The Nature Of Ethics

Ethics
• Involves systematizing, defending, and
recommending concepts of right and wrong.
• Metaethics
• Normative Ethics
• Applied Ethics
 Metaethics
• Meta which means beyond
• a removed, or bird's eye view of the entire
project of ethics
• Study of the origin and meaning of ethical
concepts.
 Objectivism and Relativism
• Other-worldly
– Holds that moral values are objective in the sense
that they exist in a spirit-like realm beyond
subjective human conventions.
• Plato
– Some timeless concepts never change
 Egoism and Altruism
• Thomas Hobbes
– “Man is a wolf to his fellow man”
• Jean Jacques Rousseau
– Man is naturally born good.
 Emotion and Reason
• Should we act in accord with our emotion?
• Or should we be reasonable all the time?
 Male and Female Morality
• Should females be treated differently from
men?