Transcript Chapter One: Moral Reasons

Chapter One:
Moral Reasons
Review
Applying Ethics: A Text with Readings (10th ed.)
Julie C. Van Camp, Jeffrey Olen, Vincent Barry
Cengage Learning/Wadsworth
What is Ethical Relativism?
Ethical relativism: Moral truths are not
absolutely true but true relative to some
particular standards.
Cultural relativism: Moral truths are not
absolutely true but are relative to a
particular society.
Individual relativism: Moral truths are not
absolute but relative to individuals.
How can we understand
“Fairness”?
The Golden Rule
Kantian respect for persons
– Never use other people merely as a means to
your own end
– Recognize that persons are autonomous
beings
What are different approaches to
explaining individual rights?
Natural Rights: rights we are all born with
(Locke, Jefferson, Nozick)
Mutual Agreement behind the Veil of
Ignorance (Rawls)
Equality principle
Difference principle
“Moral Virtue”
Aristotle
How do we acquire moral virtues?
– They are acquired by exercising them
What is moral goodness?
– A quality disposing us to act in the best way when we
are dealing with pleasures and pains
What is the definition of “virtue”?
– a disposition of the soul in which, when it has to
choose among actions and feelings, it observes the
mean relative to us
“Respect for Persons”
Immanuel Kant
What are formulations of the Categorical
Imperative?
– Never act in such a way that I could not also
will that my maxim should be a universal law
– Act so that you treat humanities as an end
and never merely as a means
– The idea of the will of every rational being as
making universal law
“Utilitarianism”
John Stuart Mill
What is the Principle of Utility?
– The Greatest Happiness Principle
– The moral principle that we should produce the
greatest balance of happiness over unhappiness,
giving equal consideration to the happiness and
unhappiness of everyone who will be affected by our
actions.
What is “happiness”?
– pleasure and the absence of pain
“A Theory of Justice”
John Rawls
What is Rawls’ central conception of
justice?
– Justice as fairness
– Developed behind a “veil of ignorance”
What are Rawls’ two principles of justice?
– Each has equal right to most extensive basic
liberty compatible with similar liberty for others
– Inequalities are to everyone’s advantage and
attached to positions open to all
“The Ethics of Care”
Virginia Held
What are the key features of the ethics of care?
– Moral salience of attending to needs of others for
whom we take responsibility
– Values emotion, rather than rejecting it
– Questions universalistic and abstract theories,
favoring individualistic approaches
– Rethinks public and private spheres
– Conception of “person” as relational and
interdependent, not individualistic