Do the right thing Virtue ethics can be thought of as an ethics of doing the right thing (See previous post) In the Encyclopedia of Philosophy we find the following: Most virtue ethics theories take their inspiration from Aristotle who declared that a virtuous person is someone who has ideal character traits. These traits derive from natural internal […]
Aristotle has influenced people down to our very day. He lived about 2500 years ago in Greece. His works on ethics have been used to challenge people over the centuries to discover the virtuous life. His approach is called the ethics of virtue. In virtue ethics the goal is not so much to follow one’s […]
Public Ethics in Question One of the deepest issues of our culture today is determining which ethical principles apply to our lives and our conduct with one another. We call these public ethics. This is especially true when we attempt to find an ethical pathway in a landscape which seems to be filled with hidden […]
Why Ponder Ethics? Suppose that I am working in an academic area that most of us believe doesn’t really involve ethics. Why ponder ethics in my field of endeavor?Let’s say that area is computer science. Who is to decide what constitutes ethical actions when programming a computer? Don’t most of us simply assume that ethics […]
Three Types of Ethical Thinking When one is faced with the task of making decisions, it is important to have some grasp of the basis for making that decision. In the tradition of ethical thinking, there are several main approaches to this question. The three most prominent have been deontological theories of ethics, teleological theories […]