INTRODUCTION: Key Concepts

• Moral vs. Non-Moral Standards

• Levels of Moral Dilemmas (individual, organizational, systemic)
• Foundation of Morality: Freedom and Responsibility for one’s act and to others
• Minimum requirement for morality: Reason and impartiality

A. THE MORAL AGENT

➢ Culture in Moral Behavior
• Culture and its role in moral behavior
• What is Cultural Relativism? Why is it not tenable in ethics?
• Filipino Understanding of moral behavior: Strengths and Weaknesses
➢ The Moral Agent
• How is moral character developed? The circular relation of acts that build
character and act that emanate from character
• Moral Development
a. The stages of moral development
b. How do we get to the highest level, conscience-based moral decisions?
B. The Act
➢ Feeling and moral decision-making
• Feeling as instinctive and trained response to moral dilemmas
a. Why they can be obstacles to making right decisions?
b. How they can help in making right decisions?

➢ Reason And Impartiality As Minimum Requirements For Morality

• Reason and impartiality defined
• The 7-step moral reasoning model
➢ Moral Courage
• Why the will is as important as the reason?
• Developing the will

C. Frameworks And Principles Behind Our Moral Disposition

➢ Virtue Ethics
• Aristotle
a. Telos
b. Virtue as habit
c. Happiness as virtue
• St. Thomas: Natural Law
a. The natural and its tenets
b. Happiness as constitutive of moral and cardinal virtues
➢ Kant and rights theories
• Kant
a. Good will
b. Categorical imperative
• Different kinds of rights
a. Legal
b. Moral
➢ Utilitarianism
• Origin and nature of theory
• Business fascination with utilitarianism
 ➢ Justice and Fairness: Promoting the common good
• The nature of the theory
• Distributive justice
a. Egalitarian
b. Capitalist
c. Socialist
i. The state and citizens: are responsible to each other: The
principles of taxation and inclusive growths
CONCLUSION: Ethics through thick and thin, and ethics and religion
➢ The challenges of pluralism and fundamentalism. The search for universal values
• Globalization and pluralism: new challenges to ethics
• Challenges in filinnials
• The religious response: the role of religion in ethics