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Ethics Reviewer
Ethics Reviewer
Ethics Reviewer
Aristotle
• Father of Philosophy
Virtue Ethics
• A theory of what’s right from wrong and how do we know and what to do and whether what we
do, our actions are the right ones.
➢ Aristotle based a lot of his ideas on the work of a former pupil of Socrates who was called Plato.
➢ Plato had several called Cardinal Virtues
• Cardinal Virtues
o Courage
o Temperance
o Justice
o Prudence
He thought that good people that we hold up on a pedestal and go like “yes, I like being around
with this person. I want to be more like this person”. They had a lot of quality of these four
different qualities of cardinal virtues
• Moral virtues
o Courage
o Temperance
o Liberality
o Magnificence
o Magnanimity
o Proper Ambition
o Truthfulness
o Wittiness
o Friendliness
o Modesty
o Righteous
o Righteous Indignation
The moral virtues is what how people act and how they decide to act.
• Intellectual Virtues
o Courage
o Temperance
o Liberality
o Magnificence
o Magnanimity
o Proper Ambition
o Truthfulness
o Wittiness
o Friendliness
o Modesty
o Righteous
o Righteous Indignation
o Intelligence
o Science
o Theoretical Wisdom
People should have a certain level of intelligence, obviously, you can be a really nice person but
if you you’re really thick then you’re not exactly what many people would call a good person or
someone they would aspire to be.
• Agent-Centred or Teleological
Teleological comes from the Greek “tell us” means “purpose”. It is called Teleological theory
because unlike other theories, for example M in the bible theory you have a lot of deontological
ethical systems, do not kill. That is a command you are not allowed to kill.
All about the purpose, it’s related to but different to consequentialism which look at the
consequences of one’s action.
• Deontological
It is your duty, “dion” comes from the duty, in Greek “not to kill”.
Virtue theory is about being rather than doing. For virtue ethicists they believe that the
important thing is to make yourself someone who is a virtuous person and then you will know
what to do in the future
“You are what you repeatedly do”
-Aristotle
For example: You might want as a child have stolen a chocolate bar but that doesn’t make you a thief for
life, however, if you keep stealing as you grow older then you are a thief because that’s what you
repeatedly do. To be a good person just keep doing good things and you will be a good person because
you are what you repeatedly do.
➢ If you hone your virtues everyday, when the time comes you will know what to do.
By being a virtuous person who practices by being good by using the morals and the intellectual
virtues, when you come into a situation and if you have tried to be a good person and you keep
doing what you repeatedly do then you will know what to do at this point. The reward at the
individual is eudaimonia.
• 2 types of vice
o Vice of Deficiency – if you have too little of a virtue
o Vice of Excess – when you have too much of a virtue
• Alaisdar Maclyntyre
o He used the natural moral law and wrote a book about this.
o He wrote a book called “After Virtue” in 1981.
o His approach in his book “After Virtue” is to ask three questions, “Who am I?”, “Who I
ought to be?”, “How do I get there?”. These questions are useful for anyone trying to
improve their life and trying to understand what the right action is to take.
• It explain the basic goal of natural law ethics is “to do good and to avoid evil”
Answer: an act is morally right if it is done in accordance with the moral law.
• For Aquinas, the moral law comes from God’s eternal law. The moral law is the divine law
expressed in human nature which reads “do good and avoid evil”
• For Aquinas, “GOOD” is that which is suitable to human nature.
• Aquinas understands conscience as the inner voice of the intellect or reason which calls the
human person to follow the moral law.
• In natural law ethics, Conscience serves as the guide in making moral decisions.
• For Aquinas if at least one of the these three natural inclinations of the human person is violated
then an act does not obey conscience; it is therefore immoral.
➢ Self-preservation
o Natural inclination to take care of one’s health or not to kill or put one’s self in danger.
This explains that for Aquinas suicide is absolutely wrong
• For an action to be considered moral, it must be done in accordance with conscience; It must be
done in accordance with the moral law.
The act of the taxi driver who returns a wallet containing a couple of thousand
dollars is good in itself but that one who takes the initiative of returning 50
thousand dollars left by a tourist is even better.
• It must be noted that for Aquinas, all the three determinants of a human act must be all good for
an act to be considered good or morally right.
• Sometimes a human act may produced two conflicting result that is one is good and the other is
evil.
1. The action is intended must be good in itself, or at least morally indifferent; otherwise, the
act is evil at the very outset
2. The good effect must follow the action at least as immediately as the evil effect, or the good
and evil effects must occur simultaneously
3. The foreseen evil effect should not be intended or approved but merely permitted to occur
4. There must be a proportionate and sufficient reason for allowing the evil effect to occur
while performing the action.
Principle 1: The intention is good. The intention of removing cancerous uterus is good in itself
Principle 2: Good and evil effects occur simultaneously. The good effect that is the recovery of the
pregnant woman follows the action immediately and even the fetus die after the removal of the
cancerous uterus at least this evil effect occurs simultaneously with the good effect
Principle 3: It is satisfied because abortion/death of the fetus was not intended, it was just allowed to
happen
Principle 4: There’s a sufficient reason for allowing the evil effect
• According to Aquinas, the 4 principle must be satisfied for an action to be considered morally
right.