The Ethical Theory Of Ethics

The philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant express the sources of virtuous and dutiful actions in a similar, yet different way. Both philosophers agree that an action has moral worth, when it is preformed for its own sake. However, the difference contains a more significant meaning. Aristotle believes that pleasure can be included when preforming an action; while Kant believes that a duty is preforming the right action without the need of inclinations.

Ethics refers to what people consider good or bad and right or wrong. It is a theory dealing with values that relate to human behaviour; with respect to their actions and purpose. The two most important philosophers that deal with ethics are Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill. Kant’s ethical theory is Kantianism or deontological ethics. Mill’s ethical theory is utilitarianism. Both philosophers’ theories have many differences; Kant’s theory deals with conduct, seeking reason for good action in duty. Mill’s theory deals with consequences and maximizing human happiness. However both Kant and Mill’s ethics relate to the important biblical principal of the Golden Rule.

“The duty to promote the highest good is not a particular duty at all, but the sum of all our duties derived from the moral law” (Rohlf, 2010). We have a choice to want to conceive the highest good; we must want to achieve it. We must truly want to achieve that highest good. Both Kant and Aristotle would say that each of their thinking’s is flawed. Aristotle’s ethics as a system of morality is not recognized by Kant. “Morality, for Kant, had to be self-legislating or autonomous: it must be what a purely rational will would legislate for itself” (Lear, 1988, p 155). Kant’s thinking about morality is more personal than it is for Aristotle. Aristotle’s is personal because it is for yourself, your

This is an instance of senior enlisted, who you should be able to trust, giving you bad advice. When the situation is hypothetical and not a pressing issue, it is easy to see that it would be wrong to allow the Chief to sign off on the maintenance checks. But in the moment, there are good reasons to have the checks signed off. Having the maintenance appear to be complete makes your division look good and helps make their lives easier. The Chief that is telling you that this is ok has been in the Navy for much longer than you have, and he has much more experience. But if you allow your Chief to sign off on the maintenance report this time, you set a precedence for future instances. It’s a slippery slope once you start down it. Additionally, this violates several of Aristotle’s virtues from Virtue Theory, such as courage and honesty. Altogether, it is clear that it might be difficult, but letting your Chief sign off would not be the right thing to do.

This paper is meant to compare and contrast the ethical theories of Aristotle and Immanuel Kant. The moral philosophies of Kant and Aristotle are dissimilar in the rationale they suggest for moral conduct. Theorists suggest what they believe is a normative ethical approach, which should be utilized as a guide to determining moral conduct. Kant bases his opinions of morality completely on reason, while Aristotle treated the virtuous person as sensing good about being good.

One day you wake up and you are faced with a dreaded decision: to sacrifice a family member to save the man who has the cure to cancer, or to sacrifice the man who has the cure to cancer to save the family member. These scenarios are ones that seem impossible to formulate an answer for. Would you rather save millions of lives or save the individual closest to you? One way that makes this scenario slightly easier to answer is from a Utilitarianism form of view. Utilitarianism is a theory of normative ethics defined as, “the view that right actions are those that result in the most beneficial balance of good over bad consequences for everyone involved” (191). If one day you were to wake up and be faced with an impossible decision,

Ethics is a concept, and is subjective that depends on the social conduct in which it is applied. Ethics has its basis in moral (Socrates) and duty (Kant), it is a different need for natural or mathematics, and it is like the freedom people need to live in society. All societies in all historical eras had and have been having their applications of ethics and morality. According Lawrence, (Lawrence & Weber, 2014a) It labels that the notions of right and wrong(ethics) usually comes from the environment that surrounds us, an example of it includes “Schools and schoolteachers, neighbors and neighborhoods, friends, admired role models, ethnic groups, and the ever-present electronic media and the internet influence what we believe to be right and wrong in life”(P.77). However, in our daily lives, we can see that although it is always an ethical practice to be moral in our society not everything that is immoral is unethical. The behavior that is immoral for one person might not be to another. We can say then, that ethics is the art of living, it is an attitude with which we “live with”. When one begins to wonder about life, it begins a process of understanding who we are. This is how a person organizes his/her life and as a way, a consciousness that is built reflecting to the extent that expands awareness of self, becomes free, so responsible. “Personal ethics” refers to an attitude or conduct of the individual understood through the way it relates to him and before others

theories, each prescribing a set of moral rules that individuals can apply in the process

Ethics is the conception about the “right” and “wrong”. It is related to the man and the society. It supports the concept of doing good things and disgraces the thinking of behaving in the wrong way with others. It is the well-known fact that the ethics don’t implement on the logics in doing right or wrong. Along with sometimes it can stand against the morality. For example the death sentence is ethically wrong, because it takes the life of a man, which can become the better part of society in future. So, ethically the death sentence should be stopped. But, the morally death sentence creates fear among the people and they get the lesson for the future that who will be done wrong with others will face the death at the end.

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that deals with moral startdards and virtues of human beings. Ethics has to do with what is good or bad. It can be summed as a method by which we categorize our values and persue them.

Ethics can be a simple concept when first introduced, but as you go deeper into the understanding of what is ethics and how to be ethical it becomes more complex than one would assume by reading a single definition. In our modern world, there are plenty of people who manage to stay ethical, but as we go further into the future more and more individuals lose that glimmer of morality that was once upon them. The actual definition of ethics is a system of moral principles. Meaning that a characteristic that shows through the decisions we make everyday. In relation to the concept we all go by which is choosing between right or wrong and success or failure. Some may argue and use morals interchangeably and disagree on whether to stay ethical is inherently found through spiritual principles or just a philosophy of morals. There are plenty of ways one can stay ethical throughout their life despite the temptation of doing the wrong thing to get further ahead whether that’d be success or popularity.

When comparing between the philosophies of St. Thomas Aquinas/Aristotle and those of Immanuel Kant when regarding moral behavior, there are some very fundamental differences. On one hand, you have Kant’s autonomous perspective on behavior morality, in which you give the law to yourself. On the other hand, you have the heteronomy views of Aristotle and Aquinas which concludes that one can measure their conduct against an external force. Kant’s views can very shortly summarized as always acting in such a way so as to other rational people as an end and never as only a means. Aquinas and Aristotle believed that moral behavior was that which is compromised of the nature of the act, its

Ethical Theory is the philosophical study of morality. (Cambridge dictionary) this is the study of people or cultures and their ethical behaviors. There are many cultures and groups of people that make up our world. Not everyone has the same ethical values and each culture is uniquely different. Ethical theory is a set of beliefs by a culture, with an ethical theory it helps people set to values and concepts of right and wrong behavior. We use ethical systems to work through our problems to find out what ought to be morally right and wrong. (Wilkens, 2011) There are three main branches of ethical theory and they are; metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. Metaethics is the study of where moral principles come from. Normative ethics regulates right and wrong behavior. Applied ethics looks at the most debatable issues that are faced in the world. With these different fields of ethics, philosophers try to figure out the best way to figure out how to best approach controversial issues. For the use of this paper, I will concentrate on Metaethics and how we use it to determine moral judgments.

Ethics, often referred to as moral philosophy, is a division of philosophy which involves arranging, defending and advising ideas of right and wrong behavior. Ethics often addresses stances of moral diversity. Moral diversity is the extent to which differing decision-makers in a population display preferences for different methods of evaluation. “The word “Ethics” comes from the Greek term “ethics from ethos”, in turn basically means custom or habit.”(1)

People often wonder what they would do if they found money lying on the ground. One might argue that a good person will do the right thing by handing the money over to the police. On the other hand, others say that the person should keep the money. Although this scenario is, of course, much more complex, it is a prime example of an ethical dilemma. However, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ solution to this dilemma because it depends on the person’s ethics and values.