Ethical Theories: A Comprehensive Classification
An ethical theory is a philosophical theory that attempts to establish a basis for morality. You can classify ethical theories according to different criteria:
- Ethical Self: Individuals who follow their own rules and values, not subject to anything external.
- Ethical Heteronomous: Individuals who consider their standards and values to be derived from external elements.
- Ethical Materials: Theories that provide moral content, telling us what we must do to act appropriately.
- Formal Ethics: Theories that do not tell us what to do, but how we should act for the action to be considered moral.
- Ethical Finalists: Theories alleging that moral actions are those that tend toward a particular purpose.
- Ethics of Duty: Theories that believe moral actions are right due to a universal duty, regardless of consequences.
- Consequentialist Ethics: Theories that consider actions ethical or not based on their consequences.
- Ethical Cognitivists: Theories that believe good and evil can be known, considering ethical values to have truth value.
- Ethical Non-cognitivists: Theories that believe we cannot justify morality rationally.
Intellectualism Ethics: Socrates and Plato
For Socrates and Plato, ethics is the knowledge of good and virtues. Ethical intellectualism identifies virtue with knowledge, believing that the essence of good is wisdom. It asserts that everyone who knows the good is good, and everyone who knows the virtues is virtuous. This leads to the belief that one cannot act wrongly voluntarily, and that evil is a product of ignorance. It is a cognitive ethics, believing that merely knowing the good and the virtues necessarily leads to being good and acting virtuously. Plato and Socrates believe that ethics can be taught and learned, having a pedagogical character. They also maintain that ethics are objective and universal. Their ethics are finalist and eudaimonistic, considering that ethical action tends toward an end, and that end is to achieve happiness.
Eudaimonism Ethics of Aristotle
Aristotle thinks that ethics is a tendency toward goodness, a search for truth. He states that there is a plurality of goods, meaning there is a supreme good, and that the ultimate goal is happiness. Happiness is an end in itself, the sum of all goods. Aristotle says that happiness is achieved by living rationally and ethically. Ethical action is based on virtues, which are the foundation of ethics. He distinguishes between ethical virtues (of will, character) and dianoetic virtues (knowledge and understanding). Ethical action is based on ethical virtues, and ethical virtue is a disposition of the soul, willingly choosing a middle way between excess and defect. For Aristotle, virtue is acquired through practical knowledge from continued experience. Virtue must be practiced until it becomes a habit. He believes there are two fundamental virtues: prudence and justice.
Ethics of Pleasure
This theory believes that the purpose of moral action is to obtain maximum pleasure. It considers ethics as providing us with the knowledge to properly calculate the appropriate means for maximum pleasure and to minimize pain.
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is an ethics based on material pleasure. It believes that ethics is based on calculated pleasures. It is an ethic that seeks individual pleasure, not intended to teach ethics in society. It clearly separates ethics from politics. Pleasure is understood as the amount of “aponÃa” (absence of bodily pain) and “ataraxia” (absence of disturbances in the soul). The purpose of action is to achieve these states, and therefore we must learn to calculate our desires. Epicurus says that there are natural desires (necessary and not necessary) and unnatural desires. We achieve pleasure by learning to wisely calculate our desires.
Emotivist Ethics of Hume
Hume’s ethics is a finalist in that it seeks pleasure as its purpose, and it is also consequentialist because it values actions that cause pleasure or pain. Ethics depends solely on our feelings about events, on emotional experience. It is not a cognitive ethics. Good and evil are merely expressions of our feelings about events. Hume argues that ethical actions are based on moral actions, altruistic feelings, and disinterestedness, leading us to consider others. His ethics are based on two fundamental elements: sympathy and utility.
- Sympathy: The feeling that inclines us toward goodness. It allows us to act from an altruistic point of view. It is a quality that makes us affected by the feelings and passions that affect others.
- Utility: A moral standard, utility is the principle that claims an action is good when it is useful. A useful action is one that creates pleasant feelings in favor of all normal human nature.
Deontological Ethics of Kant
Kant’s ethics is a rationalist and a priori ethical theory. It is rationalist because it is based on reason, and a priori because it is independent of previous experience. Kant claims that ethical knowledge is derived from reason. His ethics is a formal ethics, providing the structure of ethical action, but it is empty of content. It is also autonomous, depending only on the subject itself. Kant believes that ethics must be universal and necessary, that we all reach the same conclusions, and therefore there is a unique ethics for all mankind and for any period.
Kant analyzes moral laws and distinguishes two types:
- Hypothetical Imperatives: These represent the practical necessity of an action as a means to achieve something else; they are conditional imperatives.
- Categorical Imperatives: These represent an action as necessary in itself, in an absolute sense; these are ethical imperatives.