ETHICAL THEORIES

The philosophy of morality, hereafter referred to as ethics, critically examines two basic moral beliefs. The one which will receive the most attention here is the belief about how to decide right from wrong, or how to determine our obligations. The other is our belief about what counts as good or evil, our values. Of course, ethics examines many other beliefs as well, but these are the two which are the most basic. In order to clarify what is meant by these two moral beliefs, several concepts must be introduced and defined. In what follows, think of what we are doing as similar to learning a new board game. You have to learn the names of the pieces, how they move, and the strategy for playing the game. For the game of ethics, the first pieces for you to become acquainted with are the following concepts: morality, ethics (descriptive, normative, and applied ethics), value theory and theory of obligation. First, let us discuss the concepts of morality and ethics. Though these terms are often used interchangeably in daily life, we shall distinguish between them for greater clarity. We will use the concept morality to refer to the decisions which we make about two types of behavior. These include the actions that we perform which we call right or wrongour obligations, and the things that we desire or shunour values. Morality refers to a certain class of behavior and the judgments that we make about such behavior, just a chess refers to chessplaying behavior. Moral philosophy, or ethics, on the other hand, is a study of such behavior. It may study moral behavior in several ways. First, it may be an empirical study of the obligations and values that people do accept. We may send out a questionnaire, for example, to gather information about what a representative sample of Americans believes to be important values in their lives. We may discover that most Americans want fame and fortune, or maybe more meaning in their lives, or more freedom. We may examine what the rules are in this or other countries for specific types of moral behavior, such as abortion, or capital punishment, or physician-assisted-suicide. We might consult the laws, religion, and the medical profession for a description of such rules. This sort of study of morality is called descriptive ethics. It describes what the moral ideas of a group of people happen to be. Ethics studies morality in other ways as well. The way most important to us here is called normative ethics. Normative ethics is not a study of what our moral beliefs are, but of what they ought to be. It is a study of what we should consider to be our obligations, and what we should desire. Sometimes what we do think of as right and wrong and what we do desire, are not very different from what we ought to think of as right and wrong, and what we ought to desire.

Sometimes, however, there is a difference. In the United States, for example, even though most states and most religions and most medical codes are officially opposed to physician-assisted-suicide, it may be argued that we ought to consider it a right of all competent, dying people. And even though most people may desire fame and fortune, it may be argued that they ought to value knowledge and virtue, or perhaps love and spiritual fulfillment, instead. So normative ethics is about ideals, about how we ought to live, and about what sorts of things we ought to value. Since it is about ideals, normative ethics is not an empirical study. Ideals, after all, cannot be observed. Instead, when we do normative ethics we must argue for our claims about which ideals should guide our lives. One way to understand the business of normative ethics is to see it as a study of morality in the same way that the rule book in chess is a study of chess, or an arithmetic book is a study of counting, or adding and subtracting behavior. Study here means laying out the rules. As the rule book of chess tells us what are the allowable moves in chess, and as a textbook on arithmetic gives us the rules for adding and subtracting, so normative ethics gives us the rules for distinguishing right from wrong, and good from evil. Another distinction may be made between ethics, or ethical theory as it is sometimes called, and applied ethics. Applied ethics is about particular moral issues. Courses in Business Ethics, Health Care Ethics, and Social Ethics, for example, are courses in applied ethics. They apply the rules of ethics to particular problems to determine right from wrong. Here it is the ideals of normative ethics that will concern us primarily. Normative ethics studies two sorts of ideals. It tries to discover which sorts of things we should value, what we ought to pursue to make our lives happy. This part of normative ethics is called value theory. It attempts to give us a general idea of what are the really important goals of life, the sorts of things that we ought to desire if we really want to be happy. It is the examination of one type of basic belief that underlies our moral behavior, our beliefs about good and evil. The other basic belief of morality, and the second part of normative ethics, is often referred to as theory of obligation. A theory of obligation gives us a general definition of right and wrong behavior, and it also gives us a set of instructions for how to apply this definition to particular cases. In this way it provides us with a means to distinguish right from wrong. For example, I may claim that what makes an action wrong is that it harms another. That is my general definition of right and wrong behavior: do whatever you want to, as long as it harms no one else. How would I use such a general definition to figure out right from wrong? I would consider the consequences of my actions on others. If they lead to harm, they are wrong. If not, they are permissible. There are many competing ideas for how to distinguish right from wrong, many competing theories of obligation. There are also many different notions of what ought to be our highest values. Let us examine first what some of these are.

VALUE THEORY Moral and Nonmoral Values In value theory, one major distinction is between moral values and nonmoral values. Moral values are things that are morally good. For the most part, it is persons or properties of persons that are morally good. Some examples of morally good properties of persons include having a good moral character, or having good intentions, or having the appropriate motives for acting. Nonmoral values are anything that we value, anything that we desire or want. Sometimes this can include moral values, such as having a morally good character, but it also includes other things as well. In addition to wanting a good moral character I may want a certain type of car, for example, or desire to be married, or have children, or lots of money. So one way to think of nonmoral values, which we will simply call values from now on, is to think of them as what we want. Another important distinction needs to be drawn here. Some things we want for the sake of other things. We want money to buy things, for example. If we were stuck on a desolate island and could have only one thing with us, it would not be money. If there were nothing to buy, money would have no value. It would simply be a pile of paper. Such values are called extrinsic values, and sometimes instrumental values. They are good only for something else. A hammer is extrinsically valuable. It is good for something, not good in itself. If it did not work to drive or pull nails, we would discard it. If it had sentimental value, it would be good only because it reminded us of something else that was important to us; the one who gave it to us perhaps. Intrinsic values, on the other hand, are things that are good in themselves. We sometimes say that they have inherent worth. One way to think of nonmoral intrinsic values is to think of the ultimate goals of life, the things that we really wantour deepest desires. Happiness, of course, is always what we all want. Intrinsic values may be thought of as that which will bring us happiness. Normative ethics is concerned with discovering what sorts of things we ought to value, what sorts of things we ought to desire, what sorts of things we need to acquire in order to be happy. Monistic and Pluralistic Theories of Value

Some philosophers think that only one thing is valuable in itself. Their value theories would be monistic. Others think that there are many things on a list of values that comprise a happy life. They espouse pluralistic theories of value. Whether it takes one intrinsic value or many to produce happiness, such a life is called the good life by philosophers. What do you think we ought to strive for to be happy, to lead the good life?

There have been various monistic theories of value defended by philosophers. In their view, the good life consists of only one thing. Some have claimed that it is knowledge alone that makes us happy, while others opt for a virtuous character and still others for freedom. Some say it is love, some say it is power, some say it is a relationship with God that is really our deepest desire. Perhaps the most famous version of a monistic theory of intrinsic value, however, equates the good life with a life of pleasure. Such a theory is called hedonism. Hedonism claims that only pleasure is worthwhile in itself. Everything else is valuable only because it leads to pleasure. Knowledge would not be valued if led to pain and suffering, nor would freedom, power, love and so on. For the hedonist, all these other goods have merely extrinsic value. They are simply a means to more pleasure. For some hedonists, the important thing about pleasure is the amount of it. Whether you get your pleasure from drinking beer or listening to Beethoven matters little. For others, however, the type of pleasure is what is important. Pleasures may be ranked according to their quality. Sensual, bodily pleasures are ranked lowest, while pleasures of the mind and spirit are seen as more valuable. Even less pleasure of a higher type is to be valued over more pleasure of a lower type. For this sort of hedonist, a life of gluttony and drunkenness is surely not the good life, while a life filled with knowledge, art, music, love, virtue and the like leads to the sort of pleasures that that make for a happy life. Others hold pluralistic theories of value, claiming that many thingssuch as those on the list aboveare all intrinsically valuable. Pleasure is merely one item on the list, not the only item. Pluralists argue that hedonists make a fundamental error in considering the plurality of values as simply a means to pleasure. A hedonist may be correct to point out, for example, that understanding a complex theory in science, after much struggle, produces a sense of pleasure. Doing the right thing when it is difficult also makes us feel good, as does being in love or feeling connected to God, or hearing a beautiful symphony. However, the hedonist makes a mistake in arguing from the fact that pleasure may be the outcome of all of these activities that we value, to the conclusion that it is only pleasure that we value. For the pluralist, while it is true that knowledge, love, virtue, and other things that we value do produce pleasure when we get them, this does not mean that they are valued only for the pleasure produced. First, there is no one thing called pleasure produced by these various goods. Each good produces a different type of mental state, a state often quite different from those produced by other goods. The pleasure one gets from learning a scientific theory is quite different from that which results from being in love, or doing the right thing, or hearing a beautiful symphony. So at the very least, the hedonist himself must admit to a plurality of valuesthe various types of pleasure derived from other goods.

From this perspective, hedonism looks almost the same in practice as a pluralistic theory of value. What does it matter in practice, for example, if I say that the good life is a collection of all the various types of pleasure that I get from knowledge, love, power, freedom, God, virtue, etc., or I say that it consists of the possession of these items themselves? In either case, I need a plurality of values to be happy. I cannot get the particular states of pleasure without them. I shall leave it to you to decide whether the plurality of values that I have listed, and the ones that you may have discovered in the above exercise, are to be understood as intrinsic or extrinsic.

THEORIES OF OBLIGATION

We will have occasion to refer to various ideas of good and evil throughout this discussion of ethics, but our focus will be on our basic beliefs about right and wrong and the various theories of obligation that attempt to clarify these beliefs. As we said above, a theory of obligation does two things. It provides us with a general definition of right and wrong, and it gives us a set of instructions about how to apply this general definition to concrete cases. We say theories and not theory because several theories of obligation claim to provide the best method for determining right from wrong. The main problem with which we shall wrestle here is selecting which theory of obligation is superior to the others. The first thing to note about theories of obligation is that they are used to judge actions, not persons. The terms right and wrong are adjectives, as are red and yellow. As red and yellow refer to properties of physical objects, right and wrong refer to properties of actions. It will always be actions, not persons, which are right or wrong. As we will see later, judging the person behind the action to be a good person or a bad person requires further information, such as information about their intentions, motives and circumstances. Next, ethical theories contain various levels of explanation. First, they explain why an action is right by appealing to general rules. For example, we say that it is wrong to lie to Sarah on Tuesday, because it is wrong (in general) to lie. Second, they explain why certain rules ought to be followed by reference to even more general principles. These principles amount to a general definition of right action. In religious ethics we might say its wrong to lie because God says so. The general principle is What is right is what God says is right. In philosophical ethics we use non religious principles. A very common one is called The Golden Rule. The Golden Rule tells us to do unto others what you would like them to do unto you. According to this principle, we should not lie because we would not want others to lie to us. Whatever fills in the blank is called a principle, a general definition of right and wrong.

Moral Rules The rightness or wrongness of actions, on the lowest level, is what is to be explained by a theory of obligation. Explained here, means roughly say why an action is right or wrong. Rules explain the rightness or wrongness of actions. It is wrong not to show up for lunch with Maria (action) when you promised to meet her, because (rule) it is wrong to break promises. Most of the time, appealing to rules is sufficient for determining right from wrong. In fact, this is what we usually mean by right and wrongfollowing rules. These rules are out there in society, and we learn them as we were raised by our parents and teachers. They become part of us. They are present in us as habits of behavior. If we have good habits (virtues) we generally do not lie, steal, cheat, and so on. If we have developed bad habits (vices) we routinely do things that break these rules. The collection of all of our moral habits is called our moral character. Most of our moral decisions simply involve conforming our behavior to these rules. We do not have to think about it to know what is right or wrong. We know right away, just as we know that running a red light is illegal without having to think about it. Most of the time we are simply creatures of moral habit, conforming our behavior to the rules of society that we have been trained to follow. Sometimes we have to struggle to do what is right, to get ourselves to follow rules, especially when doing so is difficult. However, we usually do not have to struggle to know what is right. When we know whose wallet it is that we have found, but we could really use the money, it is a struggle to return it. When we need to pass the test, and the answers are on a piece of paper in my pocket, it is a struggle to avoid looking at it. Such struggles are between our desires and what we know to be the right thing to do, and constitute much of the moral pathos that fills the pages of great literature. During these struggles, however, we usually know what is right and wrong, because right simply means conforming to a moral rule, and wrong means breaking a moral rule. Moral Principles Sometimes, however, there is a problem about figuring out right from wrong itself. Sometimes simply appealing to rules is insufficient. Sometimes we are faced with a problem that requires us to think, not just to follow habits. To solve these problems we must appeal to principles. Sometimes people use terms such a moral standards and refer both to rules and principles. It is important for us to distinguish between moral principles and moral rules, however, because they play different roles in moral decision-making. A principle is more general than a rule. It provides us with a general definition of right action, one that guides all moral action, not just the certain types of actions picked out by various rules. A principle says such things as Do no harm, for example, while

rules focus on prohibiting certain types of harms such as lying, stealing and the like. There are three reasons why we need principles to determine right from wrong. First, as rules explain why actions are right or wrong, principles explain why we have the rules that we do. Why should we have a rule, Do not lie, for example? Why not have a rule that says Lie if you wish? The answer is because moral principles prohibit such a rule. The Golden Rule would prohibit such a rule, for example, since we would not want to be lied to. The Do no harm principle would also prohibit such a rule, since lying generally causes harm. Second, we need principles to introduce new rules. Sometimes changes in society have important consequences for good for evil. This is especially true of new technologies that follow on the heels of scientific discoveries. For example, should we allow you to clone a copy of yourself, to have a child that is an exact genetic copy of you? This would be acceptable if we had a rule about cloning that allowed the cloning of human beings. Should we have such a rule? That depends upon whether or not the principle or principles accepted by your ethical theory allow it. Would the Golden Rule allow it? Its not easy to say. It depends upon your perspective, whether or not you are the clone or the cloned, for example. In fact, the Golden Rule will not be the principle we shall adopt especially for this reason, that whatever guidance it gives depends upon whether or not you are the one acted against immorally, or you are the one acting immorally. Whatever principle we do choose will have to be able to give us more objective guidance in matters such as this, in matters that require the formation of new rules that may then be used to guide the day to day actions of everyone. Third, we need principles to resolve conflicts between rules. Sometimes two or more perfectly acceptable rules apply at the same time. We cannot follow both, so we have to choose which is the most important. Principles help us to decide this. For example, suppose you have promised to meet someone for lunch. On your way to the restaurant, you witness an automobile accident. You are the only one around at the time, and if you do not stop to help the injured driver may die. If you do stop to help, however, you will be late for your luncheon date, thus breaking your promise. What is the right thing to do? It is pretty easy to determine what is right in this case. While some slight psychological harm may occur to your friend, especially if she gets angry or worried about your absence, it pales by comparison to the harm you could avoid by helping the accident victim, even if it is only to use your cell phone to call for emergency assistance. The point is that there are two rules operating here. One is keep your promises, while the other is something like help prevent harm to others. When they conflict, as they do in this case, principles help us to decide which has the highest priority, and thus which is our obligation to follow at the time. If our moral principle is do good and avoid evil, then clearly we are obliged to help the victim instead of keeping our promise.

The idea that rules sometimes conflict and that judgments must be made as to which one has the highest priority is an important one. Ignoring it has led some ethical theorists to reject the importance of rules in ethics. They mistakenly believe that if doing what is right is a matter of following rules, then moral rules always have to be followed, no matter what. If ethics is a matter of following rules, then if you keep a rule you have done something right; if you break the rule, on the other hand, then you have done something wrong. This becomes a problem because there clearly seems to be circumstances in which following well established moral rules would be wrong. This leads some people to the view that each situation must be judged anew. Sometimes lying is right and sometimes wrong; it depends upon the circumstances. With the insight that sometimes rules conflict, and that the right thing to do is to follow the rule with the highest priority, we can agree both that making moral decisions is a matter of following rules, and that rules appear to have exceptions. According to the view that will be developed here, when your behavior conforms to an acceptable moral rule you have done something right; when you break a rule you have done something wrong. What about exceptions to rules? There are no exceptions to rules. When there seems to be an exception, when breaking a rule seems to be the right thing to do, it is simply the case that the rule in question has been overridden by a rule with a higher priority. Some of the most stubborn moral dilemmas that we face in applied ethics arise from conflicts between otherwise acceptable rules. It is when both sides of a moral dilemma claim to have right on their side that we face our most difficult problems in determining right from wrong. A Few More Concepts The basic concepts required to describe a theory of obligation are right (as an adjective, referring to a property of actions), rule and principle. Everything that needs to be said about theories of obligation can be said using these terms. Actions have the property of being morally right when they follow a rule that conforms to an acceptable principle. In addition to these three, there are related moral concepts that allow us to say the same sorts of things about right and wrong actions in different ways. Chief among these concepts are those of right (used as a noun), duty and obligation. Lets begin with the concept of a right, such as the right to life or the right to own property. It is my view that talking about rights such as these is simply a shorthand way to talk about what sort of actions are right. Right, used as a noun, is derived from right, used as an adjective. To say, for example, that I have a right to life, means that it is right for me to preserve my life and wrong for you to destroy it. It is wrong for you to destroy it because you are breaking a widely accepted moral rule, do not kill. To say that a homeowner has property rights is another way of saying that it is wrong for another person to enter their

house without permission, or to destroy it, rent it to others, sell it and so on. These actions are wrong because they violate, among other things, the rule do not steal. Many of todays moral problems are phrased in terms of rights, and are especially seen as a conflict of rights. The abortion problem, for example, may be seen as conflict between the right to life of the unborn and the right to privacy of the pregnant woman. It is acceptable to speak in this manner, as long as we realize that to talk about conflicting rights is just another way to talk about conflicting moral rules. Other concepts often used to discuss moral problems are those of duty and obligation. Let us assume that these two concepts mean the same thing and just talk about our duties. As with rights talk, talking about duties may also be replaced by talk about rules. To see this, note that rights and duties are often opposite sides of the same coin. If I have a right to life, you have a duty not to kill me. If I have property rights, you have a duty to keep off my property, and so on. Since rights and duties fall in the same class, and since rights may be understood as simply short-hand ways of speaking about rules, then duties may also be understood in the same manner. To say that we have a moral duty to do something, is to say that an action is morally right for us to do, because doing so keeps a moral rule. Moral rules describe our duties or obligations. Do not lie, do not steal, keep your promises, and so on are all moral rules that define some of the moral duties that society expects us to accept and live up to. In short, moral rules describe which actions are right, and define what are our rights, duties and obligations. As long as you remember that talking about rights and duties is just another way to talk about rules, there should be no trouble in discussing moral problems in terms of rights and duties or obligations. In fact, we shall often do this, if only to conform to the way in which many of these issues are discussed today. The only time this should be a problem is if you begin to think of rights and duties as having some sort of existence apart from rules. If you do, you will become as puzzled as the person who has read a statistical report of American families and wonders where the average man is located.

Specific Theories of Obligation

CONSEQUENTIALISM It will be helpful to begin by dividing theories of obligation into two main groupsthose that are consequentialist theories and those that are not. We will give names to theories in the second category later, but for now we will begin with various versions of consequentialism. The various consequentialist theories of obligation all have one property in commonthey determine the rightness or wrongness of actions exclusively by reference to their consequences. They would all accept the following statement: an action is right if it leads to a greater

balance of good over evil consequences; it is wrong if it leads to a greater balance of evil over good. From here on, however, the various versions of consequentialism diverge. One main area of difference between them concerns their various theories of value. For example, some consequentialists are hedonists, while others believe that God is the only intrinsic value, and still others something else. It makes a great deal of difference to your ethical outlook, as you might imagine, whether you are trying to promote pleasure and the avoidance of pain by your actions, or a close relationship with God. Another way in which consequentialists differ is in what they consider the proper scope of the consequences that must be taken into account. Some say what is important are the consequences of my actions on myself alone, while others require a broader concern. With this as an introduction, let us consider our first theory of obligationethical egoism.

ETHICAL EGOISM Ethical egoism is the view that what is right is what is good for me. The way to use this principle in practice is for the moral decision maker to consider the consequences that the action in question will have upon him. Then he is to consider the consequences that alternative actions will have, again only upon himself. The action which produces the most good or the least evil consequences for him is the morally right action. Several points of clarification are in order for us to grasp the full meaning of ethical egoism. First, what makes an action right is solely the consequences of the action. If it produces good outcomes, then is right. Since sometimes moral choices are choices between two evils, we say that the right thing to do is whatever action produces more good or less evil than its alternatives. Even more accurately, since some actions produce both good and evil consequences, the right thing to do is to perform that action that produces a higher ratio of good over evil than its alternatives. Second, only the consequences for me matter. It is not that I try to harm others by my actions; it is just that I am indifferent to how they affect others. This is why it is called ethical egoism, because such a theory is concerned only with the self-interest of the moral agent himself. In its most common form, ethical egoism claims that everyone ought to act only in their own self-interest. As such, it presents us with a universal moral principle, one which is to be used by all. The other types of consequentialist theories that we will consider below, all will require that we consider the consequences of our actions on others, as well as ourselves, in determining right from wrong. Such theories are versions of altruism, the view that we are required to do good for others as well as ourselves. Ethical egoism, on the other hand, is thought of as a theory of selfishness. It

denies that we have any obligations to others. It is important to emphasize the point that it does not claim simply that we do sometimes act selfishly, but makes the much stronger moral claim that we ought to act selfishly, that we are obliged to do so, that to act for others at our own expense would be immoral. Third, there are many ways to be an ethical egoist, depending upon which value theory is plugged into the definition. If you are a hedonist, if good means pleasure and evil means pain, then you live a very different sort of life than you would if good means God, for example. A life of selfishness is a life of pursuing what you have identified as the intrinsically valuable, the good that will lead to your happiness. Since there appear to be many things that are intrinsically valuable, there is any number of ways to be an ethical egoist. Fourth, notice that no mention is made of rules by the ethical egoist. For him it is not true that it is wrong to lie, to kill, to steal, to break promises, and so on. Doing the right thing is not a matter of following rules, but of calculating in each situation what the outcomes of competing actions are likely to be. To determine the rightness or wrongness of any action, I simply use my basic principle do whats good for me, and calculate the outcomes of the available alternative actions. If I see some money in your handbag, for example, it is by no means wrong for me to take it. It may be that it usually is wrong, because it usually will not be in my interest to do so. After all, I might get caught and that would produce more evil than good for me. If I was fairly certain that I could get away with it, however, it would be in my interest to take the money. I would be obliged to do so. For the ethical egoist, whenever it is my interest to do so, it is right for me to break any commonly accepted moral law. Any action is acceptable if it leads to good results for me. This consequence is what usually turns people away from ethical egoism. Any theory that accepts acts of killing, stealing, lying and so on, as sometimes morally correct, seems quite opposed to our ordinary beliefs of right and wrong. If a theory of obligation is supposed to reflect the ideas that we already possess about right and wrong, then ethical egoism certainly does not seem to be the one that we ordinarily use. Selfishness does not seem to be the principle that guides our moral lives. In fact, it seems to be positively opposed to morality. After all, do we not refer to people as selfish when they place their own interests ahead of others, and especially when they violate moral rules for their own gain?

UTILITARIANISM Utilitarianism is like ethical egoism insofar as it defines the right in terms of the good. It claims that an action is right if it produces a greater ratio of good over evil than its alternatives. Where it differs from ethical egoism is in the scope of those who must be considered when calculating these consequences. The most famous versions of Utilitarianism, those first introduced by Jeremy Bentham

(1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), claim that the consequences that occur for everyone affected by the action must be considered. For them, the right thing to do is what produces the greatest good (or least evil) for the most people. They called this the principle of utility. Act Utilitarianism As a consequentialist theory, utilitarianism may take the form of act utilitarianism or rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism, as introduced by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), does not consider ethics to be a matter of following rules. As with the ethical egoist, determining right from wrong is not simply a matter of conforming your behavior to rules. There are no hard and fast rules that one always has to follow. There are no rules because sometimes following a rule does not lead to the greatest good. There are too many exceptions for rules to be good guides to correct behavior. Instead, each situation should be seen as different from all those that went before it. Because the circumstances are different, every act of lying, for example, is different from every other. This way of thinking about moral problems is sometimes called situation ethics. For a situation ethicist, of which act utilitarianism is one form and ethical egoism another, there are not three levels to a theory of obligation, but only two. There is only the basic principle, the greatest good for the greatest number in the case of the act utilitarian, and the individual act or action to which it is applied. Bentham was a hedonist, so for him good is pleasure and evil is pain. To figure out right from wrong, to reason morally, is to weigh the amount of pleasure and pain that an action will produce and compare it to its alternatives. The source of pleasure, what type of pleasure it is, does not matter in determining right from wrongonly the amount does. The right thing to do is to perform that action which will maximize pleasure, and minimize pain. Bentham makes it clear that what is to be weighed are the pleasures and pains that the action actually produces, not simply what we believe it will produce. Because of this conviction, he provides a method for determining such consequences, a method that some have called the hedonic calculus. The hedonic calculus was very explicit in discussing the elements that entered into an analysis of the consequences of our actions. In explaining how to apply the Principle of Utility to concrete actions Bentham outlined a series of steps that must be considered in order to weigh the pleasure and pain that our actions will produce. If these steps are followed correctly, everyone ought to be able to calculate the same outcomes, just as everyone who uses the same scale should come up with the same weight for a physical object. Since outcomes are the only thing that matter in determining right from wrong, using Benthams principle and instructions should produce agreement in moral matters.

To determine in advance the amount of pleasure or pain an act will produce we must consider the following properties of the consequences of our actions: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) intensityhow strong the pleasure or pain will be durationhow long it will last certaintythat pleasure or pain will follow propinquityhow soon it will occur fecunditywhether it will lead to more pleasure or pain puritywhether it will lead to pleasure or pain of the same type extentthe number of those affected

When a person is trying to figure out right from wrong, she should weigh the hedonic consequences of her choices of action for all affected, and choose the one which produces the most pleasure or the least pain, or the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. Such reasoning exists today whenever anyone performs a cost-benefit analysis, whenever they weigh the pros and cons of a course of action. Politicians reason this way, for example, when they want to be sensitive to the wishes of their constituents. They may commission a preference poll, to see what course of action their voters wish them to back. What the majority of their voters want is the course of action they choose, because it will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Health care analysts also reason this way whenever they choose to fund one research program instead of another. The government may wish to spend more money on cancer research than research on cystic fibrosis, for example, because the money spent (cost) will produce more lives saved (benefits). Benthams reasoning about right and wrong is a form of cost-benefit analysis, where the costs are pains, and the benefits are pleasures. Rule Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) 4 also accepts the principle of utility, but holds quite different views from Bentham about how to apply it to concrete cases. Mill has three levels in his rule utilitarian theory of obligation. There are actions, the rules that explain why actions are right or wrong, and the principle which explains why the rules that we have are the ones that we ought to follow. Doing the right thing means following rules. Which rules? Those that, if followed, lead to greater pleasure and less pain than their alternatives. So for Mill, the principle of utility gets applied to rules, not to particular actions. We do not have to calculate for each act of lying, for example, whether it will maximize more pleasure and minimize more pain than not lying in this situation. Lying is always wrong because a greater overall good will follow if we always tell the truth, always keep our promises and so on, even if sometimes

doing so leads to less good than breaking the rule. Clearly, Mill would benefit from our conflict of rules insight, mentioned above, an insight that would allow him to override a particular rule, when following another of higher priority would result in greater good. Mill may have recognized this insight on his own, but we will introduce it later as a modification of Mills thinking. The important point for now, however, is that rules are essential to ethics. We do not have to calculate the consequences of moral actions for each moral decision that we make. Imagine how much time it would take to run through Benthams seven steps each time we had to decide if a simple lie was right or wrong. Moreover, if ethics contained no rules, how would we teach our children right from wrong? What would Bentham teach the next generation, to calculate using the principle of utility as their guide? This is hardly what we teach our children when we teach them right from wrong. We teach them not to lie, not to steal, to be kind, to be fair, and so on. We teach them rules, not a method of reasoning. We also teach them that when a rule seems not to hold, it is because there is a conflict of rules, and a rule with higher priority must be followed. We do not tell them that rules cannot be relied upon to guide moral actions. And so it is for Mill, determining right from wrong is a matter of following those rules that promote the greatest good for the greatest number. One way to see how the principle of utility might be applied directly to rules is to consider how new moral rules are introduced to society. Very typically, when we debate what a new rule of society should be (think again of physicianassisted-suicide and cloning human beings), we consider the harms and benefits of following various rules. If we allow physician-assisted suicide, for example, it will benefit suffering, terminally ill patients. On the other hand, it may have social harms, such as starting us down the slippery slope to killing incompetent patients, and putting pressure on patients to end their lives prematurely. As to cloning humans, we all have visions of the brave new world it may lead to. We also may have some idea of how it may be a benefit to some prospective parents who, for example, want a child that is biologically their own, but might pass on a genetic defect of one of them if they proceeded to have a child in the natural way. The point is this. For Mill, correct rules are introduced by using the principle of utility, by considering the harms and benefits of following the rule. Once justified as leading to a greater balance of good over evil, doing the right thing amounts to conforming your behavior to such a rule. Mill uses the same termspleasure and painto refer to harms and benefits as does Bentham, but he means something quite different by these terms. Mill believes that only pleasure is intrinsically valuable, but he values not so much the amount of pleasure our actions produce, its quantity, but rather the kind of pleasure that results, its quality. How much pleasure is not as important to Mill as what kind of pleasure it is. A life with only bodily pleasures is not as good as one containing pleasures of the mind and spirit. The pleasure that one gets from love, and knowledge, and being morally good, and freedom, and

power, and God, and so on, makes a life much more worth living than a life that wallows in the mire of bodily pleasures alone. As you can see, Mill holds a version of hedonism that is quite different from that of Bentham. There is something quite right about utilitarianism. We do consider the consequences of our actions on ourselves and others in determining right from wrong, and we do try to follow rules designed to promote the common good. Utilitarianism has serious problems, however, as we shall see later on. There is more to the moral life than utilitarianism suggests. Later we shall try to take from it what is right and add what else is necessary for an adequate theory of obligation. For now, let us consider other possible solutions to see what these additional items may be.

DEONTOLOGY

Some theories of obligation consider more than the consequences of an action in determining whether or not it is morally right. They may consider the persons intention, for example, or their motive, as well as the consequences. Or they may not consider consequences at all. For example, I may say that what is right is what God commands me to do, whatever the consequences. Such theories are classified together as non consequentialist theories, or as deontological theories of obligation. This rather awkward name derives from the Greek term deon, meaning duty. Deontological theories think of right and wrong as a matter of conforming your behavior to a set of moral rules, to your duties. The main difference between these sorts of theories and rule utilitarianism is that the rules themselves are not justified by appealing to the consequences of following them. They are justified by appealing either to something in addition to consequences, or something other than consequences altogether. Deontological theories come in act and rule versions, as did consequentialist theories, but we will talk only about rule deontological theories of obligation. Act versions of deontology suffer from the same sort of criticisms as their act utilitarian counterparts, as we will see later. Perhaps the most famous version of rule deontological ethics is that of Immanuel Kant, whose influence in ethics has been every bit as strong as his influence in epistemology and metaphysics.

THE ETHICS OF KANT As utilitarianism contains both an idea of what is good and what is right, so Kantian ethics also contains an idea of what is good in itself and what sorts of actions are morally acceptable. However, Kants concept of right action, as well as his idea of the ultimate good, differs sharply from those of the utilitarians.

Kants theories are complex and sometimes challenging to understand, but they so enrich our discussion that the effort is worth it. The Good Will For Kant, the highest good, that which alone is intrinsically valuable, is a moral good, not a nonmoral good as it was with utilitarians. Kant says that the only thing that is good in itself is what he calls a good will. The term will is used by Kant to refer to our choices. To say that a person has a good will is to say that he or she makes good choices. To make a good choice in moral matters is both to do what is right and to do so with the correct motive. To choose to perform a morally acceptable action because it might make you look good, for example, is to act from the wrong motive. The only correct motive for moral action is duty. One should do what is right simply because it is his or her duty to do so, simply because it is right. Doing what is right because it leads to something elsepleasure for example, or a good reputation or avoidance of guiltis to act from the wrong motive. Having a good will, then, should not be seen as a means to some other good. It is good in itself. It has intrinsic value. We sometimes express this by saying things like virtue is its own reward. Why does Kant say that having a good will, or as we might say today a good moral character, is the only thing that has intrinsic value? Kants answer is that anything else can be turned to evil by an evil will. Think about the suggested list of nonmoral values discussed above. Each one of these can be turned into an evil by an evil will. Knowledge can be used for evil ends, for example. Pleasure can be gotten from an evil means, such as that acquired by a sadist torturing someone for sexual pleasure. Even a relationship with God can sometimes look like a pact with the devil. Many dastardly deeds have been performed in the name of God. Love may be twisted, freedom abused and power corrupted by an evil will. Anything other than a good will that is thought of as good in itself, and anything thought of as merely extrinsically valuable, may be transformed to an evil by an evil will. Acting From Duty If having a good will, or being a morally good person, is the highest good, then it is important to know what this means. Kant says that someone who acts with a good will is someone who does the right thing for the right reason. By the right reason he means the right motive. To do the right thing is to follow acceptable moral rules. So to be a morally good person, a person of good moral character, you must follow correct moral rules and you must do so with the correct motive. A good moral person is someone who follows correct moral rules for only one reasonrespect for the moral law itself. This respect amounts to what Kant calls acting from duty. Someone who acts with a good will does what

is right because it is his or her duty to do so and for no other reason. I will have a good will only if my actions are motivated by my duty to do what is right, and by duty alone. Obviously, if I do what is wrong I will not be a morally good person. But even if I do what is right, but do it with the wrong motive, I will not be a morally good person either. If I tell the truth, keep my promises, do not harm others and so on, because I might get punished if I do otherwise, or because I will be praised if I do, or because it will increase the amount of pleasure and freedom from pain in the world, then I have not acted from the proper moral motive. I have followed the rules, but I have done so for the wrong reasons. Behind this notion of acting from duty lies a fundamental difference between utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Acting from duty is radically different from acting to bring about consequences of one sort or another. For the utilitarian, following rules is good because it is way to bring about intrinsic nonmoral goods, especially those of pleasure and freedom from pain. Morality is thus merely a means to some nonmoral goods, and not worthwhile in itself. Morality is a servant of desire. I follow rules because of the consequences, because doing so will satisfy my desire for what I think of as the ultimate goods. Being moral is the way to achieve happiness for utilitarians, not something good in itself. It is merely a means to acquire what I and others want. For Kant, however, acting morally is a good in itself. The goodness of morality is in acting rightly, not in the results of so acting, results which may or may not turn out as we had hoped. In following rules regardless of their consequences, simply because doing so is our duty, we are fostering what is finest and most noble in ourselves. We act in accordance with our reason when we act from duty, instead of acting from desire. In acting morally we act according to what we think, not what we feel. In doing what is right just because it is right, and not because it will get us something that we desire beyond acting rightly, we are not blown about by our desires. Instead, it is we who control our desires, not they us. In this way we freely govern ourselves by our reason, the nobler part of ourselves. In so doing we honor what is most human in us, that which is the source of our freedom and dignity. In the end, acting morally for Kant will turn out to mean acting rationally, as we will soon see. Kants Theory of Obligation Having seen something of Kants value theory, let us turn now to his theory of obligation. If being a good person requires us to do what is right from a sense of duty, the question now is, How do we determine what is right? How do we tell which rules we ought to follow? Our duties cannot consist simply in following rules that promote pleasure and the avoidance of pain, as the utilitarians claim, since that would make right action depend upon consequences,

on how well they satisfied our desires. So Kant cannot use the principle of utility as his guide. Instead, the rules that we ought to follow for Kant are those which are right or wrong in themselves. Their rightness or wrongness is not determined by the outcomes of following them, but by some property intrinsic to the type of action to which they refer. Lying is wrong, for example, not because it generally leads to more pain than pleasure, but because there is something about lying itself, regardless of its consequences, that makes it wrong. The same goes for breaking promises, killing, stealing and the like. To help us discover what this intrinsic property might be, and thus what list of moral rules we ought to follow, Kant gives us a principle as our guide, a principle that he calls the categorical imperative. The Categorical Imperative: Rules Must Be Universal So far we know what we ought to strive for in life, what will make us happy according to Kanta good will, being a morally good person. We also know that a good will or a morally good person is one that chooses to follow morally correct rules out of respect for the moral law itselfsimply because it is our duty to follow such rules, and not because of any consequences which may or may not follow from doing so. Kant calls these rules that describe our duties maxims. What we do not know yet is how to determine which maxims to follow. Kants answer is to follow those rules allowed by the categorical imperative. As the principle of utility guides decisions about which rules to follow for utilitarians, the categorical imperative, what Kant calls the supreme principle of morality, is the principle that provides this guidance for Kant. We will have a good idea of Kants ethics once we understand what he means by the categorical imperative. Imperatives are commands. Some commands are hypothetical. They have this form: If you want this, do that. We tell our children to clean up their rooms, for example, if they want to watch television. Hypothetical imperatives describe actions that we may perform if we want to achieve certain goals or satisfy certain desires. Categorical commands have this form Do it! They contain no reference to any consequences that may follow, or to any desires that such actions may satisfy. They are not presented as choices that we may take or leave according to our interests. They are presented as obligations that bind us absolutely and unconditionally. There are no exceptions, no excuses and no conditions that release us from their force. The categorical imperative is the principle that describes this sense of unconditional duty that lies within all of us. According to Kant, it is the source of the moral law within, the source of our feeling that we ought to perform or refrain from performing certain types of actions, no matter what. According to Kant, the categorical imperative may be formulated in three different ways. These three different formulations each highlight a particular moral insight about the

general properties that any maxim must possess if it is to become an acceptable moral rule. Kants first formulation of the categorical imperative is: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law. What this says is that what is right cannot simply be what is right for me, but must be something that I could rationally choose to be right for anyone. It must be something that I could will to be a universal law, something that everyone ought to do, a rule that everyone ought to follow all of the time. This first formulation of the categorical imperative has some kinship with the golden rule, which says that we ought to do unto others as we would want them to do unto us. It requires that acceptable moral maxims be the same for all. Anyone acting rationally, and not just in their own self-interest, will act in ways that he or she would want others to act who were in the same position. The main reason that Kant thinks of following the categorical imperative as acting reasonably is that acting against it leads to a contradiction, and holding contradictory beliefs is the height of irrationality. Kant gives us an example of how this first formulation of the categorical imperative works to determine correct moral rules. Imagine someone who needs to borrow money, he says, but knows that he cannot repay it. Nevertheless, he promises to pay it back as a condition for receiving it. The maxim he is following, as formulated in described in the following example from Kants Critique of Practical Reason: When I need money I will borrow it and promise to repay it even though I know that I will never do so. Now I personally might be able to live according to this principle of self-interest. But the question is: Is it right? So I ask myself: What if my maxim was to become a universal law? Then I see at once that it could never even become a universal law....since it would contradict itself. For suppose it became a general rule that everyone started making promises they never intended to keep. Then promises themselves would become impossible as well as the purposes one might want to achieve by promising. For no one would ever believe that anything was promised to him, but would mock all promises as empty deceptions. Briefly put, it is wrong to break promises because if everyone did so when it suited their immediate interests, it would destroy the very notion of promise keeping. It is not because of the consequences of everyone breaking their promises that it is wrong to do so, as the rule utilitarian might say. Instead, it is because it violates reason itself to break promises. Because moral maxims must

be universalizable, it is a contradiction to think both that it is morally acceptable for you to break promises and to think that there are such things as promises at all. If everyone broke their promises when it suited them, there would be no such thing as promise-keeping any more. Three things are important to note here about the first formulation of the categorical imperative. First, the categorical imperative principle does not provide us with a list of concrete rules, such as dont lie, keep your promises, and so on. Instead it provides us with a property that any rule must live up to. This property has to do with the form that any rule must takeit must be universalizable. Second, in saying that rules must be universalizable, Kant points out that morality includes an element of impartiality. You are supposed to consider yourself no less bound by rules than anyone else. You are supposed to consider your duties equal to those of everyone else, and therefore to consider yourself just as obligated to obey moral maxims as everyone else. Everyone, you included, is to act without regard for self-interest, but only out of respect for the law. If it is a duty for others to follow a certain maxim, then it is a duty for you as well. Third, there are no exceptions to rules. Since the way that the categorical imperative gets applied to particular cases is to see if your act leads to a contradiction, then since any act of promise-breaking would lead to the same sort of contradiction mentioned in the quote above, any act of promise-breaking is wrong regardless of the circumstances. No matter how much it may hurt you to do so, no matter what the consequences, universalizable moral maxims must be followed at all times, without exception. It is never right to break promises, or to lie, or to kill someone, for example, however difficult it sometimes may be to keep these rules. Such rules describe actions that are intrinsically immoral for Kant. They are wrong in themselves, not just because of their consequences. This third consequence of holding the categorical imperative may have been avoided by Kant if had he recognized that sometimes rules conflict and that we have to choose which has the highest priority. It would have allowed him to escape from all the problems that are going to follow from believing that it is never right to break moral rules under any circumstances. As we have seen, it is right to break promises sometimes, namely when a higher rule demands it. The Second Formulation: Respect for Persons The second formulation of the categorical imperative is: So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only. This may be the most important insight of Kantian ethics. It says that no maxim may be accepted as a legitimate duty if it includes using people for the good of another. The familiar phrase: The end

doesnt justify the means, expresses this insight. It is not right, even if it produces lots of good, to use a person for the good of others. We use persons when we manipulate them, or force them to do things, or otherwise control their behavior. In this way we treat them as things, as objects, as beings whose only worth lies in what they are good for. At the root of this second formulation of the categorical imperative is the idea that rational human beings are good in themselves, they are the jewels of creation, that they have intrinsic value. We are not important solely for how much we contribute to society, for our social worth, but we are worthwhile in ourselves. What makes us worthwhile is our reason. By reason we mean both our ability to understand the world around us, and our use of reason to guide our lives, especially to achieve a good moral character. Even those of us who do not act rationally, those of us who are weak-willed and act only from desire, are intrinsically valuable because we could act rationally. To use someone as a thing, a mere means to the good of another, is to violate their inherent worth as rational beings. For example, suppose an oncologist researcher designs an experiment which uses twelve old, dying, senile nursing home patients. They are to be injected with cancer cells and studied for knowledge of disease transmission. Suppose also that these people are given pain killers, so that during the experiment they feel even better than they did before. Suppose even further that valuable knowledge was discovered, knowledge that prevented millions of people from contracting certain forms of cancer in the future. Would such an experiment be morally acceptable? I hope that your answer is a resounding, NO! It is immoral, because it uses people, even people of such low social worth, as a mere means to the good of othersas guinea pigs we say. This is the major insight in Kants second formulation of the categorical imperative. Not only must morally acceptable maxims be universalizable, they must also respect persons as intrinsically valuable. No maxim is acceptable if it allows us to use people exclusively as a means to the good of others. This does not mean that we can never, under any conditions, use people as a means to our good. We can use people as a means to our good if they allow us to do so, if they freely choose to be so used. The mailman brings my mail, the waiter serves my food, and the nurse bandages my wounds. This is alright, according to Kant, since I am not using them as mere objects. I am not forcing them or manipulating them against their will, for example. To do that would be to use them only as a means to my good. This is what the second formulation of the categorical imperative forbids, treating people merely as a means. Instead, we must respect persons as valuable in themselves.

Since a rule that involved using someone as a means would not be universalizable, Kant believes that the two version of the categorical imperative are two different formulations of the same principle. A maxim that allowed slavery, for example, would be rejected as an example of using some people as a means to the good of others. But it would also be rejected as a valid maxim because it is not universalizable. If it was morally acceptable for you to own slaves, then it would be morally acceptable for everyone to own slaves. This would mean that everyone would be a slavesomeone who owns nothing, which would contradict the very notion of ownership. The Third Formulation: Respect For Autonomy The third formulation of the categorical imperative is: So act as if you were always through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends. This statement will take a comment or two to clarify. First, by kingdom of ends, Kant envisions a web of all rational beings, held together by the threads of shared moral maxims. Think of it as a moral universe, where every person is related to every other one by their shared duties and mutual respect. Clearly this part of the third formulation is compatible with the first two. What about the law-making part of this statement, however; what new property does that add to our list of properties that all moral maxims must possess? In addition to universalizability and respect for persons, what else does it say that rules must possess in order to be acceptable moral maxims? Kants answer, in a word, is autonomy. That is, such rules must be freely chosen by us. We may be trained in our youth to refrain from lying and stealing, and to treat each other with respect and so on; but until we accept these rules freely, and act upon them because we accept them as our duties, we are not creating a good will. We are acting in accordance with the law, perhaps, but not from respect for the law. For Kant, we must see moral maxims as our own rules. However they were acquired initially, they must become rules that we give to ourselves, not rules imposed on us by others. This does not mean that we can create and follow any rules that we may wish, however. On the contrary, the rules by which we freely govern ourselves must follow reason. To follow reason is to follow rules that are universalizable and that respect persons as intrinsically valuable. Moreover, since moral maxims must be universalizable, then every time you decide to act on one you should think of yourself as creating a new law for everyone, for every member of the kingdom of ends, for every other rational being. To create a good moral character we must submit to such moral rules, rules that would be acceptable to any rational being, and do so of our own free will. This is the meaning of the third formulation of the categorical imperative. But why is it important to choose such an ethical life freely? Would we not be as good if we were just trained to follow rules that were universalizable

and treated persons with respect? To understand why Kant insists that a good will requires autonomy or freedom, we must look closer at the meaning that this notion has for him. To understand Kants concept of freedom we must first distinguish between freedom of action and freedom of the will. I am free to act if nothing prevents me from getting what I want. I am not free to go to the Bahamas, for example, if I cannot afford it, or if someone has a gun to my head threatening to shoot me if I do, or if the US government has placed a ban on travel to the Bahamas. Absent these sorts of constraints, however, I am free to go. I can do what I want, I have freedom of action. For Kant, however, freedom from external constraint is not true freedom. Being free to do what you want to, freedom of action, is not freedom of the will. Someone who does what they want is someone who is still controlled by their wants, by their desires. True freedom requires more than this; it requires freedom from internal constraint as well; it requires that we control desire itself; it requires that we can act contrary to our desires, just by willing to do so. To be truly free or autonomous is to be fully in control of ourselves, fully self-governing. True freedom requires reason to be in charge of our decisions, not desire. For reason to control behavior it is not enough to act in accordance with moral maxims. This is just another way to act from desire, the desire to do what others want you to do. Only by freely choosing to submit to moral rules are we truly free, truly autonomous beings. What we submit to is reason as it is expressed in practical matters. These are the moral maxims that conform to the categorical imperative. Why we need to submit freely, is because this form of self-legislation is the only way to rise above desire, to be truly rational beings. Reason is what is best in us, reason is what we most truly are. So to choose freely to submit to universalizable moral maxims is to live according to our true selves, not according to the wishes of others, not according to our own desires. It is to be truly autonomous. Such an autonomous, self-governing life is the source of our dignity and deserves the highest respect. We are to respect and nurture our own autonomy as well as that of others, as a full expression of our rational selves. In practice this means that we are to see others as the center of their own life plans, and to respect their decisions even when we may disagree with them. In an autonomous person, such decisions are an expression of reason and thus are an expression of a good will, that most noble part of us all. For Kant, the reason that a good will has intrinsic value is because it is the expression in action of our reason itself. Reason is followed when we follow rules that are rational, that any rational being would choose to follow, because to go against them would be irrational, would be contradictory. This is the first formulation of the categorical imperative, which tells us to follow universalizable rules. The second formulation tells us to respect persons as valuable in themselves. They are valuable because of their reason, which is what shines so

brightly in them. That is why we must not treat them as things, as merely a means to the good of another. They are not mere things that may be prized as commodities are prized. People are not for salethey are beyond all price, as Kant says. The third formulation of the categorical imperative recognize that true moral behavior must be freely chosen behavior, and that any moral maxim must respect the autonomy of persons. If the goal of life is developing a good will, and if doing so amounts to acting according to reason, then the goal of life is to become as fully rational, and thus as fully autonomous, as possible. Reason allows us to rise above a merely animal existence, it allows us to escape the chains of desire, it allows us to govern ourselves, as do the gods. VIRTUE ETHICS At the beginning of this discussion we said that ethics studies how to decide which actions are morally right. In so doing it constructs theories of obligation. Theories of obligation present a general definition of right action, usually formulated as a principle, and a set of instructions about how to apply the principle to particular cases. We also said that ethics studies the good, as well. It does this in two ways. First, it tries to identify what we called nonmoral goods; those intrinsic values that we believe will make us happy. In so doing it constructs theories of value, some of which are monistic, while others are pluralistic. Second, ethics studies moral good, those properties of persons that make them morally good, such as their moral character and their motives. Most modern consequentialists and deontologists have focused less on what is good and more on what is right. When they have discussed the good, they have especially been concerned with nonmoral goods, such as pleasure. Often they are concerned with nonmoral goods only as a way to determine right from wrong, as is the case with consequentialism. They have spent very little time discussing moral goods, the sorts of things that make one a morally good or virtuous person. They are much more interested in identify the moral principles that guide the formation of rules than in discussing what makes a morally good person. They are more interested in what makes actions right, than in what makes a person good. Although Kant had much to say about moral goods, he focused mainly on the rules that one had to follow to achieve a good moral character, and especially on the basic moral principle to which all such rules had to conform, the categorical imperative. Virtues and Obligations The modern emphasis on principles and rules has not always been the focus of ethics. Many Ancient philosophers, Aristotle being the main example, believed that rules and principles are of secondary importance in our moral lives. What really counts in ethics is not knowledge of a set of rules and the principles

that guide their formation, but the development of good persons. Like Aristotle, modern day virtue ethics focuses on the kinds of persons we ought to be, not on knowing which rules and principles we ought to follow. It focuses on what is morally good, not on what is right. Doing what is right may be a part of what makes a person good. After all, you cannot be morally good while at the same time performing immoral actions. But being a good moral person is more than doing what is right. A morally good, or morally virtuous, person is one who possesses a good moral character. A good moral character is one that consists of virtuous moral habits, or virtues. Virtues may be thought of as dispositions, or tendencies to behave in certain morally acceptable ways. Honesty, for example, is a moral virtue. It is the tendency to tell the truth. Dishonesty, on the other hand, is a vice. It is the tendency or habit of lying. There are other sorts of virtues besides moral virtues. We have mentioned many traits of critical thinkers throughout this text, for example, such as inquisitiveness and tolerance. Patience is a virtue, we are told, though not a moral virtue. A virtue may be thought of as any habit or skill required to achieve a certain goal. Since we are interested in what makes us a good person, we will discuss only moral virtues in what follows. At first glance, talking about virtues seems to be just another way to talk about rules. The virtue of honesty, for example, seems to be nothing but living your life according to the rule, Do not lie. So whats the big difference between virtue ethics and an ethics based on principles? There are many fundamental differences between these two approaches to ethics. In fact, even though on the surface they appear to be quite similar, they are really two very different ways to think about morality. There are three major differences that we will mention here. The first difference is that virtue ethics has a lot to say about our motives for acting. Virtue ethics is especially concerned with what makes us good, and this is where the goodness of our actions lies, in our reasons for acting. This is not to say that those who emphasize theories of obligation have nothing to say about motives, but in virtue theories such discussions take center stage. In virtue ethics, it is generally considered that concern for my well-being and for the wellbeing of others is the best motive for action. This is very different from Kants conception of motivation, as you will remember from our earlier discussion. For Kant, the only appropriate motive for moral action is duty. In acting from duty I act according to reason, whatever my feelings or desires happen to be. The difference between these two ideas of the proper motivation for moral action is striking. How cold would be a mother who fed, clothed, sheltered and educated her children simply because it was her duty to do so? Instead, she is more admirable to us if she does so from concern for the well-being of her childrenfrom love, in other words. In recognizing that the good of myself and others is a motive for action that is superior to duty, virtue ethics allows feelings and desires back into the moral life, though always under the control of reason.

Unlike Kant, virtue ethics allows us to see moral choices as those of persons, not just abstract reason. A second major difference between obligation and virtue approaches to ethics is in their goals. The goal of theories of obligation is to teach us the difference between right and wrong. It achieves this goal by identifying rules and principles that we are obliged to follow, even if we do not want to. The goal of virtue ethics, on the other hand, is to show us how to be happy, how to live good lives, a life of human flourishing, as Aristotle says. Part of a good life may include living up to your moral obligations, but virtue ethics has a much broader conception of the moral life than an ethics of obligation. It places the emphasis on achieving what is good for ourselves and for others, and not simply on identifying the obligations that we have to others. In virtue ethics, living up to our obligations is important only to the degree that doing so contributes to the grander scheme of living a rich and fulfilling life. A third way in which virtue ethics differs from an ethics of obligation is in their way of thinking about values. If the goal of ethics is to show us how to live good and happy lives, then it must contain a conception of such a life, a moral ideal. Only in the light of such an ideal can we identify the particular virtues that we wish to develop. A moral ideal in this case is a general conception of the good life, a general idea of what sorts of persons we think we ought to be, if we are to be truly happy. Such an ideal may be thought of as similar to the nonmoral intrinsic values identified by those who favor an ethics of obligation. The parallels are especially close between the virtue ethics moral ideal and the consequentialists intrinsic value, such as pleasure for example. There are, however, differences that important to note. The ideal itself may be quite different in the two approaches to ethics. As we will see quite soon, the most famous practitioner of virtue ethics, Aristotle, held a very different idea of what will make us happy than that of the hedonist. A second difference is in the way that such ideals function in a moral theory. This is a subtle but important point. For a consequentialist, such as Mill, the ideal of pleasure determines right from wrong. If actions achieve it, they are right; if not, they are wrong. The actions themselves and the rules and principles that guide them are merely a means to bring about happiness, or a life that maximizes pleasure while minimizing pain. In virtue ethics, however, the virtues are not merely a means to bring about the life of happiness. They are not simply a means to an end. Rather, the collection of virtues is the goal itself. Living a good or happy life just is living virtuously. Virtuous character traits, the behavior that springs from them, and the appropriate feelings and attitudes that accompany them, are all good in themselves, because they themselves constitute the good life. The good life is not anything over and above the virtues, any more than playing a good game of

baseball is anything over and above hitting well, fielding well, running fast, and so on. Virtues should not be thought of as obligations that have become habits, but rather as ways to contribute to the good life. The best way to think of virtue ethics is as not even using the concept of obligation at all. If ethics is about becoming happy persons, and if this is something that we all want for ourselves and others anyway, then it hardly makes sense to say that we are obliged to do what is ethical. Instead of identifying our obligations, the goal of ethics is to produce good and happy people, people living lives of human flourishing. The virtues are simply particular ways to contribute to such a life. If right means anything in virtue ethics, it means something like behavior that contributes to the good life, while wrong means behavior that is not good for us. If living the good life is the goal of ethics, then it is crucial to know what we mean by the good life. One of the most famous conceptions of the good life that was developed in the context of virtue ethics is that of Aristotle.

Aristotle: The Good Life The earliest well-developed theory of virtue ethics was that of Aristotle. According to Aristotle, what is good for any particular type of living thing is that which fulfills its nature. All living things of the same type share a common structure which results in common, natural behavior. Tomato plants all have the same sorts of leaves and roots and fruit, for example, which grow and develop in roughly the same way for each successful plant. Their good in general is the full development of the plant. That is how they realize themselves. That is how a tomato plant should be. For human beings as well, the good life is the life of the full development of all of our natural ways of being. These include all of our various dimensions biological, psychological, and intellectual. Special emphasis is placed by Aristotle on the development of what is distinctively human, however, our rational abilities, especially knowledge and virtue. While we are animals, and thus must satisfy our biological and emotional desires to be happy, we are also rational, and thus must satisfy the desires of reason as well, especially the desire to know. A full, rich, happy life includes having wisdom, what Aristotle calls intellectual virtues. It also requires that we use this wisdom to direct our lives. The use of reason to direct our lives is called moral virtue. Each particular moral virtue is just another way to act rationally. We are fully developed as human beings, and thus have achieved our goal in life, and thus are happy, only when we have acquired the intellectual and moral virtues that the full development of our natures requires. So one thing that happiness requires is that we be morally good persons. But how do we tell which habits are moral virtues and which are

vices, and thus what counts as a good moral character? What set of instructions does Aristotle give us for determining what is good for us in particular situations? We can tell what is good for us in several ways. The way most of us develop our moral character is through moral training. Our parents, teachers, peers and so on tell us what morally good behavior is. They also tell us what counts as appropriate feelings and attitudes and motives for acting. So we can learn what is good for by training, by others telling us. We can also learn from our own personal experience which sorts of behaviors are good and which are not good for us. Most of us do not need to experience too many nights of drunkenness, followed by the inevitable morning hangover, for example, to quickly learn that drinking to excess is not good for us. We can also tell what a good life is by observing the lives of those we admire, says Aristotle. We learn by example what are a virtue and a vice. We have examples of moral heroes and ordinary good people, whom we admire and wish to be like. These examples are used as a template by society and by individuals to shape the moral ideals they wish to emulate. Christ may be a model for some societies and individuals, while the life of Socrates, or Confucius, or Buddha, or Mohammed, or any number of inspirational people may provide models of a good life for others. Finally, we can also learn what virtuous behavior is by figuring it out for ourselves, by a process of reasoning Aristotle calls phronesis. This term is best translated as prudence, or prudential reasoning. Aristotle gives us perhaps the most famous example of such reasoning in his discussion of what he calls the golden mean. The Golden Mean Prudential reasoning is a way of figuring out what is good for me in particular situations. In general, it begins with the assumption that morally good persons, persons who lead good lives, are those who live a life of moderation in all things. They choose the mean between extreme types of actions. For example, courage is a virtue, because it is the mean between the extremes of cowardice, on the one hand, and recklessness, on the other. A coward has too little courage, while a reckless person, someone who takes excessive risks, may have too much for his own good. Another example of a virtue for Aristotle is temperance. To be temperate is to regulate your actions in matters of pleasure avoiding the excesses of self-indulgence, on the one hand, and the deficiencies of abstinence, on the other. The happy life should contain pleasure, but not be driven by its pursuit. Generosity is another virtue, because it lies between the extremes of stinginess, one the one hand, and being overly generous, on the other. For Aristotle, choosing the mean between extremes is the way for reason to control the excesses of the emotions and passions. Each extreme is either a

deficiency of character or an excess of ita vice, in other words. Extreme types of behavior are motivated by desire or feeling, without the benefit of thinking through the consequences of such action. A life of moderation is not a life of safety or boredom, but is a life where reason is in control. Such a life enables one to live fully, to live as closely to the ideal of a good life as possible. A life of moderation does not ignore our feelings and desires, but channels them to their proper function, and thus controls them for the well-being of the person. The life of moderation, one that avoids the excesses and the deficiencies of behavior, is a life governed by reason, not a life directed by uncontrollable passions and desires. Aristotle sums up the role of choosing the mean, in his Nichomachean Ethics, as follows: We can experience fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity and generally any kind of pleasure and pain either too much or too little, and in either case not properly. But to experience all this at the right time, toward the right objects, toward the right people, for the right reason, and in the right manner that is the mean and the best course, the course that is the mark of virtue. According to Aristotle, it is not so much your duty to live a life of moderation, as it is in your interest to do so. Without a life of choosing the mean, desires will rule your life, and you will be cut off from fulfilling many of your natural functions. You will not realize your full potential as a human being. You will not lead a good life. You will not be happy. In the end, what is important in Aristotles version of virtue ethics is that one live as fully humanly as possible, that one live as he or she was meant to live, that one live a life that is directed by reason toward the well-being of the individual. Such a life is a truly good life.

OTHER ETHICAL THEORIES

There are many other types of ethical theories, all of which are staunchly defended by their proponents. We will briefly describe a few of these here. Do No Harm One approach to ethics that grows out of a reaction to utilitarianism claims that we have no general moral obligation to good for others, only to avoid harming them. If we were really obliged to act for the good of everyone, and to do so without regard for how closely we were associated with them, then we would have to lead very different sorts of lives than most of us do. For example, it is estimated that there are some 30,000 to 40,000 people that die each day from the effects of malnutrition. Most of these people live in developing nations. They

are strangers to us. We have no connection with them. Are we immoral because we do not save them from such a fate? It is easy to see how one could answer yes to this question, and thereby seem to confirm the view of the utilitarian that we do have a general obligation to help others. If we did, however, we would have to spend our lives in pursuit of doing good and reducing evil whenever possible. A moral saint may take on such a mission perhaps, but it clearly strikes many as beyond the call of duty. Instead, according to the do no harm theory, our only general moral obligation is not to harm others. The guiding principle of morality should be simply do no harm. If we choose to live on a mountain top, spending our days in fasting and prayerful meditation, trying our best to get closer to God, are we leading immoral lives? On the contrary, such people have often been thought of as leading exemplary lives. Even if they were concerned only with their own lives and were not praying for the good of others, we certainly would not think of them as morally bankrupt persons. A quick glance at the moral rules accepted by most of us will confirm that we have no general obligation to help others. Most rules are of this form: Do not______, where the blank is filled in with the description of a prohibited type of action, usually an action harmful to others. Most general moral rules simply oblige us not harm others in specific ways. We are admonished not to kill, or lie, or steal, and so on. If we have no general obligation to do good for others, it does not mean that we have no obligations whatsoever so help others. What we do have are obligations to help specific others. We must not only avoid evil, but also do good for those with whom we have special relationships. If we have children, for example, we must care for them. If we are members of a family, we are obliged to help family members in their time of need. If my brother is hungry, I am more obliged to feed him than a stranger living in another country. Doctors must do good for their patients, teachers must do good for their students, friends must help each other, and so on. Most of us find ourselves in special relationships with others, so we all have some duties to do good for some others. We might argue about whether or not a hungry stranger in another land is really my brother or not. If he is, if we are all related as brothers and sisters in the human species, then there is no doubt that I am obliged to help him, too. If not, then my helping him or not is a matter of charity, not obligation. It is what ethicists call a supererogatory act. It is a praiseworthy act, but it is an act that goes beyond the call of duty. The point for now, however, is that we do not have a general obligation to increase human happiness and decrease human misery whenever and wherever we can. According to do no harm ethics, I am only obliged not to harm anyone. I am not obliged to do good for anyone with whom I am not related in a special way.

The Ethics of Care As the do no harm principle may be seen as a reaction to the excessive demands of utilitarianism, the ethics of care may be seen as a reaction to the narrowness of a male-dominated approach to ethics. The basic claim it makes is that men and women, whether by training or natural inclination, have fundamentally different notions about the nature of moral decision-making. According to these studies, the ethical thinking of men is legalistic. When faced with a moral problem, men determine which course of action is right by determining which rule (or which right) has the highest priority. They see moral problems as conflicts to be solved by appealing to abstract rules. One side triumphs over the other by using principles as their weapons. Women solve moral problems quite differently, however. They attempt to resolve moral problems in ways that satisfy the personal concerns of all the individuals involved. This different orientation to moral decision-making springs from a different set of values that women hold dear. What is important to them is caring for othersbeing sensitive to their feelings, their points of view, their needs, and especially their relationships. Abstract rules ride roughshod over these values. The virtues prized by malesthose of justice, with its special stress on impartiality, and duty, which places law over personal concernsseem to ignore them completely. Neither provides much guidance for negotiating a moral settlement, where the interests of all parties involved are met to the degree that this is possible. Caring for others is the central virtue in the ethics of care, and the moral ideal is not so much a rational person as a caring person. As a mother cares for her children, so should all of us care for each other and ourselves? We live up to this ideal by empathizing with different points of view, and by focusing on the personal, individual outcomes of our decisions. An ethics of care has much to offer any ethical theory, whether that theory is used by a man or a woman. Perhaps if we placed caring as high on list of virtues as justice and duty, the world would not be such an impersonal place. Perhaps our communities, our families, and even our business institutions would be kinder, gentler, more human places to grow and develop. We will later draw on the strengths of an ethics of care in our attempt to find the best possible ethical theory. The Ethics of Rights Our final possible solution is an ethics of rights. Many moral problems are formulated in terms of rights. The abortion issue, for example, usually pits the right to life of the fetus against the pregnant womans right to privacy. The physician-assisted-suicide issue is argued from the perspective of the dying patients right to self-determination, and his right to avoid needless suffering

on the one hand, and the rights of society on the other. Many of the contemporary moral problems that divide society are seen as conflicts of rights, with each side proclaiming that its rights should override the others. An ethics of rights arises from the attempts of political philosophers to determine criteria for acceptable legal rights. To explain what is meant by the ethics of rights will require us first to say a few words about legal rights. People often claim that they should have legal rights to things that strike others as downright silly. Do I have the right to be fed, clothed and housed by others even if I choose not to work? Do I have the right to drive an expensive sports car even if I cannot afford one? Do I have the right to cosmetic surgery to reduce my obesity? To a yearly vacation? To attend the opera? Since rights usually have correlative duties associated with them, to say that I have a right to something usually means that someone else has a duty to provide me with that something. My rights to be fed, have a sports car, receive cosmetic surgery and so on, require others to provide these things. Because of this, it is important to be able to distinguish legitimate legal rights from the mere expression of desire. Legal rights are thought of as claims against someone else that the law is willing to support. If I have a winning lottery ticket, for example, I have a legally protected claim to the money that I won. If I own a house, I have property rights, the legally protected claim to keep others out of my house. Having a legal right also imposes upon others specific duties. My right to life, for example, imposes upon you the duty not to kill me. My property rights give you the duty to stay out of my house unless invited in. What makes these rights and their correlative duties legitimate for a rights theorist is that they rest on a foundation of moral rights called natural rights, and sometimes human rights. A natural right is a right that belongs to you apart from any legal system. If we have such rights, then they would have to be respected by others. Any government that tries to rob us of such rights is seen as morally corrupt, since the very purpose of government is to protect these rights. Any fellow citizen that violates these rights is subject to punishment. It is not uncommon to base the legitimacy of political systems on a foundation of natural rights. This is the case in the United States, where we claim in our Constitution that we all possess unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are rights that no one can take from us because they are ours by nature. A legitimate government is supposed to uphold these rights. It is not supposed to allow one citizen to violate the natural rights of others, and it is not supposed to do so itself. Perhaps the best expression of natural rights is that of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948. All human beings are supposed to have the rights listed therein, including what is required to meet their basic needs.

Such natural rights form the basis of an ethics of rights. Those who hold an ethics of right determine moral right from wrong by identifying natural rights and other moral rights that may be derived from them. If I have a natural right to liberty for example, then I have a right to exercise this liberty in various ways. I have the right to think and speak and express myself in other ways, as long as doing so does no harm to others. Legal rights may then be seen as more specific ways to protect these rights, as the First Amendment to the Constitution protects free speech. There is a long tradition of natural rights approaches to ethics which has much to offer in our search for an adequate ethical theory. Especially important is its insistence that any legitimate government must rest on a moral foundation. It may not follow just any laws of its choosing, but must respect the basic moral rights which are possessed by all of its citizens. This tradition has also been important in picking out which of these moral rights are truly essential, such as the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is only by protecting such rights that any society may survive and flourish. However, an ethics of rights does not provide the best guidance for determining right from wrong. Identifying moral rights is not merely a matter of identifying basic natural rights and the more specific moral and legal rights that follow from them. In order to identify something as a right in the first place, it must be determined that the actions it requires or permits are morally right actions. We would reject a claim that there is a natural right to take anything we please from anyone we please, for example, because doing so is morally wrong. We know this because such actions violate basic moral principles and rules. We must know which actions are right and wrong before we can identify something as a natural right. In fact, talking about rights is simply a shorthand way of talking about what is right (actions). Right used as an adjective is the most basic moral concept. Right used as a noun is simply a way to refer to a related collection of obligations. The right to life is simply a way to refer to the fact that it is wrong to kill. It is wrong to kill because it violates basic moral principles. If this is so, then it is best to understand rights as correlated with obligations or duties, and to understand obligations as determined by reference to principles. Since obligations, phrased as rules, define which actions are morally appropriate and which are not, we shall understand talk about rights as simply a short-hand way for talking about what is right and wrong to do. We will have little to say about an ethics of rights in what follows, since everything important about rights can be understood using the language of right action.