# Ethics

Explore ethics as character formation, from Paul’s Greek roots to restoration scripture, where moral virtue serves a purpose beyond rules.

[Image: Paul warns the Corinthian saints that “evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33), linking ethics to the habits formed by the company one keeps.]

The study of ethics centers on the disciplined examination of right conduct and the underlying character from which such conduct proceeds. Moral instruction serves a greater purpose beyond immediate social harmony: it prepares individuals to safely receive and wield divine power. When the Apostle Paul defended the doctrine of the resurrection to the Corinthian saints, he observed that “evil communications corrupt good manners” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Character, in this view, is a settled moral habit. Restoration scripture positions the commandments as essential guidelines for forging a character to which divine power might safely be entrusted.

## **Character Formed in Company**

Classical philosophy long maintained that moral virtue arises through consistent habituation. To this, scriptural tradition adds that such habits are intimately tied to one’s companions. A community that abandons the reality of the resurrection will eventually live as though the body has no future, and its members will absorb that conduct from one another.

The Savior similarly subordinated specific rules to overarching dispositions when asked to identify the greatest commandment. By naming the love of God and the love of neighbor as the two pillars on which hang all the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:40), He established that every lesser rule is suspended from and interpreted by the love it serves. Commandments train habits until the virtues they describe become the settled character of an individual. On that character depends the righteous exercise of delegated power.

## **A Command in the Streets of Jerusalem**

[Image: When Nephi was commanded by the Spirit to slay Laban in Jerusalem, he shrank at the thought of shedding blood, until revelation overcame that revulsion (1 Nephi 4:13).]

The Book of Mormon confronts the tension between fixed rules and spiritual constraints with unusual severity. Commanded by the Spirit to slay Laban in the streets of Jerusalem, Nephi recoiled, shrinking from an act contrary to his lifelong adherence to the law against shedding blood. The Spirit pressed its case by reasoning that it is better for one man to perish than for a nation to dwindle in unbelief (1 Nephi 4:13).

The structure of the narrative carefully restricts this reasoning. The calculation belongs exclusively to the Spirit, the act is singular, and the agent resists until revelation overcomes his trained revulsion. Nowhere does the scriptural record commend this consequentialist calculation as a general method for human decision-making. Secular theorists of artificial intelligence have reached a parallel conclusion, arguing that agents who decide a good end justifies a harmful means are prone to fatal self-deception and require firm ethical boundaries. An artificial system pursuing a single objective lacks any innate revulsion to overcome. In the hands of its designers, the logic of sacrificing the one for the many can easily be applied at catastrophic scales.

## **Power and the Principles of Righteousness**

The definitive text on the relationship between character and authority was dictated from Liberty Jail, in March 1839. Here, Joseph Smith taught that “the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness” (D&C 121:36). The epistle warns that when individuals “exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness,” the heavens withdraw (D&C 121:37). The only legitimate means of influence are “persuasion,” “long-suffering,” “gentleness and meekness,” and “love unfeigned,” along with “pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul” (D&C 121:41-42).

Contemporary ethicists note that technology now permits humans to act across the globe and far into the future, while human moral psychology was formed in small groups with short horizons. The resulting imbalance means power has outrun the dispositions meant to govern it. Observers within the Restoration tradition frame this danger in theological terms, warning that individual enhancement pursued without communal growth toward God devolves into selfishness, and at superintelligent scales, an extinction risk. The Liberty epistle supplies the governing principle: power remains answerable to character. Any power that compels forfeits the authority by which it was conferred, whether its bearer holds the priesthood, directs a laboratory, or commands a fleet of servers.

## **Moral Enhancement and Agency**

Given the accelerating pace of technological capability, some philosophers propose the pursuit of moral bioenhancement—pharmaceutical or genetic interventions designed to strengthen empathy and restraint—arguing that traditional moral education works too slowly for the impending dangers. Critics counter that an agent rendered biologically incapable of choosing wrong could no longer meaningfully choose right. Restoration scripture sides decisively with the defense of moral agency. The plan of salvation itself rejected a premortal proposal to save every soul by removing the capacity to choose.

From these premises, the ethical teachings of the Restoration follow with considerable rigor. Because character is formed in community and through habit, it cannot be installed externally. Furthermore, because power is answerable only to character, every increase in power raises the stakes of that slow, agentic formation. Tools that inform and strengthen individuals who freely choose them belong to the economy of pure knowledge that enlarges the soul. Compliance induced by a state, an employer, or a drug repeats the compulsion condemned in the Liberty epistle. Those who welcome artificial intelligence and human enhancement inherit a demanding task, ensuring that the character of makers and users grows at least as fast as the capacities those tools confer.

*See also*: [Accountability](/topical-guide/accountability), [Agency](/topical-guide/agency), [Alignment](/topical-guide/alignment), [Artificial Intelligence](/topical-guide/artificial-intelligence), [Charity](/topical-guide/charity), [Commandment](/topical-guide/commandment), [Conscience](/topical-guide/conscience), [Consequences](/topical-guide/consequences), [Good](/topical-guide/good), [Law](/topical-guide/law), [Wisdom](/topical-guide/wisdom)