethics and a necessary morality.

The Utilitarian Ethics
Utilitarian ethics and necessary morality are terms that characterize contemporary age.But contemporary utilitarianism is different from the classic one.It is a form of utilitarian ethics, which can be defined as global ethics.This means that the contemporary utilitarian ethics extends to the whole community because it represents the standards that all global citizens must follow.So the citizen who wants to create its identity must follow the path of the globalized world.A road that is drawn by global economic systems.The utilitarian ethics, in fact, puts aside the sovereignty of states and relies on its own sovereignty.As Singer argues effectively, living in a globalized world means to follow a single economy, a single policy, a single law, a single network of information.This is the global ethic that silently imposes the rules of conduct of each of us.All follow these rules and are directly responsible for their inclusion in the global world.The global ethics is different from Hobbes' utilitarian ethics, as it exceeds the conception of contractualism.Hobbes' theory, in fact, explains and justifies the absolute power through the contract of men with the sovereign.This contract takes place primarily for fear.The fear of death drives man to give up all his rights to a single sovereign, the king is unfettered by any law.The right to life is the only right that the man does not give up and he wants to preserve and defend.Like all contractualists Hobbes begins with the distinction between the state of nature and marital status.In the state of nature man is a wolf with respect to the other man.Everyone lives in a conflict that threatens the lives of everyone.The fear of death, in this ongoing battle, causes man to leave the state of nature and enter into civil sectors.In this step, the man relies on a sovereign who has absolute power but ensures everyone's life: "The only way to erect such a common power, to be able to defend them from foreign and injustice between them, and thereby to secure them in such a way that by their own industry and by the fruits of the earth they may nourish themselves and live satisfied, is to confer all their power and their strength to a man or an assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by the plurality of voices, with one will, that is to say, appoint a man or assembly of men to play the part of their person and each accept and recognize himself as the author of all that he upholds the part of their person, or will that be the case, in those things which grant peace and common security, and submit it in all their will to the will of him, and all their judgments to his judgment.This is more than consent or concord is a real unity of them all in one and the same person made with the covenant of every man so that every man should say to each other, I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this man, or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that E. PALESE thou give up law and authorize all his actions in like manner" (Hobbes, 1987: p. 167).This is the justification of absolute power according to Hobbes.This means that Hobbes regards utilitarianism as research of a selfish pleasure, a private pleasure.Hobbes, in fact, thinks that politics itself is based on a contract, as there is an exchange between ruler and ruled.Through this exchange is formed the foundation of politics.But, for global utilitarianism the conditions are different.Global utilitarianism and utilitarian ethics in the contemporary world are not legitimized through a contract but through the results.All those who are part of the globalized world must achieve the same results that are imposed primarily by the large international markets.It is an ethics that does not come anymore from local institutions, as happened in the modern era, but from the global and addresses to the socio-historical context.The obedience to utilitarian ethics does not come from fear of sanctions, but from the ability to meet specific needs.The global citizen, in fact, is a client-consumer who wants to satisfy his needs, or perhaps that should meet his needs as he is forced to be included.A member of the global community is fully responsible for his own self-assertion, which, paradoxically, is realized only in being "ideal consumers" remodelling according to eligibility requirements generated by the market, but above all in being consumer goods, in succeeding to maintain a "market value".The failure of this venture creates a strong personal distress, as it reveals an inability to adapt to a "society of consumers who outsources, contracts, and assigns the role of Prometheus to the individuals and the responsibility for its performance".The failure falls contemporary man in the dimension of Promethean shame, that "unlike the challenge and pride, is a feeling totally individual".This means that the utilitarian ethics on the one hand seems to aggregate individuals because it acts as global ethics, but on the other it makes the subject more and more alone.The contemporary individual is lonely in the race to adapt.The adaptation to global, in fact, has a value of urgency because "the real driving force of the economy geared to consumers is constituted precisely by the lack of satisfaction and constant renewal and strengthening of the unshakable conviction that the attempt to satisfy those desires is at least partially failed" (Bauman, 2007: p. 12).The concept of conservation, long-lasting good but more importantly, fixed identity, is replaced with the emergency, continuous change and uncertainty.No identity is a gift from birth, no identity is given, and even less so that once and for all safely.According to the utilitarianistics ethics identities become projects: tasks to be taken as a commitment to an infinitely remote completion.This conception of identity as a planning lead man in front of a challenge.Modern man defies nature, challenges himself in the belief of "being yourself", in line with Sartre's idea of man that "is nothing more than what you do".Transforming your body, acting on it, is not only a practical realization of a desire, but also a source from which to draw safety, capacity of possession and dominion over that which is the most authentic natural unfolding.Acting on the body to control it, fix it, direct it is the principle of he apparent independent decision of man who chooses how he wants to be.But in order to succeed in the challenge of self-realization, it is necessary to overcome fear and have the appropriate equipment.For this reason, "the markets are happy to take advantage of that fear, and companies that provide consumer goods compete to act as a reliable guide and help in the tireless effort of their clients to be up to the challenge.They sell the tools, the equip-ment required to self-construction that takes place on the individual level."The failure generates discomfort, neurosis-disease of our time-but, above all, guilt.Guilt is a real strategy of global ethics as it bends free choice.Being directly responsible for their own identity-in the era of globalization-means being personally responsible of the exclusion resulting from the inability of that Heidegger's "being in the world".Indeed, the physical self-construction takes as its primary objective the attainment of happiness, the contemporary well-being that wants to meet man's needs.But these needs are also "false needs", as would H. Marcuse, that "it is possible to distinguish between real needs and false needs.The "false" needs are those that are superimposed to the individual by particular social interests felt by its repression: they are the needs which perpetuate toil, aggressiveness, misery and injustice... Most of the needs that prevail today, the need to relax, have fun, to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements, to love and hate what others love and hate, belong to this category of false needs" (Marcuse, 1979: p. 23).
The false needs project contemporary man in an isolated dimension in which we are witnessing the weakening of all social ties.It is a process of de-socialization of the responsibility of man, who builds his own identity in a social system supported by new media.M. Castells calls this new form of socialization as network individualism which considers man isolated and seduced by new forms of global power.The emergence of new media presents a new model of sociability based on the individual.The most important role of the Internet in the structuring of social relations is the contribution to the new model of sociability based on individualism.More and more people are organized in social networks that communicate via computer.Thus, it is not the Internet to create a model of individualism in the network, but it is the development of the Internet to provide support material suitable for the spread of individualism in the network as the dominant form of sociability.
Individualism in social network is a model, not a collection of isolated individuals.This is Castells' thought which leads us to consider not just a 'utilitarian ethics but also a new morality.We can refer to a moral need.But what does necessary morality mean?

The Necessary Morality
The distinction between ethics of modernity and morality of post-modernity is based on the fundamental separation between the law to be followed as set by the state and the inner moral of man.Ethics and morality are, therefore, two different terms: the first refers to duty, the second to responsibility.Moral responsibility can develop if there is freedom.Not only freedom to choose for themselves but also for the good of others.This is the principle that makes man a social animal and not societal, because it connects to a relationship of natural solidarity with each other.Solidarity is part of the moral sense of man's freedom and his humanity.All these aspects seem to be recovered in the postmodern age because it had opened the doors to the diversity of man, to the acceptance of plurality in the world to the idea of social perfection of the modern era.But we have seen that in our contemporary reality a utilitarian ethics is developing which is a global ethics for two main reasons: 1) All individuals must fall within the global economy; 2) Every aspect of life is embraced by the global policies.This means that each of us lives in the global dimension and must be adapted to Copyright © 2013 SciRes.
the performance of the global economy.A trend-as we have seen-which is driven primarily by the market.Analyzing this situation we can understand that the global economy is creating a new political and social tissue.At the political level we see a destabilization of local institutions.At the social level, however, it changes the concept of solidarity and that of morality.Morality becomes necessary because each of us must necessarily be supportive.In other words, we are forced to be moral.Morality becomes necessary because only through approval to the global we can survive.Solidarity becomes the economy, the social organization which, today, proposes circuits of closeness, supports groups via digital network.To be moral does not mean to be free but to follow a business that allows us to survive during the economic crisis that is sweeping Europe and the world.This is why modern man is no longer the man of 20 years ago.We are witnessing the end of the exasperated individual freedom and the creation of new forms of solidarity, new ways of being moral persons.Modern man is forced into the same need to be supportive, to engage others who are in his situation.But what changes between free, natural and authentic and necessary morality?The missing element is the inability of the global individual to think of himself as a project.The economic crisis, the future uncertainty, the reduction of space and time in which to express themselves, create discomfort, insecurity and uncertainty.In this atmosphere each one being associated to another is not for the good for others but for himself: for a need that maybe hides the true nature of man.A rational and at the same time social animal-as Aristotle pointed out-in the harmony of these two terms retraced the true human being.A being is capable of tending to virtue, which is an ethical and political aim together because in political action man must rediscover the unity of ethics and morality, duty and responsibility of humanity.