Ethical stress

"Ethical Stress" is the sort of tension created by the presence of a real ethical or moral problem or state of affairs, either good (ethical eustress) or "bad," (ethical distress). It requires shared moral labor to resolve the real causes and perceptions of the ethical difficulty or possible good to be produced. It does not "go away" if those experiencing the ethical stress take tranquilizers or work out more. Indeed, if denied, it may cause even more serious objective harms, or a failure to recognize the good or the good life. It involves the use of some skills recently studied by psychologists of moral development: moral sensitivity, the moral imagination, and moral support.

Is Ethical Stress 'Bad?'"

Ethical stress is not necessarily bad, -like the several specific and positive, structured sorts of stress (compression, tension, etc.) that actually serve to hold up buildings and other structures. Attending to ethical stress is usually a very good thing, and helps prevent larger ethical problems, destructive conflicts, and resentment. John Dewey referred to conflict as "pregnant," a suggestion that it bears the fruit of attention to ethical eustress as well as ethical distress. Ethical distress is not to be confused with guilt, which often ignores moral responsibility, or continues because the original ethical stress is unresolved or unexplained, or because a plan for changing behaviors or choices does not set up a stronger habit of reflection and a different course of action than the course that led to inaction and guilt.

Who coined the term, "Ethical Stress?"

This term was coined by Sarah Bishop Merrill, M.S., Ph.D., in the late 1980's while she was helping to pioneer the new fields of practical and professional ethics, such as Construction Ethics. Dr. Merrill developed this new, basically pragmatic concept of ethical stress as she applied progressive pacifist and feminist pedagogies and ethical theories to her teaching, when she was asked, while at Kansas State University, to teach various applied ethics courses "across the curriculum" in departments and colleges as wide-ranging as Veterinary Medicine, Computing, Chemical, Mechanical, Industrial, and Agricultural Engineering.

She designed the first curriculum in Construction Ethics, (for which she was awarded the AGC Education and Research Foundation's Klinger Prize for Improvements in the Undergraduate Curriculum)for the Department of Architectural Engineering and Construction Science. Her forthcoming book on ethics in contracting, design, and Construction Management is called Muddy Boots:. The term first appeared in a paper given at the Central Division American Philosophical Association, at a session chaired by Alison Jaggar, with comments by Roger Paden, and was later published in the Journal of Social Philosophy in the early 1990's.

Ethical stress in the history of ethics

David Hume was referring to ethical stress when he described the difference between benevolence, which is like a wall, built by adding stones in a linear way, and justice, which Hume sees as the "vaulted" (Gothic) arch, which by mutual pressure supports a structure for moral support in the resolution of ethical stress. The skills involved in recognizing and resolving ethical stress are skills which the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers and Moral Sense Theorists clearly had in mind.(Beattie, Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith especially in his first book, on the origins of language and moral sentiments).

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It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical+stress Wikipedia article Ethical stress.