The branch of philosophy concerned with how one ought to live and act, and with what makes an action right or a life good. Three broad families of answer have dominated the Western tradition: virtue ethics, associated with Aristotle, which asks what character traits make a person excellent and treats right action as what a virtuous person would do; deontological ethics, associated with Kant, which grounds rightness in duty and in principles that could be willed as universal law regardless of consequences; and consequentialism, most fully developed as utilitarianism by Bentham and Mill, which judges an action by the balance of good and harm it produces. Ethics also covers metaethical questions about whether moral claims can be true at all, and applied questions about specific practical dilemmas, but the founding question, how should one live, is Socrates' own, asked in nearly every dialogue Plato wrote.
Facts
Disputed
Key DebateConsequentialism versus deontology, sharpened by the trolley problem: whether the rightness of an action is fixed entirely by its consequences, as consequentialists hold, or by duties and rules that can forbid an act even when it produces the best outcome, as deontologists hold, with trolley cases used to test the two views against shared intuitions. 1 The trolley problem and its variants have been used since Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson to sharpen, without settling, the older dispute between consequentialist and deontological ethics. Key DebateWhether morality is discovered or made: the Socratic tradition treats the good as an objective target reason can pursue through examined dialogue, while Nietzsche treats inherited morality as a historically contingent human invention, open to revaluation rather than discovery. 2 A third position denies both horns: J.L. Mackie's error theory holds that ordinary moral discourse commits speakers to objective values and objective prescriptions, but that no such objective moral facts exist at all, so moral claims are not so much discovered, made, or revalued as systematically false; see the attached dissent. Central QuestionHow should one live, and what makes an action right or a character good? 1 Key DebateThe is-ought problem: David Hume observed that moral writers slide, unnoticed, from statements of what is the case to statements of what ought to be the case, a transition he found could not be validly made from facts alone, since the distinction of vice and virtue is not perceived by reason or founded merely on the relations of objects; whether any such gap between fact and value can be bridged remains a live question in metaethics. 1 Ethics
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The Rebel is a moral philosophy of revolt and its limits.
Source Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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His account of bad faith and authenticity is a genuinely ethical body of work.
Source Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Information- s.v. Ethics
- entry: Socrates
- s.v. Doing vs. Allowing Harm
entry: Hume's Moral Philosophy, Section 5 Is and Ought
Attention to this transition would 'subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason.'
- Includes: Aristotle
- Includes: Immanuel Kant
- Includes: David Hume
- Includes: Simone de Beauvoir
- Includes: Jeremy Bentham
- Includes: Utilitarianism
- Includes: Existentialism
- Includes: The Nicomachean Ethics
- Includes: The Categorical Imperative
- Includes: Socrates
- Includes: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Includes: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- Associated With: Aristotle, entry: Aristotle's Ethics
- Associated With: Immanuel Kant, entry: Kant's Moral Philosophy
- Associated With: Jeremy Bentham, entry: Consequentialism
- Includes: Cynicism
- Includes: Diogenes of Sinope
- Includes: The Analects
- Includes: Self-Reliance
- Includes: The Conduct of Life
Includes: Mohism, entry: Mohism, Introduction
They were the first in the tradition to engage, like Socrates in ancient Greece, in an explicit, reflective search for objective moral standards and to give step-by-step, tightly reasoned arguments for their views.
Includes: Virtue Ethics, entry: Virtue Ethics, Introduction
Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics.
Includes: Deontology, entry: Deontological Ethics, Introduction
In contemporary moral philosophy, deontology is one of those kinds of normative theories regarding which choices are morally required, forbidden, or permitted.
View the Source 2. Moral Anti-Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophySection 3.2Quote, Section 3.2
John Mackie...argues that when we participate in moral discourse we commit ourselves to the existence of objective values and objective prescriptions, but there are no such things.
Ethics (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIntroductionQuote, Introduction
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Includes: Confucius
- Includes: Zeno of Citium
- Includes: Stoicism
- Includes: Confucianism
View the SourceJean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy- Includes: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Includes: Bad Faith
View the Source Albert Camus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Trolley Problem (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIncludes: The Trolley Problem, IntroductionQuote, Includes: The Trolley Problem, Introduction
The series usually begins with a scenario in which a runaway trolley (tram) or train is on course to collide with and kill a number of people.
Environmental Philosophy (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Environmental Philosophy, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Environmental Philosophy, Lead section
Environmental philosophy includes environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, ecofeminism, environmental hermeneutics, and environmental theology.
Philosophy of Sport (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Philosophy of Sport, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Philosophy of Sport, Lead section
These issues cover many areas, but fall primarily into five philosophical categories: metaphysics, ethics and moral philosophy, philosophy of law, political philosophy and aesthetics.
Bioethics (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Bioethics, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Bioethics, Lead section
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health
Is-Ought Problem (Wikipedia)
WikipediaIncludes: Is-Ought Problem, Lead sectionQuote, Includes: Is-Ought Problem, Lead section
It was first articulated by the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, who saw a significant difference between descriptive statements (about what is) and prescriptive statements (about what ought to be).
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Key Debate
Ordinary moral discourse commits speakers to the existence of objective values and objective prescriptions, reasons for action that would bind regardless of any agent's desires, but no such objective moral facts exist. Such properties would be metaphysically queer, unlike anything else in a naturalistic world, and our capacity to know them would be equally mysterious. Moral judgments are therefore not correctly analyzed as either the Socratic discovery of an objective good or a Nietzschean invention open to revaluation; they are, on this error theory, systematically and uniformly false, even though speakers do not intend or realize this when they make them.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneMoral Anti-Realism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the is-ought problem, and why does it matter for ethics?
David Hume pointed out that moral writers often slide from statements about what is the case to statements about what ought to be the case without justifying the move, and whether that gap between fact and value can ever be closed is still debated.
David Hume observed that moral writers slide, often unnoticed, from statements of what is the case to statements of what ought to be the case, a transition he argued could not be validly made from facts alone, since the distinction between vice and virtue is not perceived by reason or founded merely on the relations between objects. Whether any such gap between fact and value can be bridged remains a live question in metaethics, and it is one of the reasons some philosophers doubt that ethical conclusions can ever be derived from purely factual premises.
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