A new global ethics
The role of a global ethics
The principles and basic ideas of a global ethics furnish the minimal standards any political community should observe. The Commission thinks it unwise to go further and spell out a comprehensive image of the good polity. Peoples have always differed in their political visions. Influenced by their cultural heritage and historical experience they often have different views about what further values their society should uphold and what specific projects it should pursue. Expressly acknowledging such diversity, a global ethics provides the minimal requirements any government and people must meet but otherwise leaves scope for political creativity, social imagination and cultural pluralism.
Confining a global ethics to certain basic principles and criteria also reflects an awareness that societies do not, need not and cannot follow identical development patterns and development styles. While insisting on a number of fundamental normative standards, a global ethics abstains from committing societies to only one and the same path on which to advance. The modernization of the West need not be the model to be copied by all societies.
