A psychological approach to ethics

This article has the purpose of calling attention to C.G. Jung's archetypal concept of the Self as an approach to ethics. The distinction between simple morality and transcendent ethics is established. Comparison is made between the archetype of the Self and Kant's categorical imperative. Freud's superego, however, is assimilated to a natural outlook on morality, such as the notion of altruism in sociobiology. The superego is only the psychic effect of the current moral code—which could be explained either culturally or as a Lamarckian acquired characteristic of the unconscious. Jung's transcendent ethics is expressed in an ethical mandala.