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Three Ethical Approaches

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THREE ETHICAL APPROACHES BASED ON VIRTUE, DUTY AND CONSEQUENCE

Three ethical approaches have evolved as the focus of those who study moral philosophy: virtue ethics, duty ethics and consequential ethics. Virtue ethics, associating ethics with personal habits, is associated with Aristotle. Duty ethics is associated with religious beliefs, although Kant tried to create a system of duties independent of belief in God. Consequential ethics is associated with the quest for rationalism during the Enlightenment, and especially with the Utilitarians.

Virtue Ethics
Plato and especially later Aristotle described moral behavior as “what the moral or virtuous person does.” The virtuous person develops a sense of right and wrong. This idea endures. …show more content…

Sometimes economists can even show that the consequences are the opposite of those intended. But utilitarians are split over the issue of who is to decide what the greatest good is. Those who seek to use government power to give people what they ought to want whether or not they realize that it is good for them are called managerial liberals. Those who are more interested in addressing what people actually do want – whether or not obtaining this will, objectively speaking, turn out to be good for them – are called subjectivists. Those who believe that businesses should respond without questions to NGOs that are active on behalf of consumers or investors might be described as subjectivists. Those who disagree on the grounds that government should be the ones to decide how businesses respond might be managerial liberals.
Life of Aristotle
Aristotle was born in Stageira, a Greek colony in Macedonia, in 384 BC. Generations of Aristotle's family including his father, Nichomachus, had served as physicians to the Kings of Macedonia. His parents died when he was about ten years old and he was taken in by foster parents: Proxenos and his wife. He moved to Athens at the age of seventeen, and he remained there for some twenty years. This is where he got his first taste of the sciences and actively became a teacher. He studied under Plato, whose influences are most apparent in Aristotle's

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