The Ethics of Democracy by John Dewey Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Ethics of Democracy by John Dewey - Essay Example Understanding also the types of government that emerge throughout history would help in appreciating the importance of the government. A government is made up of people who help the citizens every day. The people are part of teams who work hard in the community for the welfare of many. A government may run a town, a school and a country as it decides for the people it leads (Bedesky 4). Basically a government is not just the group spearheading the direction of a country because it may exist in smaller groups that lead the people like cities or even school organizations and companies. There are several forms of government: republic, democracy, monarchy, aristocracy, dictatorship, and democratic republic. Republic is like democracy but it exists in many people and the political system allows the citizens to elect the representatives for their government. On the other hand, democracy is similar to republic but the focus is on the rule by the people. It means that the power of the govern ment officials is granted by the citizens. Monarchy differs from both republic and democracy since the political power is vested upon the king or queen. In other places as shown by the history, monarchy may have an emperor instead of a queen or king. Normally the royal family has the wealth and total control over the land and people have less say regarding the politics of their place. Today monarchy does not exist as part of politics. Aristocracy is somewhat related to monarchy because the members of the royal family are wealthy and educated. Aristocracy is a more general type since it does not need to have a royal family as long as the land is dominated politically by the wealthy families. Dictatorship is somewhat like aristocracy wherein few people are dominating the government but in dictatorship, harshness is involved and the dominant figure can just be a single person. Some of the prominent dictators in history are Castro of Cuba and Hitler of Germany. Last in the list of the c ommon forms of government is the democratic republic. Typically people may say that it is democracy and republic combined, but in reality it is a form of dictatorship as North Vietnam called itself as The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and China as The People’s Republic of China (The Global Citizen). In the study, the essay of John Dewey regarding ethics and democracy would be tackled thoroughly. Since the concept of government had been laid down, it would be great to also give some introduction and basic information regarding the concept of ethics. Later on democracy would be discussed in detail and a brief biography of John Dewey would also be included to connect his experiences and works to his specific view regarding democracy. The concept of ethics is almost synonymous to morality as some people use them interchangeably. The origin of the word ethics can be traced back from the Greek word ethickos which means habit or ethos which describes a pattern of behavior. On the o ther hand, morality comes from the Latin word morales which mean social norms. The concepts of morality and ethics can be misleading as they are more than just patterns of behaviors and norms. Ethics can be separated into several divisions: meta-ethics, normative ethics and practical ethics. Meta-ethics is about the things associated with the terms right, good and virtue. The major purpose of meta-ethics is to analyze an ethical system. Normative ethics as its name shows it is about