ABSTRACT
Ethics, as the study and practice of moral beliefs, by its very nature ought to be a major consideration in any process of policy development. Morality concerns how an individual’s behaviour to others and themselves may be justified. It is impossible to process public policy that has no moral implications. Any workable society is dependent on moral rules as to how we should behave towards one another and, as Thomas Hobbes observed, without such rules there can be no society. Robinson Crusoe when alone on his desert island was morally free to do whatever he pleased, but one man alone does not of course constitute a society. As with any statement of preference moral claims are not issues that can be judged by any scientific positivist thought to be either right or wrong. Morality whilst subjective is, however, as discussed in Chapter 3 subject to rational thought, as the study of ethics which can, from basic principles concerning the value of human life, construct theories that can guide how we ought to behave towards others. Ideologies normally claim to have an ethical dimension and the two often are com-
plementary and closely intertwined but are best considered in studies of social analysis or theory as separate elements of study. Ideological analysis largely describes and seeks to understand systems of social ideas but is not always concerned to justify whether the ideology has a rational foundation that ought to be accepted by all of humanity. Ideology is also generally less prescriptive as to how everyone should behave and is wider in scope as it concerns how political and economic institutions should be constructed to conform to its precepts. Few ideologies are wholly constructed on the basis of ethical thought given that they must incorporate consideration of how society can be built given the physical and social realities of human behaviour. Moral analysis concerns itself less with the reality of human behaviour but how the human race ought to behave.
