-The four principal perspectives represent the most highly regarded ethical approaches throughout European American history, giving us the concepts and vocabulary we commonly use today
-Aristotle’s perspective deals with virtue and personal character
-It 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
-Something should be done just because it is “good”
-Kant’s perspective deals with duty or obligation based on a fundamental universal principle
-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
-The perspective of utilitarianism weighs the consequences of costs of an action against benefits in order to calculate the most socially desirable course of action
-In other words it strives to be fair
-Doesn’t deal with the interests or feelings of individuals
-The perspective of an ethic of care presents a new, nontraditional way of understanding ethics
-Developed for the sake of people gender-sensitive
-Urges other standards for making ethical decisions, such as caring concern and the quality of relationships
-Urges flexibility and sensitivity to the particulars of a given situation, deals with individuals
-Confucian ethics is Chinese and represents a culture other than European-American
-Levinas espoused a very learned phenomenological and existential approach with strong theological undertones that is difficult to articulate because it is entirely opposed to the idea of systematizing- confusing (very wordy)
-Gert is an ethical theorist who deliberately does not diverge from the mainstream, instead reinterpreting traditional ethical concepts in contemporary terms
Aristotle
-Aristotle’s notion of ethical conduct deals with reflective reasoning, prudent judgment, deliberate choice, conscious application of the will, and practical action
-Practical and concrete thinker
-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 still plays an indirect role in Aristotle’s ethics
-Thought ethics was the study of what is involved in good actions
-Believed ethics simply does not allow hard and fast answers
-Ethics deals with doing something just because it is the right thing to do
-Humans are compound creatures having aspects of both a lower, animal nature and a higher, divine nature
-We should seek and act out in a divine nature even though our lives are mundane and imperfect
-It is the person and not the action that is virtuous
-Each person is responsible for his or her character which determines the goals the individual desires and wants to achieve
-Ethical behavior must be reasoned behavior (it is thought out), it is not automatic or unreflective
-A person is not ethical or virtuous because of a single action but instead their character is reflected in their behavior over time
-No one is ethical or virtuous instinctively but achieve it through their actions
-Focuses on the mean between two extremes as the guide for our actions (pragmatic imperfect world)
-Moral wisdom must meet practical wisdom in order to be ethical
-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
How can ethics be the “ultimate” guide when sometimes our political figures themselves don’t do the most ethical things?
-Many modern thinkers differ from Aristotle’s view that specialized knowledge such as in technology and science is separable from ethics.
-They believe that the true, right, and good are highly operative in technology and science.
-They don’t believe in relying on unconfirmed personal opinion (AIDS example)
-Thomas M. Lessl pg. 47 “calling scientists the religious priests and philosophical oracles of our day”
KANT
-One of the most important European philosophers of the period from classical Greece to the twentieth century, his ethical theory is based on a sense of duty
-Self-interest, material gain, and the greatest good for the greatest number don’t matter and the ethical system is based on obligation and duty
-Has nothing to do with purposes results or feelings or emotions, as well as any sense of “moral feeling”
-All humans are endowed with a sense of moral reason so it is our duty to use it
-Ethics can only be understood and derived from abstract reasoning; our senses alone cannot derive knowledge or our morals
-Kant’s ethics are entirely based on one’s feely chosen decisions to act in good will out of a sense of duty
-Kant believed our ability to reason should serve as a basis for judging ethics
-It is our duty to act in good will just because it is the right thing to do
-We must be disinterested in any rewards or feeling of self-satisfaction
-Kant thought of everyone as a rational being, to be a fundamentally self-legislator, making, willing, and enforcing laws for oneself about how one will behave
Kant’s Ethical Theory
· Emphasizes a sense of duty, doing what is right regardless of outcome
· Conceptualizes ethics as both an individual and a social matter
· Amounts for all practical purposes to the golden rule, he assumes nothing except that we are all rational beings
-Our rational nature exists for itself so people are not taken as a means to an end
Ex: lying is unethical because you are using another person as a means to your own end.
Utilitarianism
-Weigh ethical judgments on the basis of accomplishing the greatest useful goodness for the greatest number of people
-Utilitarianism allows a quantitative calculation of what to do ethically, it presumably yields the best course of action in that situation
-Medical ethics are a good example in some situations
Feminist and Care Perspectives
-Postmodernism is a movement where traditional authorities and knowledge long taken for granted are challenged
-Several important new perspectives on ethics have arisen from feminist critical thinking and from postmodernism
Feminist Perspectives on Science as a Value System
-Feminist critical thinking has expanded the meaning of ethics
-Believe both science and technology constitute value systems in themselves
-Historically women have been discouraged from science because of emotions, analysis is a masculinist way of arriving at knowledge
-Critics also point out some potential difficulties in characterizing logic as a characteristically male way of thinking. To do so seems to assume that women are inclined to be illogical, that is, unreasonable or incapable of reasoning clearly and correctly
-A Darwinian industrial environment is one which only the fittest survive but feminist critics as well as other ethical critics, point out the need to rethink our society and economy to create a win-win environment in which we all can thrive.
-Hierarchical organization in corporations are giving way to more horizontally stratified structures
-Women’s typical ways of knowing and interacting, which stress harmony and conciliation rather than confrontation or decisive action.
-Feminism amounts to a system of values
-Reveals the bias against women and women’s work in a variety of ways in technical communication
Ethics of Care
-Some refer to it as a feminine or “feminist” ethic
-Tthe relationship, caring concern, and the other person are valued more in women’s moral judgment and ethical decision making than in men’s
-Men base ethical decisions on justice and think of ethics impersonally
-Women generally emphasize caring concern on the particular person or circumstance and men emphasize justice based on abstract principle regardless of the person or situation
-Mary Jeanne Larrabee, editor of An Ethic of Care examines that one of the dangers of trying to develop a system of ethics specific to women is that it can seem to confirm stereotypes
Confucian Ethics
-Its ethics are grounded in immediate realities rather than in immutable, timeless absolutes. Confucius discouraged speculation of the spiritual realm because the real world is where morality is truly played out.
-Human responsibilities are constituted in relationships and not in the individual.
-Social relations and the needs of social harmony are more important that individual egos
-Fundamental importance of several key principles and the practice of these fundamentals by people constitute morality and ethical conduct
-Attitude without action is meaningless, one’s behavior in relation to real circumstances are valued more than principles
-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
-Involves thoroughly understanding the nature of virtue by learning the ethical traditions and the interpretations of exemplary lives from worthy teachers.
-One is bound by relationships to everyone in society but not all to the same degree or in the same way
Tao – way of virtue
Li – traditional rituals
Yi – sense of rightness or appropriateness
Ren – virtue of humaneness or humanity, the love of all people
The virtue of Yi has a sense of justice that maintains social hierarchy and traditional relationships
-Confucianism holds males as primarily responsible for most ethical activities, with females having responsibilities derived from relationships with males.
-We are all equally obliged to behave ethically but the way we carry this out depends on the relationships we live in
-The particulars of ethical behavior are determined mainly by social context
-From a Confucian perspective we should not expect everyone to behave the same to all people everywhere
-Each member of society has duties and obligations defined by their relationships
-There is a traditional Confucian thought explaining the need for subordinates to rectify or reprove their leaders and remove them if necessary
-Businesses are expected to enhance the common good
-At times, profit was considered a threat to social well-being
-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 close relationships with family and friends.
Levinas
-Levinas sees the root of ethics and finds it
-Ethics result from our human nature in relation to others and our encounters with other people
-This makes us aware that some other thinking and feeling human being exists, whose wants, values, feelings, thoughts, and responses are unknown to us and we must understand what that person needs and wants from the relationship with us
-The “other” is ethically more important that “I”
-Only the “other” can make us aware of the impact of our behavior so we can adjust accordingly
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
-Relates morality to rational thinking
Definition of morality: 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
-Gert’s idea of morality involves action(not feelings), social relations with others, and avoiding evil instead of the pursuit of good.
-Avoiding evil is more definite than the pursuit of good
Ten primary moral rules:
1. Don’t kill
2. Don’t cause pain
3. Don’t disable
4. Don’t deprive of freedom
5. Don’t deprive of pleasure
6. Don’t lie
7. Keep your promises
8. Don’t cheat
9. Don’t commit adultery
10. Don’t steal
There is a list of eight questions that Gert offers to determine the morally relevant features of a given situation:
1. What moral rules are being violated?
2. What evils are being avoided? Prevented? Caused?
3. What are the relevant desires of the people affected by the violation?
4. What are the relevant rational beliefs of the people affected by the violation?
5. Does one have a duty to violate moral rules with regard to the person, and is one in a unique position in this regard?
6. What goods are being promoted?
7. Is an unjustified or weakly justified violation of a moral rule being prevented?
8. Is an unjustified or weakly justified violation of a moral rule being punished?
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