ETHICS, POLITICS AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

Due to the coceptual ambiguity of the tern the ethics, as na autonomous discipline, will grow and develop into two directions, such as: autonomous ethics and heteronomous ethics. It is considered that the source of morality is inside the man himself as well as that it is outside the man by the two concepts, respectively. There is no morality without a certain extent of a developed awaraness. In wthics, conscience denotes the ability to distinguish the moral good from the moral evil, or in other words a moral conscience presents a subject’s judgement of the morality behind the deed one is to make. To be the judge of anything good or bad as such, it is necessary to have an inner sensibility for proper assessment, a criteria by which one is guided. It usually takes on a form of the norm and regulation. Those are essential, prescribed by either society or an authority. The values should be fundamental guidelines of both norms and regulations.

The ethics and politics have always been linked together from the times of Plato and Aristotle in terms of their common goal: cultivating and nurturing the human soul and educating citizens. Therefore their common founding principle is the idea of justice as the greatest virtue of any individual or any form of the state organisation. The request that public administration is to be separated from the politics and that the civil servants should not be involved in politics derives from those who deem the public administration as value neutral. However, being a practical field of the science, the public administration has ever since its existence been linked to the values such as political, economical, ethical ones etc. The proofs of such permanent association may be found among the disciplines of public policy forming, „new public management“ and written ethical codes.