Topics Ethics

Question How can we say that it is rude to do a certain thing but not unethical? Isn't that like saying that it is morally okay to be rude?

Accepted:
July 3, 2011

Comments

A good point. Usually it's not okay to be rude. It's typically a minor moral offense, but rudeness is generally wrong because it hurts or offends people gratuitously.

That said, we can dig a bit deeper. What's rude and what isn't depends heavily on conventions that vary a fair bit. In some settings and circles, it's rude to call people one doesn't know well by their first names. In other settings and circles, it would be rude not to. In this country (the USA), it's rude to slurp your soup. In some cultures, it's the norm and doesn't offend anyone. But there's nothing inherently good or bad about calling people by their first names, and nothing inherently good or bad about slurping one's soup.

Not so for killing people. That's prima facie wrong (or, if you prefer, pro tanto) wrong and it takes special circumstances to make it permissible. The same for stealing. And perhaps deliberate cruelty is just wrong, period.

Indeed, if one adopts rudeness as a means to deliberate cruelty, then those cases of rudeness might be unexceptionably wrong (or close to it). But it's still true that whether or not an action is rude isn't something that can be settled without understanding the background conventions, and very often those could easily have been otherwise.

Question How can we say that it is rude to do a certain thing but not unethical? Isn't that like saying that it is morally okay to be rude? Accepted:July 3, 2011

Question How can we say that it is rude to do a certain thing but not unethical? Isn't that like saying that it is morally okay to be rude?

Accepted:
July 3, 2011