Aristotle: deals with virtue and personal character. defines and explains basic notions such as goodness, truth, justice, and rightness as principles for guiding our conduct. it is a fairly pragmatic approach but with a philosophical cast that imparts a sense that a given action should be performed principally because of its inherent goodness.
- reflective reasoning, prudent judgment, deliberate choice, conscious application of the will, and practical action are all involved
- later Christian ethical thinking was shaped more by Aristotle's practical ethical theory that aimed at achieving the best conduct in our temporal lives in the here and now.
- metaphysics plays an indirect role in his ethics.
- ethics is the study of what is involved in good actions; does not allow hard and fast answers. it is about what is sought for its own sake-goodness itself-and not for the sake of something else such as money or success.
- humans are uniquely compound creatures, having aspects of both a lower, animal nature and a higher, divine nature. We should, however, seek and act out of what we share with the divine even though we are fated to live out our lives in sphere of the mundane and imperfect. We share our rational powers with the divine.
- it is the person and not the action that is virtuous because an action may be performed for all sorts of reasons, few of which might be innately virtuous.
- one is ethical or virtuous as one's character is reflected in a continuous pattern of behavior over time.
- each person is responsible for his or her character, which determines the goals the individual desires and acts toward.
- ethical behavior must be reasoned behavior. what this means practically is that ethical conduct is not automatic or unreflective; one is not ethical or virtuous instinctively.
- insists on a mean between extremes as the guide for our actions.
- moral wisdom must be combined with practical wisdom in order to yield ethical action.
- ethics is relational; it consists of how one relates to oneself, to the divine through the powers of reasoning, and to one's fellow human beings.
- ethics cannot be reduced to politics or the law because it must guide us when the law or political rules are silent or in error.
- Talking point: what are some real world examples of this concept?
- we should resist some deeds regardless of the personal consequences they entail. "whistle-blowing" laws.
- many modern thinkers differ from Aristotle's view that specialized knowledge such as in technology and science is separable from ethics. the true, right and good are highly operative in technology and science. Contemporary science is trying to seek the absolute, realy truth.
- scientists=the religious priests and philosophical oracles of our day: their methods are hidden from us and distant from our everyday experience; we turn to them for truths that evade everyday perceptions, and we receive their revelations as the absolute truth.
- Talking point: is this an accurate comparison?
Kant: deals with duty or obligation based on a fundamental universal principle which can be figured out rationally. An action should be performed just because it is the right thing to do, regardless of its costs or benefits to us individually. Strives for fairness and equality.
- perhaps the most important European philosopher of the period from classical Greece to the 20th century. ethical theory is based on a sense of duty.
- self-interest, material gain, and the greatest good for the greatest number are all beside the point. his ethics is a deontology-an ethical system emphasizing obligation or duty.
- nothing whatever to do with purposes or results and nothing whatever to do with feelings or emotions, including any sense of "moral feeling".
- all humans are endowed with a sense of moral reason.
- insists that ethics can be understood and derived only from abstract reasoning itself.
- based on one's freely chosen decisions to act in good will out of a sense of duty.
- our distinguishing feature as human beings is our reasoning abilities which must therefore serve as a basis for judging ethics.
- Act in such a way that, if you had your way, the principle guiding your actions would become a universally binding law that everyone must act in accordance with (including in relation to you), applying to everyone, everywhere, and always, without exception.
- theory of duty is founded on the radically autonomous free will and its capacity to choose otherwise and on its reasoned self-persuasion not to choose otherwise. it is duty based in freedom.
- must be absolutely disinterested in any rewards or resultants or even any feeling of self-satisfaction we might have. "The moral worth of an action then does not lie in the effect which is expected of it".
- also examines the nature of the individual in relation to society. Though personal conduct in particular situations is decided and willed by the individual, it ought to be on the basis of the categorical imperative that, by definition, should guide everyone in the same situation similarly.
- Talking point: is this ever really possible? everyone comes into a situation with different values and backgrounds, so could different people of different origins ever feel and behave the same way in any situation?
- understands each person, as a rational being, to be a fundamentally autonomous self-legislator, making, willing, and enforcing laws for oneself about how one will behave. thus one's ethical decisions though autonomous, are never egocentric or arbitrary or even self-serving.
- emphasizes a sense of duty, conceptualizes ethics as both an individual and a social matter, and amounts for all practical purposes to the Golden Rule.
- assumption that we are all rational beings implies a great deal-we are all capable of reflecting on our consciousness, of reasoning toward binding universal conclusions, of weighing judgments about practical action, and of willing our actions to conform to our judgments.
- technical excellence or expediency cannot serve as a basis for rendering ethical determinations.
- every person must be taken as an end in itself and never as a means to an end.
Utilitarianism: weighs the consequences of costs of an action against benefits in order to calculate the most socially desirable course of action. Strives to be fair (in the sense of not distinguishing between people) by being impersonal. Insists on being unresponsive to the interests or feelings of individuals. Often performed by the government.
- weigh ethical judgments on the basis of accomplishing the greatest useful goodness for the greatest number of people. John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and Richard Brandt.
- rose to prominence at the same time as the rise of science and modern technological industrialism-not a coincidence.
- allows a quantitative calculation of what to do ethically which presumably yields the best course of action in that situation.
- easy to state in principles, but carrying it out in reasonable practice is another matter. medical ethics provides a good example of the validity of this approach in some situations.
Feminist Perspectives: in the movement known as postmodernism, traditional authorities and knowledge long taken for granted have been challenged, while new perspectives are offered in their place. Several important new perspectives on ethics have arisen from feminist critical thinking and from postmodernism.
- feminist critical thinking has expanded the meaning of ethics in important new ways.
- feminist criticism is perhaps more unsettling because of the damaging discriminations it reveals.
- science's impulse to separate and isolate and thereby to minimize if not nullify relationships, is characteristically masculine. A feminist sort of science, some contend, would emphasize the whole organism and the entire interrelational social complex in which the organisms fully live.
- Talking point: to me, insisting on a ethical method (or a form of science) that is oriented around a woman's point of view is just as damaging as having one that is solely oriented towards men. by doing so it implies that women aren't able to think any other way than the emotional way and this is just not true. is there any way to have a method that has elements from both schools of thought?
- feminist criticisms are not without their own critics, however, from other women or feminists. Point out some difficulties in characterizing logic as a characteristically male way of thinking-it seems to imply that women are inclined to be illogical, that is, unreasonable or incapable of reasoning clearly and correctly.
- we need to rethink our society and economy to create a win-win environment in which all can thrive.
- women's typical way of knowing and interacting stresses harmony and conciliation rather than confrontation or decisive action.
- feminism amounts to a system of values, an ethic. brings to our attention many important factors that would escape our notice through conventional ethical approaches.
- in other ways, a feminist approach lends additional support from a different quarter to some conventional ethical approaches.
- requires that we open up to critical examination the very roots of what we take ethics to be.
An Ethic of Care: presents a new, nontraditional way of understanding ethics; gender-sensitive. Urge other standards for making ethical decisions, such as caring concern and the quality of relationships. Urge flexibility and sensitivity to the particulars of a given situation.
- though some feminists support the idea of an ethic of care, many others find compelling reasons to reject it as a specifically feminist sort of ethics, preferring to refer to it as a feminine or even "femininist" ethic.
- both the relationship, marked by a caring concern, and the other person are generally valued more in women's moral judgment and ethical decision making than in men's. Men base ethical decisions on justice and are more inclined to think of ethics impersonally, as a matter of abstract principle.
- women generally emphasize caring concern, relationship, and the flexible application of values depending on the particular person and circumstance in rendering their ethical judgments, whereas men generally emphasize justice through the inflexible application of abstract principles regardless of the person or relationship.
- advocates an interdependent relationship of caring among equals that is mutually satisfying to all parties.
- one of the dangers of trying to develop a system of ethics specific to women is that it can seem to confirm traditional stereotypes.
- many feminist theorists object to various ethics of care: "fail to take into accout the oppressive conditions in which many women's practice of caring occurs" aka subordination and dependency; reflect an impoverished situation in which care is not reciprocated and in which only limited sorts of relations are possible; assume a biological determinism that constrains the expectations of women's behavior and denigrates any divergence from such expectations.
Confucian Ethics: numerous variants of Confucian thought over the years. Confucian ethics is part of Confucianism.
- grounded in immediate realities rather than in immutable, timeless absolutes.
- defines human responsibilites as being constituted in relationships, not in the isolation of a radical individual. insists on the subordination of individual egos to timehonored obligations of social relations and to the needs of social harmony.
- fundamental importance of several key principles and the active practice of these principles by a person constitutes morality and ethical conduct. have a concrete realness.
- attitude without action is meaningless-one's behavior in relation to real, immediate circumstances is valued more than adherence to abstract, absolute principles.
- what we know about virtue does not rest on a foundation of logical or analytic reasoning but on virtue itself as exemplified in people and episodes.
- confucian ethical study can be characterized as hermeneutic (that is, involving interpretation rather than, say, analytical reasoning).
- the most important Confucian principles are ren, li and yi, which together constitute a general ethical virtuousness called te, which the good person must cultivate carefully.
- one cultivates virtuousness by understanding and carrying out many activities that together compose the single "way," tao, of virtue. also involves understanding the obligations and duties entailed in various relationships and executing these piously, first and foremost through the "filial piety" that a good son shows towards his parent.
- these duties and obligations are ethically carried out according to principles of propriety, li, in the form of traditional rituals. one is bound by relationships to everyone in society but not all to the same degree or in the same way.
- yi is the sense of rightness or appropriateness. operates to maintain the social hierarchy and traditional relationships.
- ren-the virtue of humaneness or humanity. one's sense of oneself as a human being and as related to all other people through our common humanity, love of all people.
- holds males as primarily responsible for most ethical activities, with females having responsibilities derived from relationships with males, as in showing ritual respect for her in-laws or in bearing and raising children.
- though we are all equally obliged to behave ethically, the way in which that obligation is carried out depends on the web of interrelationships one happens to live in.
- the particulars of ethical behavior are determined principally by social context rather than by absolute, transcendent principles that are indifferent to the person or the social context. we should not expect everyone to behave the same to all people everywhere.
- each member of society has many duties and obligations defined by his or her relationships.
- the family metaphor resonates through all levels of society, the strength of the obligations involved weakening as one moves farther from the core relationship of the family.
- in the corporate context, traditional Chinese business relations were modeled on the paradigm of the parent-son relationship.
- there is a clear strand of traditional Confucian thought affirming the need of subordinates to rectify or reprove their leaders and to remove them if necessary. businesses are expected to enhance the common good and there is a long tradition of disdain of profits as the primary motive for actions.
- from the Confucian perspective, it does not make sense to hold the same standards of loyalty, deference, honesty, integrity, or other virtues in our business dealings as we do in our closer relationships such as to friends or family. it would also be a violation of justice to do so.
Levinas: seeks the root of ethics and finds it in the particularity and uniqueness of our encounters with other people, which he refers to generically as "the other".
- it is, rather, about our human nature in relation with others. ethics result from our awareness of the other.
- the other makes us aware that some other thinking and feeling human exists, whose wants, values, feelings, thoughts, and responses are radically unknown to us and can never fully anticipated. we must understand what that person needs and wants from the relationship with us. this can be known only through communication in a give-and-take interchange that recognizes in the other person a morally equal yet unknown factor.
- "the other" is ethically even more important than "I". only the other can make us aware of the impact of our behavior on the other so that we can adjust our behavior responsibly.
Gert: focused on the topic of morality and explored what it means, how it is known, how it relates individuals to society, and how it is carried out practically.
- relates morality to rational thinking, to a universal audience, and to traditional moral principles while carefully distinguishing it from emotions such as caring, from religious duty, from personal authenticity, and from several other bases of morality proposed throughout history.
- basic definition of morality, equivalent to ethics, is: morality is a public system applying to all rational persons governing behavior which affects others and which has the minimization of evil as its end, and which includes what are commonly known as the moral rules as its core.
- morality involves action, social relations with others, applied impartially to all including oneself, and the avoidance of evil (more definite and decidable) rather than the pursuit of good.
- five primary moral rules: don't kill, don't cause pain, don't disable, don't deprive of freedom, don't deprive of pleasure
- second five rules: don't lie, keep your promises, don't cheat, don't commit adultery, don't steal.
- offers a short list of eight questions to be used in determining the morally relevant features of a given situation:
- what moral rules are being violated?
- what evils are being (a) avoided? (b) prevented? (c) caused?
- what are the relevant desires of the people affected by the violation?
- what are the relevant rational beliefs of the people affected by the violation?
- does one have a duty to violate moral rules with regard to the person, and is one in a unique position in this regard?
- what goods are being promoted?
- is an unjustified or weakly justified violation of a moral rule being prevented?
- is an unjustified or weakly justified violation of a moral rule being punished?
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