ETHICS AS A PRESCRIPTIVE SUBJECT

Joanna Paula Edem

Ethics as a Prescriptive Subject
• The primordial question that students of ethics ask is:
“Given a particular situation, what should a person do?”
• That is why many authors would say that ethics is not just a
drescriptive subject; rather, it is prescriptive one.
• It means that this subject is not only concerned about
describing the facts, the circumstances of human agent,
and the conflicting principles that arise from the situation.
Instead, ethics is concerned about prescribing what
should be done after knowing all the facts, the
circumstances, and the principles involved.
• Some business ethics scholars would call as “normative
discourse” which means “outlines not how the world is but
rather how it ought ideally to be...”
• According to these authors, the aim of ethics is not only
describing but also prescribing the ethically correct
course of action that the human agent should take.
• However, one must be careful on this point. Its is because
human acts are always complex and outright prescription
of ethically correct actions based on traditional ethical
theories may oversimplify the complexities of the ethical
issues under analysis.
• The verb “to prescribe” come from a Latin word
“praescribere” which means “to write beforehand.”
• Decision is already written prior to the actual event
not mindful that the said event is surrounded by unique
circumstances that the prescription may not have
considered.
• Thus, the business ethics scholar Duska reiterated that
ethical theories “seem to serve merely as starting points for
discussion rather than bearers of principles that provide
the final word.”
• They further clarify the concept of ethics by relating it with
other concepts that are somehow related to ethics but
cannot be reduced completely to it.
• They are the concepts of etiquette, law, and professional
code of ethics.