The ethic of ultimate ends, moral conviction, or conviction is a concept in the moral philosophy of
Max Weber
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...
, in which individuals act in a faithful, rather than rational, manner.
The "ultimate end" is out of the hands of the actor. So long as he/she acts in a
moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. ...
manner, any bad results, or negative ends, are not the responsibility of the actor and ultimately a result of God's will or other forces.
Applications
In science, Weber argued that the discovery of laws is not the end of
scientific inquiry
Models of scientific inquiry have two functions: first, to provide a descriptive account of ''how'' scientific inquiry is carried out in practice, and second, to provide an explanatory account of ''why'' scientific inquiry succeeds as well as it ap ...
since they have been rendered irrational by the
inductivist and
deductivist approaches. The thinker held that the discovery of the causes and reason behind these laws is the ultimate goal. Ultimate end is also expressed in the realm of policymaking in the way decisions are not guided by the
moral values
Morality () is the categorization of intentions, decisions and actions into those that are ''proper'', or ''right'', and those that are ''improper'', or ''wrong''. Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduc ...
of those who are making them. Politicians, for instance, must sometimes use extraordinary and non-moral means to achieve certain goals because an alternative method based on ethics does not often address the realities of everyday life. According to Weber,
politics
Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
involves constant struggle among bearers of different rationally irreconcilable
values
In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of some thing or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live ( normative ethics), or to describe the significance of different a ...
and successfully advancing any value depends not on ethics but the reality of power.
See also
*
Consequentialism
In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a ...
*
Deontology
In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek language, Greek: and ) is the normative ethics, normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a ...
References
External links
Online edition of ''Politics as a Vocation''
Max Weber
Concepts in ethics
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