Theories and Approaches in Ethical Philosophy

Summary:

The text provides an introduction to ethical philosophy, theories, and approaches. It starts by defining ethics and morals, highlighting their different meanings and uses. The objectives of the study include understanding moral reasoning throughout history and applying ethical approaches in personal and professional relationships.

The concept of ethics and morality is explored, with ethics being the study of ideal human behavior and ways of being, while morals are specific beliefs and behaviors derived from ethical analysis. Different types of ethical inquiry are presented, such as normative ethics, common morality, meta-ethics, and descriptive ethics, each serving unique purposes in understanding moral judgments and behaviors.

The text also discusses two opposing views on ethical perspectives, namely ethical relativism and ethical objectivism.

Excerpt:

Theories and Approaches in Ethical Philosophy

Objectives:

• Define the terms and ethics and morals, and philosophical uses of these terms
• Discuss systems of moral reasoning as they have been used throughout history.
• Uses variety of ethical approaches and theories in personal and professional relationship.  

Introduction to Ethics

In today’s world, “we are in the throes of giant ethical leap that is essentially embracing all of humankind” (Donahue, 1996, p. 484). Scientific and technological advances, economic realities, pluralistic world views, and global communication make it impossible for nurses to ignore the important ethical issues in the world community, their individual lives, and their work. Ethical directives sometimes are not clearly evident and people often disagree about what is right and wrong, these factors lead to some people to believe that ethics can be based merely on personal opinions.

The Meaning of Ethics and Morality

Ethics

• A branch of philosophy, means different people. Ethics is the study of ideal human behaviour and ideal ways of being.
• Unethical is used to describe ethics in its negative form when for example, a person’s character or behaviour is contrary to admirable traits or to the code of conduct.
• People often used the world ethics when referring to a collection of actual beliefs and behaviours, thereby using the terms ethics and morals is essentially synonymous ways.