1.

The Moral Aspect of Human

Existence
2. Value Judgments Beyond the Scope
of Ethics.
3. 2 Approaches in Ethics
the ethical dimension of human existence

Ethics as a subject for us to study is

about determining the grounds for
the values w/ particular and special
significance to
HUMAN LIFE.
 Our first point of clarification is to recognize that there are
instances when we make VALUE JUDGMENTS
that are not considered to be part of ethics.
1.AESTHETIC VALUATIONS
2.TECHNICAL VALUATIONS
3.MORAL VALUATIONS
• It shows us that aesthetic considerations and questions of
ETIQUETTE are important facets of human life. But they do not
necessarily translate into genuine ethical or moral value.
• THE CHOICE OF CLOTHING THAT ONE IS TO WEAR, in general,
seems to be merely a question of aesthetics, and thus one is
taste.
Is it deemed immoral or
unethical (improper behaviour)
for women to wear spaghetti
straps and for men to wear
shorts inside the church?
• Yet in some cultures, what a
woman wears (or does not wear)
may bring upon harsh
punishment to her according to
the community’s rule.
• Afghanistan in the 1990s was
ruled by the Taliban, and women
were expected to wear the full-
body burqa; a woman caught in
public with even a small area of
her body exposed could be
flogged severely.
 TECHNICAL VALUATIONS

We get the English terms "technique" and "technical" from the Greek word "techne," commonly
employed to denote the correct or proper method of performing tasks. However, it is important to
note that a technical assessment, representing the right or wrong approach to doing things, might not
inherently align with ethical considerations, as illustrated by this image
 MORAL VALUATIONS
• They involve valuations that we make in a
sphere of HUMAN ACTIONS, characterized
by certain gravity and concern the human
well-being and human life itself.
• Therefore, matters that concern life and
death such as war, capital punishment, or
abortion and matters that concern human
well-being such as poverty, inequality, or
sexual identity are often included in
discussions of ethics.
NORMATIVE ETHICS
• Normative approach is an evaluative one, it is a way of
generating and FORMULATING PRINCIPLES, RULES,
STANDARDS THAT WILL GUIDE HUMAN CONDUCT OR
ACTION.
• In normative approach it includes general normative
ethics and applied ethics. The former emphasizes any
philosophical attempt to formulate and to defend basic
moral principles and virtues governing the moral life,
thus, it emphasizes ETHICAL THEORIES like natural law
theory, utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics etc.
• The PRINCIPLES found in normative general ethics that
are regarded to be of help to guide an action and are
commonly applied to some specific moral problems such
as in medicine, nursing and other medical sciences; thus,
it yields an APPLIED ETHICS
 NON-NORMATIVE ETHICS
• This approach is a non-evaluative one. IT SIMPLY CONSIDERS BY
KNOWING WHAT IT IS AND DESCRIBES CERTAIN ACTIONS, PRACTICES
AND EVENTS.
• It is not expressed by categorizing that is right or that is wrong, rather IT
SIMPLY EXPRESSED WHAT IS THE ACTION AND THE WAY AN ACTION WAS
DONE.
• Under this approach it presents two considerations, namely:
DESCRIPTIVE ETHICS AND METAETHICS.
• The former, simply reports through description and explanation of moral
behavior and belief of a person. For example, the stages of moral
development by Lawrence Kohlberg.
• Now, in metaethics or analytic ethics it analyzes the peculiarity of an
ethical language, such as ‘ought’, ‘good’, ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’. It asks the
question ‘what is’ and also analyzes the structure of logic and moral
reasoning. These are investigated in metaethics. These are not the only
forms of nonnormative ethics. There are other forms, such as those that
consider the biological bases of moral behavior and the ways in which
humans do not differ from animals.