Preface

As part of the work of the University and Citizen Network of Ethics and Bioethics, which is currently organizing spaces for debate on ethics, with the aim of contributing to academic processes related to teaching, research, service to society, and university management from an ethical approach, the 3rd International Congress: Ethics in Cuenca: University City, whose proceedings are collected in this volume, was held.

The University, faced with the challenge of a complex contemporaneity, must open spaces for a discussion on ethics, which overcomes the traditional idea of imposition and modeling of bodies and behaviors.

This reflection is fundamental in our academic work because it involves the training of professionals, so it is essential to understand our own context, which means looking closely at our culture and our human nature, which we know requires certain conditions for its existence, development and welfare.

From a bibliographic compilation, ethics, from its very conception, is closely related to the search for a "good way of being" or having wisdom in actions. Ethics, also identified as a synonym for morality or doing things well, must be constantly observed, analyzed, and addressed.

As a result of this analysis, it will be easy to accept that the practices of some affect others, that the actions of some affect others, and that solidarity, understood as the exercise of putting ourselves in the place of others, will allow us to recover our sensitivity and re-humanize ourselves in the light of what is good for all. Therefore, the construction of these ethics, beyond a legal system that obliges or forbids us to do, will be the compass that guides our actions in freedom because we will have decided, individually and consciously, that we will all be well within this agitated and dynamic world.

Under these premises, the Catholic University of Cuenca, as host, has taken care of all the details to receive those who have taken on the challenge of rethinking ethics from different coordinates. The main thematic axes of the Congress were defined from ancestral ethics, ethics in education and art sciences, health sciences, social sciences and administration, engineering, industry, and construction, information and communication technologies, and finally ethics in agricultural and veterinary sciences; ethics is included in all areas of knowledge as a transversal axis.

Thus, the proceedings of the Congress are presented, which have been successfully compiled in this volume thanks to the contribution and work of different strategic actors ranging from the participants through their papers received, members of the Organizing and Scientific Committee, Editorial Edúnica and its technical team, representatives of the University and Citizen Network of Ethics and Bioethics, academic authorities, teachers, administrative and service staff of the Catholic University of Cuenca, who collaborated actively, and which aims to influence reflection and consideration of ethics from the different titles that are detailed in the volume, after having passed a rigorous review process and other aspects of the process.

The aim is to influence reflection and the consideration of ethics from the different titles detailed in the volume, after having passed a rigorous revision process and other standards required for the publication of this type of work.

It will always be opportune to take stock of what has been reflected upon, compiled, and learned in this philosophical celebration on the motif that has questioned all thinkers throughout the ages: What is the way of living that allows human beings to achieve ethics?

> **Katina Vanessa Bermeo Pazmiño** Academic Vice-Rectorate, Catholic University of Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador

**María Del Cisne Aguirre-Ullauri and Marco Avila-Calle** Catholic University of Cuenca,

Cuenca, Ecuador

**1**

**Chapter 1**

**Abstract**

**1. Introduction**

The University as a Scenario for

the Continuity of Ethics Education

*Enrique-Eugenio Pozo-Cabrera and Silvio-José Castellanos-Herrera*

This work addresses three fundamental issues: First, the rescue of the ethical reflection for which civilization unknowingly cries out, starting from conceptions that, having been disdained in favor of extremely liberal approaches, left basic anchors of society without foundation. Secondly, a new conception of ethical formation—which must impact all manifestations of civil existence, with particular emphasis on the family, including the entire framework of pre-university education at its different levels—is posed as a must. Thirdly, the role played by the university in a community in which the fear of the reversal of values or the presence of anti-ethics could threaten the existence of the State. In this last aspect, and taking as an underlying theme "The New Latin American Constitutionalism," we will show a proposal that goes beyond the simple assumption of students' and teachers' training in professional ethics since the problem goes far beyond a merely deontological view, becoming the impact or social transforma-

It is evident that university students have acquired an ethic synergistically from the family and the environment that we call civil society, the latter made up of all the institutions contemplated in our legal system. We ask ourselves: Is there a line of ethics teaching in the formal pre-university educational process? If it exists, how much has it influenced the student? Is there a reinforcement of ethics other than professional ethics in undergraduate education? Can the students integrate these ethics into their academic development? To what extent can they develop, in their university career, an ethical basis beyond the deontological one, which allows them to influence the strengthening or reconstruction of the State from the ethical point of view and of

All these questions lead us to affirm that our most urgent problem is not to underpin the oil industry or the national electric system but to rethink the State in its educational role with emphasis on the university system, especially when we speculate that we are facing a structure of social thinking, where individualistic behavior is exalted. It brings, consequently, the destruction of the ethical culture, which had been gradually built since the post-war independence in the last third of the nineteenth century

tion in the true desideratum of university education.

**Keywords:** education, ethics, constitutionalism, society, state

a new conception of a popular culture contrary to corruption?

and especially in the twentieth century.
