. Perhaps on the dominant view an enquiry into how men ought to act in general, not as means to a given end. Etymology supports this: see MORAL. The primary concepts are then ought, obligation, duty, right, wrong, though not in all their uses. For the other main view the primary topic is value and the primary concepts are the valuable, the desirable, the good in itself. All these notions are normally included under ethics, though the second group can also be excluded as belonging rather to axiology, the study of value in general (in aesthetics, economics, etc., as well as ethics). An ethics based primarily on value can be called an axiological ethics.
These two views of ethics correspond closely to two outlooks in it. For deontologists (notably Kant, W.D.Ross, H.A.Prichard) duty is prior to value, and at least some of our duties, such as promise-keeping, are independent of values. Deontological properly means connected with, or favouring, this outlook. Deontic means, simply, connected with duty and related notions, as in ‘deontic LOGIC’. For teleologists, notably UTILITARIANS, our only duties have reference to ends and are to produce value, or perhaps to distribute it in certain ways; cf. CONSEQUENTIALISM. These views may not be sharply distinguishable, since deliberate action must always aim at some end; and even Kant emphasized moral worth. Also the slogan ‘Do right, whatever the consequences’ faces difficulties over distinguishing acts from their consequences (cf. ACTION).
However, though this distinction still holds, it has recently been supplemented with other approaches less easy to classify, notably rights-based ethics, where rights are prior to duties in the sense that duties are defined in terms of them, and VIRTUE-based ethics, where the promotion of the virtues and of actions based on them is taken as the proper aim.
The distinction between views of ethics and views in ethics is reflected in two groups into which ethical questions are often divided. These are usually contrasted as ethics/morals, metaethics/ ethics, philosophical ethics/normative ethics, or metaethics/normative ethics, the subject as a whole being called ethics, moral philosophy, or sometimes morals.
In the first group are conceptual questions, which introduce other branches of philosophy, notably logic, philosophy of language, and epistemology. During this century questions about the meaning of ethical terms and the CRITERIA for applying them have been emphasized. How do the terms relate to each other, including the ‘bad’ terms, like ‘bad’, ‘evil’, ‘wrong’, etc., though in practice these ‘bad’ terms receive much less attention? How do moral uses of all these terms relate to non-moral uses, and in general what distinguishes the MORAL as such? Other questions concern how we should analyse sentences containing these terms. Cf. NATURALISM, on the prescriptivist/descriptivist issue and the fact/value distinction. A connected question is whether there are any objective moral truths (as moral realism holds), and whether moral conclusions can be objective even if not strictly describable as ‘true’. Questions about how such conclusions might be known, and, in general about how moral arguments can be justified, what part is played in them by reason, feeling and intuition, and about the nature and role of conscience, belong to moral epistemology. An important notion in this area is that of UNIVERSALIZABILITY, and the MORAL sphere can often be compared with others, e.g. the aesthetic or that of rational action in general. Cf. also GOOD, OUGHT.
Questions of the second main group mentioned above concern actual moral issues, like: What things are good, right, etc.? What are our duties? Are there any natural rights? Do animals have rights? When if ever is abortion, or genetic engineering and experimentation, permissible? When and how far can war be justified, especially when mass destruction is involved?
These two groups were sharply distinguished (and the first preferred) both by logical POSITIVISM because of its restrictions on what could be true or false, and by the succeeding linguistic PHILOSOPHY because in rejecting the restrictive dogmatism of the positivists it also thought the philosopher should avoid dogmatizing on substantial issues. However, this all implies that every position on questions of the first group is compatible with every position on those of the second. This compatibility results from the particular answers positivism and linguistic philosophy gave to questions of the first group. These answers, and therefore the sharpness of the distinction, have been attacked because of doubts on the fact/ value distinction and more willingness to allow reason a role in moral arguments, not just in factual or logical preliminaries. The second group has therefore received much more attention recently, and subjects such as business ethics, legal ethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics (the last two overlapping with bioethics or the ethics of life), are flourishing parts of what is often called applied philosophy.
Many questions seem not to belong to either group alone, such as analyses of particular virtues and vices, and questions about merit and responsibility and about moral ideals. Questions belonging to philosophy of mind rather than ethics, but clearly relevant here, concern FREEWILL, psychological HEDONISM and INCONTINENCE. Such borderline questions are often classified as moral psychology, along with analyses of notions like motive, intention, desire, voluntary, deliberation, pain, pleasure, happiness; ethics proper examines their moral relevance. Interest is a more specifically ethical notion, and the distinction between one’s own and others’ interests leads to questions about egoism and altruism.
One question involving both moral psychology and ethics concerns the Catholic double effect doctrine: we may not intentionally produce evils, but we may sometimes rightly do what we foresee will produce evils, provides we do not intend these, but regard them as unwanted side-effects, not as indispensable steps. Does this make sense? If so, is it psychologically possible? And is it morally acceptable?
Metaphysical and religious justifications for ethical positions are uncommon now, but one concept deserving mention is that of the FUNCTION of man, appealed to especially by Aristotle.
A distinction is sometimes made between agent ethics and spectator ethics because things like motives, and the difference between what is right and what the agent thinks is right, may play one role when one is deciding what to do, and another role when one is judging what someone else does or should do.
Casuistry is the application of moral principles to particular cases or types of case. Here it contrasts with situational ethics, or moral particularism, which insists on considering each moral situation as it arises, in isolation from others, and rejecting general principles. Casuistry has fallen into disrepute largely from the possibility of using ever more subtle features of a situation to reach a desired moral conclusion in the face of allegedly inadequate moral principles—‘inadequate’ can be stretched to cover ‘inconvenient’.
Descriptive ethics examines what moral views are actually held by various people or societies, and whether any are universally held. Though such questions might seem scientific rather than philo-sophical, they often involve analysis and interpretation as well as mere fact-finding, and indeed illustrate the blurring of the philosophy-science distinction.
*B.Almond and D.Hill (eds), Applied Philosophy: Morals and Metaphysics in Contemporary Debate, Routledge, 1991. (Selections from Journal of Applied Philosophy on environment, personal relations, war etc., justice and equality, and medical ethics. Cf. also B.Almond (ed.), Introducing Applied Ethics, Blackwell, 1995, and for a more theoretical and methodologically based collection, E.R.Winkler and J.R.Coombs (eds), Applied Ethics: A Reader, Blackwell, 1993, mainly new or revised essays with summaries linking them.)
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics. (Very influential, for methods rather than conclusions, on post-war British ethics; cf. R.Sorabji, ‘Aristotle and Oxford Philosophy’, in American Philosophical Quarterly, 1969. See book 1 for functions, books 2–5 for virtues and responsibility, book 7 for incontinence.)
J.Dancy, Moral Reasons, Blackwell, 1993. (Defends moral particularism, among other things.)
S.Darwall, A.Gibbard, P.Railton, ‘Towards fin de siècle ethics: some trends’, Philosophical Review, 1992. (Survey of developments from 1950 to 1990 with many references.)
J.N.Findlay, Axiological Ethics, Macmillan, 1970. (Discusses some less fashionable writers.)
P.Foot, Virtues and Vices, Blackwell, 1978. (Collection of articles by her on title topic and many others in ethics.)
*W.Frankena, Ethics, Prentice-Hall, 1963. (Short introduction, from modified Utilitarian standpoint.)
A.Gewirth, ‘Metaethics and moral neutrality’, R.C.Solomon, ‘Sumner on metaethics’, Ethics, 1968, G.H.von Wright, The Varieties of Goodness, RKP, Humanities Press, 1963, esp. chapter 1, G.J.Warnock, The Object of Morality, Methuen, 1971. (All these illustrate the breakdown of the sharp metaethics normative ethics distinction.)
R.M.Hare, Freedom and Reason, Oxford UP, 1963. (Includes discussion of moral ideals. Cf. J.O.Urmson, ‘Saints and heroes’, in A.I.Melden (ed.), Essays in Moral Philosophy, 1958, reprinted in J.Feinberg (ed.), Moral Concepts, Oxford UP, 1969.)
*G.Harman, The Nature of Morality, Oxford UP, 1977. (Elementary introduction.)
*A.C.MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, RKP, 1966.
J.L.Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Penguin, 1977. (Antirealist approach, i.e. opposing moral realism. Cf. also S. Blackburn, Spreading the Word, Clarendon, 1984.)
J.T.Morgan, ‘An historical analysis of the principle of double effect’, Theological Studies, 1949.
H.A.Prichard, Moral Obligation, Clarendon, 1949, Oxford UP, 1968. (Early twentieth-century intuitionism. For examples of more recent revival of intuitionism see A.T.Kolnai, Ethics, Value and Reality, Athlone Press, 1977, D.Wiggins, Needs, Values, Truth, Blackwell, 1987, both collections of essays.)
J.Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford UP, 1972. (Influential attempt to base morality on a hypothetical contract.)
*P.Singer (ed.), Applied Ethics, Oxford UP, 1986. (Selected readings on various moral issues).
M.Slote, From Morality to Virtue, Oxford UP, 1986. (Virtue ethics. See pp. xvi, xix, for ethics treated as wider than ‘morality proper’.)
P.Thompson (ed.), Issues in Evolutionary Ethics, State University of New York Press, 1995. (Selections from Darwin onwards.)
*J.Waldron (ed.), Theories of Rights, Oxford UP, 1984. (Anthology.)
*B.A.O.Williams, Morality, Penguin, 1972. (Elementary introduction. His Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Fontana, 1985, is fuller but rather harder.)
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