When Rhonda finds herself forced to choose between gossiping about her friends and alienating her co-workers, she faces an ethical dilemma. Because workplace gossip can seem unifying and may keep employees operating smoothly together, refusing to engage in such chatter might mean breaking the peace and might make working alongside others awkward. On the other hand, gossiping about others can have harmful effects on them. It has the potential to hurt reputations and to humiliate victims. Rhonda, then, must choose between breaking the peace and showing disloyalty to her co-workers or being disloyal to her friends and possibly damaging their reputations. She must also choose between maintain her workplace friendships or following the bible’s instructions to avoid gossip.
Augustine would see Rhonda’s gossip as idleness and misdirection. Just as he found playing ball, going to the theater and even seeking academic or professional success as distractions from God and, therefore, loathsome, he would have found Rhonda’s gossip evil and distasteful. He would urge her, instead, to seek divine truth.
Augustine would have urged Rhonda to consider biblical condemnation of gossip. He would have pointed to the warnings in Proverbs, for instance, that gossip separates friends. He would have urged Rhonda to reject it based on her faith in the bible and God’s word. For Augustine, although reason had its place in the world, faith in God came before all else. He would have also pointed out to Rhonda that sin such as gossip might leave her in danger of eternal damnation. Augustine would tell Rhonda to turn to God and to focus on her faith. He would tell her that faith in God was the only way to make her life right.
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"The Ethics of Gossip: Aquinas vs Augustine".
Aquinas, meanwhile believed that an action the is good or right is an action that contributes to our proper purpose. He believes that the acts that keep us from this end are wrong. Our end, in his eyes, is happiness with God. Sin, such as gossip, is something that deters people from achieving happiness with God. Although Rhonda might argue that keeping the peace was also a “good” thing to do, it would be hard for her to argue that doing something “evil”, such as betraying her friends or hurting their reputations was justified in the name of keeping the peace. Even if she was able to maintain peaceful relationships with her co-workers by gossiping about others with them, she would create discord by betraying her other friends. Therefore, it would be hard to say that gossiping about others was really bringing about something good. Reason, therefore, might tell Rhonda that choosing her coworkers over her friends was the wrong choice.
Aquinas, who valued logic and reason greatly, would have helped Rhonda come to an ethical decision via logic and reason, which both he and Augustine saw as gifts from God. Aquinas, for his part, would advise Rhonda to give it up and to ask God to help her live a life that was better in line with his will. He would acknowledge that Rhonda faced a real dilemma and that both of her choices could involve unpleasantry. He would have suggested that perfect choices were impossible to come upon in a corrupt world, but that although the things that are not the same as what they should be, there is always hope in God’s grace.
Finally, Aquinas would have urged Rhonda not to violate her conscience. The fact that she originally felt bad about gossiping, but then decided to ignore her worries would have been proof in Aquinas’s eyes that she was making a sinful or unethical choice.
