Page 32 - The Ethics of ASEAN
P. 32
The Ethics of ASEAN
modifications in today’s context to overcome historical biases on women, slavery and
racism, as well as their lack of knowledge of contemporary science and practical ethical
applications.
Figure 1: Model of Five Types of ASEAN Ethics
The purpose of the ethical types model is to help the thinking person make sense of
ASEAN ethical issues for understanding, discussion, policy-making and decision-making.
In defining the contents of the model, I start with virtue ethics, then turn to rules-based
and results-based ethics before turning to leadership ethics and emerging ethics.
ASEAN’s Virtue Ethics
The Greek philosopher Socrates captured the virtue of ethics for a meaningful human
2
life in his famous statement “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This type of ethics
representing a philosophy of how to live and be a responsible person (one’s identity)
is called virtue ethics. In the development of ASEAN, virtue ethics constitute the
foundations.
ASEAN’s virtue ethics go back hundreds of years and have been influenced by multiple
migrations of ethical systems. An example is the virtue ethics of Confucius, taught to
disciples in China two thousand four hundred years ago. Confucius defined the superior
3
person as one who continuously self-develops through learning . He called this ethic the
Way and underlined that ethics are in harmony with the universe. The Confucian value set
on education has influenced cultures, family values and educational systems worldwide.
Confucianism migrated across ASEAN, becoming the dominant ethical system in Vietnam
and Laos but present through Chinese immigration in all ASEAN countries.
The Indonesian-born Singaporean historian Wang Gungwu described in his book
Home is Not Here how Southeast Asians actually possess multiple anchors for identity
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and ethics. The book is illustrated by his personal sense of rootlessness and confusion
as an ethnic Chinese in building what became a very cosmopolitan career. Wang’s
2 The statement is found in Plato’s Apology (38a5–6). Socrates is sentenced to death for impiety and corrupting
youth because he taught and debated philosophy publicly
3 Confucius discusses the ethics of learning throughout the four Confucian classics and especially in the
Great Learning. These books can be consulted online in English in the MIT collection http://classics.mit.edu/
Confucius/learning.html retrieved 3 January 2023
4 Home is Not Here by Wang Gungwu, NUS Press 2018 216 pages, ISBN: 978-981-4722-92-6
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