CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS

WHAT IS ETHICS?
 Ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” meaning character or customs
 According to “The American ethos” or “The Business ethos” we use the word ethos to refer to the
distinguish disposition, character, altitude of specific people, culture or group
 According to Solomon, the etymology of ethics suggests its basic concerns
Individual character, including what it means to be “a good person”
The social rules that governs and limit our conduct

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ETHICS AND MORALITY

 Morality refers to human conduct and values while Ethics refers to study of those areas as
mentioned by Solomon.
 What is Ethics?
 Ethics generally speaking, is about matters such as the good thing that we should pursue and the
bad thing that we should avoid; the right ways in which we could or should act and the wrong
ways of acting. It is about what is acceptable and unacceptable in human behavior. It may involve
obligations that we are expected to fulfill, prohibitions that we are required to respect, or ideals
that we are encouraged to meet.
 Ethics, as a subject is an intellectual discipline belonging to philosophy that study about
determining the grounds for the values with particular and special significance to human life.

CLARIFICATIONS AND TERMINOLOGY

KINDS OF VALUATION:

DOMAIN OF AESTHETICS
 Aesthetic it is derived from the Greek word aisthesis (“sense” or “feeling”) and refers to the
judgments of personal approval or disapproval that we make about what we see, hear, smell, or
taste.

CATEGORY OF ETIQUETTE
 Etiquette is concerned with right and wrong actions, but those which might be considered not
quite grave enough to belong to a discussion on ethics.
 “Technique” or “Technical”
 Technique is derived from the Greek word techne which are often used to refer to a proper way
(or right way) of doing things, but a technical valuation (or right or wrong technique of doing
things) may not necessarily be an ethical one as these examples show.

MORAL VS NON-MORAL STANDARDS:

 What falls outside the sphere of Morality is Non-Morality Standards
 Moral standards are different because they concern behavior that is of serious consequence to
human welfare, that can profoundly injure or benefit peoples
 The conventional moral norms against lying, stealing and murdering deals with actions that can
hurt people. And the moral principle that human beings should be treated with dignity, respect
and uplifts the human personality.
 Moral Standards are different because they concern behavior that is of serious consequences to
human welfare, that can be profoundly injure or benefit peoples
 take priority over other standards, including self interest
 their soundness depends on the adequacy of the reasons that support or justify them

MORAL VS NON-MORAL STANDARDS

MORALITY AND ETIQUETTES

 Etiquettes refers to any special code of behavior or courtesy e.g. It is usually considered bad
etiquettes to chew with one’s mouth open
 If we violate the rules of etiquettes that we have read in the books then we rightly considered as
ill-mannered, impolite or even un-civilized but not necessarily immoral
 Rules of etiquettes are generally non moral in nature: “Push your chair back into place upon
leaving a dinner table. “ But violation of etiquette can have moral implications. The male boss
who refers to female subordinates as “honey” or “doll” shows bad manners

MORAL VS NON-MORAL STANDARDS

MORALITY AND LAW

 Before understanding law we should have know that there are four kinds of law: statutes,
regulations, common law and constitutional law

1. STATUTES - The law which is enacted by legislative bodies e.g. The law that prohibit theft is a
statutes. Statutes make up a large part of the law and are what many of us mean when we speak of
laws
2. REGULATIONS - Limited in their knowledge legislatures often set up boards or agencies whose
functions include issuing detailed regulations of certain kind of conduct – Administrative Regulations
3. COMMON LAW - It refers to law applied in the English speaking world when there were few
statutes. Courts frequently wrote opinions explaining the bases of their decision in specific cases,
including the legal principles they deemed appropriate. Each of these opinion became a precedent for
later decisions in similar cases
4. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW - It refers to court rulings on the constitutionality of any law.

MORAL VS NON-MORAL STANDARDS

 People sometimes confused legality and morality, but they are different things. On one hand,
breaking law is not always or necessarily immoral. On the other hand, the legality of an action
does not guarantee that it is morally right.
 An action can be illegal but morally right e.g. Helping a Jewish family to hide from the Nazis
was against German Law 1939, but it would have been a morally admirable thing to have done.
 An action that is legal can be morally wrong e.g. It may have been perfectly legal for the
chairman of a profitable company to lay off 125 workers and use three-quarters of the money
saved to boost his pay and that of the company’s other top manager, but morality of his doing is
so open to debate.

MORAL VS NON-MORAL STANDARDS

PROFESSIONAL CODES
 Somewhere between etiquettes and law lies professional codes of ethics. These are the rules that
are su
 pposed to govern the conduct of members of a given profession. Generally speaking, the
 members of a profession are understood to have agreed to abide by those rules as a condition of
 their engaging in that profession.

WHERE DO MORAL STANDARDS COME FROM?

 Morals come from issues taught and passed down from person to person. However the original is
based on the religious beliefs of the person sharing the moral. In short all morals come from
religion. Without religion, all things are possible and no morals are required.

RELIGION AND MORALITY

 Morality Need not Rest on Religion
 Many people believe that morality must be based on religion, either in the sense that without
religion people would have no incentive to be moral or in the sense that only religion can provide
moral guidance. Others contend that morality is based on the commands of God. None of these
claims is very plausible.

ETHICAL RELATIVISM
 Ethical Relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture.
That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it
 is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in
another.
 Relativism and the “Game” of Business
 Albert Carr in a essay “Is Business Bluffing Ethical” argues that a business, as practiced by
individuals as well as corporations, has the impersonal character of a game – a game that
demands both special strategy and an understanding of its special ethical standards. Business has
its own norms and rules that differs from those of the rest of society. Thus according to Carr, a
number of things that we normally think of as wrong are really permissible in a business context
e.g. conscious misstatement and concealment of pertinent facts in negotiations, lying about one’s
age on a resume, deceptive packaging, automobile companies’ neglect of car safety and utility
companies’ manipulation of regulators and over changing of electricity users.

SENSES OF THE SELF

 It is sometimes thought that one should not rely on any external authority (Law, religion and
culture) to tell oneself what the standards of moral valuation are, but should instead turn inwards.
Three theories about ethics that center on the self:
1. Subjectivism – the recognition that the individual thinking person (the subject) is at heart of all
moral valuations. He/she is the one who is confronted with the situation and is burdened with the
need to decide or judgment A number of clichés familiar to us would echo this idea:
“No one can tell me what is right or wrong.”
“No one knows my situation better than myself.”
“I am entitled to my own opinion.”
“It is good if I say that it is good.”
2. Psychological Egoism – it a theory that describes the underlying dynamic behind all human
actions. The ego or self has its desires and interests, and all our actions are geared toward
satisfying these interests.
3. Ethical Egoism – it prescribes that we should make our own ends, our own interests, as the
single overriding concern. One should consider himself/herself as the priority and not allow any
other concerns, such as the welfare of other people, to detract from this pursuit.

SUMMARY
In this chapter, we have established the scope and the rationale for a discussion of ethics. We
explored various domains of valuation in order to distinguish what makes a particularly grave type of
valuation a moral or ethical one. We clarified some of the terms that will be used in the study of ethics.
We have explored a number of problematic ways of thinking of ethics; some give a too simplistic answer
to the question of our grounds or foundations for moral valuation, while others seem to dismiss the
possibility of ethics altogether.

CHAPTER 2 - UTILITARIANISM
CATEGORIES OF DEONTIC EVALUATION
 The Greek original of “Deontic” is “deon”, which means “duty”.
 Three categories (Timmons 2002):
1. Obligatory actions are actions that one ought to do.
2. Wrong actions are those that ought not to be done.
3. Optional actions are neither obligatory nor wrong.
 Right actions in the narrow sense are obligatory.
 Rights actions in the broad sense are either obligatory or optional.
 A finer categorization (Driver 2007):

A FINER CATEGORIZATION (DRIVER, 2007)

(1) OBLIGATORY ACTIONS

 Morally obligatory acts are morally right acts one ought to do, one is morally prohibited from not
doing them, they are moral duties, they are acts that are required. Such acts might be keeping
one's promises and providing guidance and support for one's children.

(2) SUPEREROGATORY ACTIONS

 Designates any action which is deemed morally good, but which carries or implies no obligation
to act. This is distinct from other moral actions which are designated 'right' or 'wrong'. ... They are
also known as altruistic actions.

(3) PERMISSIBLE ACTIONS

 Act is one which is justified by or consistent with a moral framework, but which does not imply
an obligation to act.
 There are two types of 'permissible' acts:
 1. Neutral - any action that has no moral consequences at all, and
2. Supererogatory - any action that is morally praiseworthy, but entails no obligation (altruistic
actions)

(4) SUBEROGATORY ACTIONS

 Are actions that it is bad to do, but not wrong to do. They are an inverse of the supererogatory, if
the supererogatory is what is good to do, but not morally required.

(5) FORBIDDEN ACTION

CATEGORIES OF VALUES
 Intrinsic value: Something is intrinsically good (or valuable) if it is good (or has value) in and of
itself.
 Extrinsic value: Something is extrinsically good if it related to something else that is good, so its
goodness is borrowed.

THREE CATEGORIES OF VALUES:

 Intrinsically good
 Intrinsically value-neutral
 Intrinsically bad

MORAL VALUE AND NONMORAL VALUE

 Moral value is ascribable only to responsible agents (persons).
 Other things, including experiences and states of affairs, have nonmoral value.

HEDONISM VS PLURALISM
 Hedonism: Happiness is the only intrinsic good.
 Pluralism: There is more than one intrinsic good.

UTILITARIANISM
 It is a consequence-based theory (consequentialist theory).
 The deontic status of an action is defined solely in terms of the utility of the consequence
produced by the action.
 Utility is a nonmoral value and the ultimate goal of morality is to maximize the aggregate utility.
 Virtue-based consideration is out of the picture.
 An action is obligatory if it has a utility higher than any alternative actions.
 An action is wrong if it has a utility less than some other alternatives.
 An action is optional if it is tied with some other alternative for first place.
 An action is right (in the broad sense) if it has a utility no less than any other alternative action.

JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832)

 Born on February 15, 1748 in London, England.
 Teacher of James Mill, the father of John Stuart Mill
 First wrote about the greatest happiness principle of ethics.
 Died on June 6, 1852
 Was known for “PANOPTICON”, a system of penal management.
 He was an advocate of economic freedom, women’s rights and the separation of Church and
State; an advocate of animal rights and the abolition of slavery, death penalty and corporal
punishment for children.
 His corpse was donated to the University College London where his auto-icon is in public display
up to this day to serve as his memorial.

THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY

 Bentham begins by arguing that our actions are governed by two “sovereign masters”- which he
calls “pleasure and pain”, which was given to us by nature to help us determine what is good or
bad and what ought to be done and not; they fasten our choices to their throne.
 This principle is about our subjection to these sovereign masters and it refers to the motivation of
our actions as guided by our avoidance of pain and our desire for pleasure.

THE PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY

 It also refers to the pleasure as good if, and only if, they produce more happiness than
unhappiness.
 It is not enough to experience pleasure, but to also inquire whether the things we do make us
happy.
 Having identified the tendency for pleasure and the avoidance of pain as the principle of utility,
Bentham equates happiness with pleasure.

CLASSICAL UTILITARIANISM
 Classical utilitarianism is hedonistic.
 The utility of an action is defined as the overall balance between happiness and unhappiness
produced by the action.
 Bentham’s version
Happiness is identified with the pleasure (and the absence of pain).
Unhappiness is identified with pain (and the deprivation of pleasure).

BENTHAM’S FELICIFIC CALCULUS

 It is a common currency framework that calculates the pleasure of a pros and cons that some
actions can produce .
 A method/guide to balance the pros and cons of a proposed course of action in relation to the
balance of pleasure and pains it potentially produces:
 Guide questions to measure it:
Intensity: How strong is the pleasure?
Duration: How long does the pleasure last?
Certainty/Uncertainty: How likely/unlikely that the pleasure will occur?
Propinquity/remoteness: How soon does the pleasure occur?
Fecundity: What is the probability that the action is followed by sensations of the same
kind?
Purity: What is the probability that it is not followed by sensations of the opposite kind?
Extent: How many people are affected?
 JOHN STUART MILL (1806-1873)
 He was born on May 20, 1806 in Pentonville, London, United Kingdom.
 He was the son of James Mill, a friend, student, and disciple of Jeremy Bentham.
 John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) contd.
 He was home-schooled and studied Greek at the age of three and Latin at the age of eight.
 He wrote a history of Roman Law at age eleven, and suffered a nervous breakdown at the age of
twenty.
 He was married to Harriet Taylor after twenty-one years of friendship.
 His ethical theory and his defense of utilitarian news are found in his long essay entitled
Utilitarianism (1861).
 He was died on May 8, 1873 in Avignon, France from erysipelas.

THE GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE

 It is the supreme measure of morality.
 Pleasure and the freedom from pain are the only things desirable as ends and all desirable things
are desired either because they are inherently pleasurable or because they contribute to the
prevention of pain.
 Bentham’s version of utilitarianism focuses on the potential amount or quantity of happiness that
an action can potentially produce for it to be considered right, while Mill’s makes a sharp and
nuanced division of higher and lower forms of pleasure in terms of quality.

COMPARISON OF BENTHAM’S AND MILL’S CONCEPTION OF UTILITARIANISM

 Playing online games all day for a week
Immediately satisfies one’s search for fun and excitement.
Allows one to hang out with friends.
Let’s one enjoy oneself while escaping the everyday pressures of daily tasks like household
chores, etc.
Essentially satisfies one and one’s gaming friends immediately
 Studying three hours a day for a week
Tedious, yet allows one to develop his/her intellect and virtue of perseverance in learning
important lessons for school.
The discipline of focusing on relevant tasks related to one’s education can go a long way in
one’s future endeavors.
Relatively solitary.
Has the potential to bring pleasure to one’s family by showing one’s gratitude for their gift of
education.
 Greatest happiness principle: In our actions, we should aim at producing the greatest happiness
of the greatest number, or if impossible, then reducing the unhappiness of the greatest number.
 Mill’s version
Quality matters.
The life of dissatisfied Socrates is morally better than that of a happy fool.
 MILL’S PROOF

PART I
 Everyone desires his/her happiness for its own sake.
 Everything that is desired for its own sake is desirable. (Every object that is seen is visible).
 If something is desirable, it is intrinsically valuable.
 One’s own happiness is therefore an intrinsic good for oneself, which implies that general
happiness is intrinsically good for the aggregate of persons.

PART II
 If some other things besides happiness that are desired for themselves, they are desired as part of
the end of happiness.
 Thus, happiness is the only intrinsic good.

CRITICISM
“Desirable” is ambiguous. It can mean “able to be desired” or “worthy of being desired”.

SUMMARY
 Bentham and Mill see moral good as pleasure, not merely self-gratification, but also the greatest
happiness principle or the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. We are compelled
to do whatever increases pleasure and decreases pain to the most number of persons, counting
each as one and none as more than one, in determining the greatest happiness for the greatest
number of people, there is no distinction between Bentham and Mill.
 Bentham suggests his felicific calculus, a framework for quantifying moral valuation. Mill
provides a criterion for comparative pleasures. He thinks that persons who experience two
different types of pleasures generally prefer higher intellectual pleasures to base sensual ones.
 Mill provides an adequate discourse on rights despite it being mistakenly argued to be the
weakness of utilitarianism.
 He argues that rights are socially protected interests that are justified by their contribution to the
greatest happiness principle. However, he also claims that in extreme circumstances, respect for
individual rights can be overridden to promote the better welfare especially in circumstances of
conflict valuation.

CHAPTER 3 – DISCOURSE ETHICS

 JURGEN HABERMAS
 Born: 18 June 1929 (Age 90)
 Era: Contemporary Philosophy
 Region: Western Philosophy
 Main Interests: Social Theory, Epistomology, Political Theory, Pragmatics
 Notable Ideas: Communicative Rationality, Post-Metaphysical Philosophy, Discourse Ethics,
Deliberative Democracy, Universal Pragmatics, Communicative Action E.T.C

BRIEF HISTORY
 Jurgen Habermas is a German Sociologist and Philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and
pragmatism.
 He was born with a cleft palate and underwent corrective surgery twice during childhood.
 He is perhaps best known for his theories on communicative rationality and public sphere.
 Global polls consistently find that Habermas is widely recognized as one of the word’s leading
intellectuals.
 He argues that his speech disability made him think differently about the importance of
communication and prefer writing over the spoken word as a medium.

HIS LIFE AS A TEACHER AND MENTOR

 Habermas is a famed teacher and mentor. Among his prominent students were;
a. The pragmatic philosopher Herbert Schnadelbach (Theorist of discourse distinction and
rationality),
b. The political sociologist Claus Offe (Professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin),
c. The social philosopher Johann Arnason (Professor at La Trobe University and chief editor of
the journal Thesis Eleven) and many more.
 Habermas has constructed a comprehensive framework of social theory and philosophy drawing
on a number of intellectual traditions;
1. The German philosophical thought of Immanuel Kant ,
2. Friedrich Schelling,
3. G.W.F. Hegel, Wilhelm Dilthey,
4. Edmund Hursserl and
5. Hans-George Gadamer.

HABERMAS' THEORY OF DISCOURSE ETHICS

 Habermas’ moral theory is called discourse ethics or theory of argumentation.
 Discourse ; to argue
 It is designed for contemporary societies where moral agents encounter pluralistic notions of the
good and try to act on the basis of publically justifiable principles.
 His moral theory is grounded in the principle of discourse ethics, which can be viewed as a
principle of argumentation.
 In discourse ethics, Habermas communicatively grounded and revised Kant’s categorical
imperative, which he viewed as incorrectly monologic, abstract and strategic.
 Kant argued that valid norms are those that one individual could decide should be universal law
after solitarily considering the consequences for everyone.
 Habermas argued that valid norms must be publicly and discursively defendable.

 His theory suggested a kind of democracy where the constitution and law is open to public
discussion and suggestion(s).
 Jurgen Habermas' theory of discourse ethics contains two distinctive characteristics:
i. It puts forth as its fundamental principle a prerequisite of participation in argumentation for
testing the validity of a norm and it transforms the individual nature of Kant's categorical
imperative into a collective imperative by reformulating
ii. It to ensure the expression of a general will and by elevating it to a rule of argumentation.

DISCOURSE ETHICS: THE RULES OF REASON

1. Freedom to Participate.
2. Freedom of Speech.
3. Participants are Free from Force or Coercion.

 Such rules are seen to circumscribe the ideal speech situation, one which stresses equality and
freedom for each participant – especially Freedom to participate in the discourse in critical ways
so as to express one's own attitudes, desires, and needs, and freedom from coercion of several
sorts.
 Conclusively, Habermas’ theory of discourse stipulates that the only norms that can be
accepted as valid norms are those that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in
their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.
 He also came up with the Universalization Principle which states that a norm is valid when the
foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value
orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion.
 CHAPTER 4 - ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

DEFINITION

 Ethics or moral philosophy is the branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending,
and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct.
 Environmental Ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of
human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its non-human
contents.
 They are moral principles governing the human attitude towards the environment, and rules of
conduct for environmental care and preservation.

HUMAN ROLE IN ENVIRONMENT

 Humans both the problem and solution for the environmental crisis.
 Human values can play a great role in solving environmental issues.
 Values can show a path to not exploit the environment beyond the limits.
 Famous Gandhi Quote – ‘There is enough for everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed’
 INTRINSIC & INSTRUMENTAL VALUE
 Instrumental value - the value of things as means to further some other ends.
 Intrinsic value - the value of things as ends in themselves regardless of whether they are also
useful as means to other ends.
 A certain wild plant may have instrumental value because it provides the ingredients for some
medicine or as an aesthetic object for human observers. But if the plant also has some value in
itself independently of its prospects for furthering some other ends such as human health, or the
pleasure from aesthetic experience, then the plant also has intrinsic value.
 Intrinsic value:
 Is value that a thing has in and of itself
 Often valuable as an ends i.e happiness, love, honor, family, health, and freedom.

VALUE OF ENVIRONMENT

 Instrumental Value
The environment has value because it helps people to reach some end
 Food
 Shelter
 Clothing
 Medicine
 Entertainment

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS - HISTORY

 When environmental ethics emerged as a new sub-discipline of philosophy in the early 1970s, it
did so by posing a challenge to traditional anthropocentrism.
 The questioning and rethinking of the relationship of human beings with the natural environment
over the last thirty years reflected an already widespread perception in the 1960s that the late
twentieth century faced a human population explosion as well as a serious environmental crisis
 Among the work that drew attention to a sense of crisis was Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
(1963).

TYPES OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

 Anthropocentrism is the idea that the earth and its resources exists for human consumption.
People who hold this view believe that we ought to protect the earth for future generations.
 Anthropocentrism often focuses on fixing the problem of limited resources through the use of
technology rather than a reduction in consumption.
 Biocentrism views animals as important beings. Stereotypically, Biocentrics are against harming
other life forms for their own ends - many of them are vegetarian's or vegans
 Ecocentrism holds that humans are only one part of the complicated system that is the Earth.
Ecocentrism believes that everything has intrinsic value and emphasized the interconnectedness
of all life.

ANTHROPOCENTRISM
 Anthropocentrism is the position that humans are the most important or critical element in any
given situation; that the human race must always be its own primary concern
 Western tradition shows bias for humans when considering environmental ethics
 Many argue that all environmental studies should include an assessment of the intrinsic value of
non-human beings

ANTHROPOCENTRISM/HOMOCENTRISM
 Homocentrism holds that only humans have intrinsic value
 For homocentrists, the environment only has value insofar as it is useful to us. The environment
has no value of its own, only that which is derived from its value to humans
 What brings together ideas of the homocentric camp is the belief that humans and human interests
have a privileged moral status and value higher than the environment

BIOCENTRISM
 Biocentrism, on the other hand, holds that all natural things have intrinsic value
 The environment is seen as an end in itself, and not valued only as a means to human ends
 In the biocentric view, we have a moral duty to protect the environment and living things even
when they do not affect our welfare or benefit our interests
 What sets the biocentrist apart from the homocentrist is the belief that humans are not inherently
superior to other living things, and that human interests do not take precedence over the natural
world.
 Biocentrism in a political and ecological sense, is an ethical point of view that extends inherent
value to all living things. Biocentric ethics calls for a rethinking of the relationship between
humans and nature
 The four main pillars of a biocentric outlook are:
 Humans and all other species are members of earth's community.
 All species are part of a system of interdependence.
 All living organisms pursue their own "good" in their own ways.
 Human beings are not inherently superior to other living things.

ECOCENTRISM/HOLISM
 People who ascribe to an ecocentric philosophy believe in the importance of an ecosystem as a
whole
 They attribute equal importance to living and non-living components of ecosystems when making
decisions regarding their treatment of the environment
  It is a holistic school of thought that sees little importance in individuals; ecocentrists are
concerned only with how individuals influence ecosystems as a whole
 The primary difference between ecocentric and biocentric philosophies lies in their treatment of
the abiotic environment

ECOCENTRISM
 The ontological belief denies that there are any existential divisions between human and non-
human nature
 Ethical claim is for an equality of intrinsic value across human and non-human nature
 It comprehends the ecosphere as a being that transcends in importance any one single species,
including humans

ETHICAL APPPROACHES: MARSHALL

 Alan Marshall developed a postmodern version of the human nature relationship, one that throws
into doubt the very concepts of 'humanity' and 'nature’
 According to Marshall, three general ethical approaches have emerged over the last 40 years:
libertarian extension, the ecologic extension and conservation ethics

MARSHALL - LIBERTARIAN EXTENSION

 Marshall's libertarian extension echoes a civil liberty approach (i.e. a commitment to extend equal
rights to all members of a community)
 In environmentalism, though, the community is generally thought to consist of non-humans as
well as humans

MARSHALL-ECOLOGIC EXTENSION
 Ecologic extension places emphasis not on human rights but on the recognition of the
fundamental interdependence of all biological (and some abiological) entities and their essential
diversity
 Whereas libertarian extension can be thought of as flowing from a political reflection of the
natural world, ecologic extension is best thought of as a scientific reflection of the natural world
 Ecological extension is roughly the same Classification of Smith's Eco-holism, and it argues for
the intrinsic value inherent in collective ecological entities like ecosystems or the global
environment as a whole entity.

MARSHALL - CONSERVATION ETHICS

 Conservation ethics is an extension of use-value into the nonhuman biological world
 It focuses only on the worth of the environment in terms of its Utility or usefulness to humans
 It contrasts the intrinsic value ideas of 'deep ecology', hence is often referred to as 'shallow
ecology', and generally argues for the preservation of the environment on the basis that it has
extrinsic value - instrumental to the welfare of human beings
 Conservation is therefore a means to an end and purely concerned with mankind and inter-
generational considerations
 FUTURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS
 Greater the crisis more the urgency for EE
 Environmental ethics needs to be informed by the politics to ameliorate environmental problems
 The effectiveness of states and governments in "getting there" will affect the types of ethics that
emerge
 For example, The Kyoto Protocol might be regarded as the first real global attempt to deal with
the problem of climate change but caught up in politics.

CHAPTER 5 – FEMINST ETHICS

(The Question of Women and their Emancipation)

WHAT IS FEMINIST ETHICS?

 "Feminist ethics is born of women's refusals to endure with grace the arrogance, indifference,
hostility, and damage of oppressively sexist environments," Card writes.

WHAT IS IT?
 The goal of gender-equal, not gender-neutral ethics
 An ethical theory which promotes non-sexist principles, policies, and practices
 Feminist ethics is an attempt to: Highlight differences between how males and females interpret
situations
 Help humans deal with rising dilemmas in private and public
 Deconstruct any ethic that systematically subordinates women

DIFFERENCES IN MEN’S MORAL VOICES AND WOMEN’S MORAL VOICES

MEN
 Justice
 Rights
 Treating everyone fairly and the same
 Apply rules impartially to everyone
 Responsibility toward abstract codes of conduct

WOMEN
 Care
 Responsibility
 Caring about other’s suffering
 Preserve emotional connectedness
 Responsibility toward real individuals

WHY MUST WE DO THIS?

 Western ethics failed women in five inter related ways:

1. It showed less concern for women's rights than men's

2. It dismissed ethically uninteresting problems arising in the "private world,"
3. It implies women are not as ethically developed as men
4. It prizes masculine traits and exhibits little regard for feminine traits
5. It favors culturally masculine approaches to ethical reasoning

WHEN DID THIS START??

 The first push for Feminism was in the late 1700's

 The late 1800's saw the start of women voting

WHO CONTRIBUTED?
 MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
April 27, 1759 September 10, 1797)
 Concluded that moral virtue is unitary
 Denied women are doomed to be less virtuous
 Women having strong sexual desires was degrading and immoral
 Called the Mother of Feminism
 Honored women's natural talents
 Insisted that women not be measured by men's standards
 Helped achieve a better life for everyone

JOHN STUART MILL

 Believed in equal education for women
 Women are educated to serve the interests of men
 First considered radical, now seen as classic statement of liberal feminism

In Carol Gilligan’s groundbreaking book, In Another Voice, she shows that women decide the
good on their concern for preserving relationships and for their concern for the welfare or feelings of
others. Rather than focus on abstract, universalizable rules, they decide based on the concrete needs of the
persons involved and how their decisions cultivate or harm their relationship with other people.

HOW WE CAN WORK TOWARD EMANCIPATION?

 Today, the Women’s Emancipation Movement, is an ongoing project with women continuing to
struggle for equality while discovering various and creative ways of being a woman. The aims of
the movement continue to evolve with more and more women exploring social realities and how
exposing economic, communication, governance, and cultural systems oppress women. As
before, feminists of all genders explore how women can continue to push against the boundaries
of oppression. Despite this, it is still clear that women are not fully equal in our shared world.
Thus, we must ask ourselves how to think about the good with a mind to realize gender equality
and genuine liberation.
 There are many areas to consider when thinking about doing the good using a woman’s ethical
perspective.
1. To protect the rights of women. As women activists rightly remind us, women’s rights are
human rights. This means that the first thing we must do with regard to the liberation of
women is to ensure that all their rights are preserved. The right to life, the right to the means
of survival, the right to education, the right to bodily integrity, the right to access health care
– these are all very basic rights, however, are easily violated for women.
2. Violence against women. Because of the status of women as a lower form of humanity and
because they are often seen as property, women are subjected to all kinds of psychological
and physical abuse. Other than rape, they are prone to physical beatings and psychological
torture from abusive spouses. If society is made aware if what acts are effectively violent
against women and women are counseled to realize the abuse that they do not have to suffer,
then the violence could end.
3. Engage in critical thinking with regard to women’s issues. Every society needs to explore and
reflect on itself. Why are they so prone to do violence against their women? What functions
 does the oppression of women fulfill? Why is it necessary? Usually, the practices that
propagate violence against women are rooted in some practice that was useful for a society.

SUMMARY
 Feminist ethics demands as opening of our perspectives about the meaning of being human in a
way that does not discriminate against but celebrates the different possibilities of womanhood.
This is an essential task because the oppression of women necessarily means the oppression of
men as well. We often think that men benefit from the oppression of women given the fact that
they get the more respected jobs, the positions of power, the higher pay, and the best care.
However, men are in this way the perpetrators of violence, defines as the violent sex, and bear the
responsibility for always being defined to be strong and non-feminine. Thus, men are
immediately associated in a certain way with violence, aggressiveness, and detachment from their
emotional life. Any self-aware man will tell you that that is not healthy for their emotional
development. And so, everyone must engage in the movement of women’s liberation as an act of
social justice and as an act of liberation of all mankind as much as it is a liberation of
womankind.