I believe Aristotle has the stronger argument in terms of defining justice is. It is important to consider whether a law is just or unjust as opposed to Plato 's argument that we should follow all laws regardless; if we were choose to solely follow all laws and the consequence of that law caused harm to another human being we would unintentionally be harming others, which would make it harder for us to be virtuous. I also believe everyone should be held responsible for their own actions, in addition to using Aristotle 's definition of voluntary action, we choose to follow laws which leads to the world being a more desirable place to live. As we have seen with previous laws, such as slavery, if we fail to question the validity and consequence of the law, but voluntarily follow it blindly it can result in issues for years to come; similar to slavery, despite it being illegal today, prior legality negatively affects minorities in our society. If we fail to question unjust laws and believe everything we are told by the government, we are failing to think for ourselves.
In the Medieval and Early Modern Period, the most common way to ignite social change was through writing. Political and philosophical authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer and John Locke were often the voice of reason due to certain societal obligations based on the class system. Using moral allegories Chaucer explained the order of his society and its corruption. Contrary to Chaucer’s approach, Locke uses political theories and little pieces of evidence from the Holy Scripture in writing The Second Treatise of the Government to change his society’s view on the amount of power the government should hold. Individually, both authors, influenced by the religion, political state, and social structure in their period, wrote pieces of literature that
The Act-utilitarians do not focus on implementing rules but rather on the single actions and their consequences. Utilitarianism is useful for developing ethical arguments that justify the suffering of some for the happiness of the majority. For example public policy
Are we obligated to obey unjust laws? Laws are important because they are guidelines for a state. Without laws citizens would not know how to act and cause harm to others. Laws are aimed at common good and keep a society together and functioning.
The obligation of morality is necessary for the pure purpose of a peaceful world and that men need the consent of all to do so, but couldn’t because its in our nature. Though all people and state actors with in a political system should believe that “the peer principles of right have an objective reality, i.e. that they can be applied in practice.” The context required understanding his confidence that is consistent with the prominent issues in the 1700s such as the French revolution and the rising American Revolution that laid the foundation for Kant’s works. With these events occurring in that time frame, they served as particular situations where Kant questioned and actively proved some of his theories explaining his confidence with the philosophy of
I agree when Rachels says that the best argument in establishing Ethical Egoism as a viable theory of morality is Thomas Hobbes principle that we should do unto others because if we do, others will more likely to do unto us (Pojman and Vaughn, 2014, pg. 527). People should avoid harming others because we should care about the interests of other people for the very same reason we care about our own interests; for their needs and desires are comparable to our own (Pojman and Vaughn, 2014, pg. 532). Therefore, I believe that Rachel makes the better case regarding ethical
“Subjectivists think that there are right answers in ethics, but that these are always relative to each person’s values. There is no superior moral code that can measure the accuracy of each person’s moral outlook.” When a person says that caring is good then that person’s value/belief says that caring is good and he likes caring. Someone else might say that caring is bad and he doesn’t like caring. But are either of them wrong?
According to Locke moral law is an “obligation”, meaning that rational beings have the obligation to obey these moral laws, however, they have the ability to not obey them. This is shown when he says “Moral good or evil is only conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law.” (Essay, 2.28.5)
Ross’s moral theory can be thought of as a compromise between utilitarianism and Kantianiasm. Even though Ross applauds the idea of benevolence in utilitarianism and the importance of justice, he disapproved of maximizing happiness as the main duty and stating that the moral rules were absolute. The basis of Ross’s moral theory lies in the concept of prima facie; the “duty” performed based on the relationship between certain individuals. Ross means that in any situation the individual needs to decide which relationship is most important to them at that time when making decisions. His main argument consists of: 1.
Moral theories are theories that help us distinguish between a right or a wrong action. Adequate moral theories help us understand that what we should or shouldn’t do in certain situations. Two of the most famous moral theories are Utilitarianism and Kantianism. According to Utilitarianism, an action is right if only if it out of all the other action gives out the maximum utility. In oppose to that, Kantianism says that an action is right if and only if, in performing that action, the person does not treat anyone as a mean and treats everyone as an end in itself.
In society, people should be ethically responsible with helping people. People act ethically responsible when one is in need of assistance because they let their sympathetic feelings of compassion take over their intentions. Ethical responsibility is a duty or obligation to ensure the individual’s well-being through specific commitments; such as saving someone from a certain tragedy. One piece of evidence from the text that demonstrates the sudden acts of ethical responsibility is “Can the Law Make Us Be Decent” by Jay Sterling Silver. Though many may argue that Silver’s argument is invalid, most will agree that his argument is in fact agreeable.
Another ethical principle that can be applied to the case is the deontological theory of categorical imperative. Under this ethical principle Cathy could argue that he had a moral duty to state and follow the laws that are given from God asserting that we are bringing God’s judgement on ourselves when we try to redefine the definition of marriage. Also under this principle it is the responsibility of the business to do the greatest good for its stakeholders in general. When Cathy stated his stance against same-sex marriage he was not thinking of his customers or the employees of the organization. As the owner of Chick-fil-A he did not respect people and
Also, it is important to note that the definition of law contains terms such as consistent, universal, published, accepted and enforced. A law has to be consistent because there cannot be two contradicting requirements in law since people cannot obey both. It has to be universal because the requirements must be applicable to everyone, not to just one group of people. The different between ethics is that ethics is a collection of social guidelines that are based on moral principles and values.
In his brief essay, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives”, Immanuel Kant emphasizes how essential it is to be truthful and how our duty to be truthful outweighs any other duties we have to ourselves to ourselves or to humanity. Altruistic can be described as a genuinely moral act. People who are altruistic take action for the benefit of others and deem other people’s interests more important than their own interests. Kant believes that people should always do what is right, no matter what the outcome holds. I affirm that Kant believes praising truthfulness above all other duties because he believes it is morally wrong to hurt the dignity of others.
As a result of this we constantly require the assistance of fellow humans in order to gain the greatest positive outcomes for ourselves. This can also explain why some people enjoy and gain internal pleasures when helping others. Kant explains that as rational beings we do not get our moral understanding from experiences but rather it is something that we are born with. Using the example of God we see that he is the symbol of morality, however how he came to be was not from experiences but rather priori