IMPLICATION of ETHICAL

TRADITIONS FOR
BUSINESS
LESSON 7
TEOLOGICAL AND DEONTOLOGICAL THEORIES:
JUSTICE AND RIGHTS THEORIES

• Since the time of Socrates in West and Confucius in the east, philosophers
have sought the basis for right conduct in human reason.
• The good news is that all humans have reason to use of certain principles
of ethics, the principle of the good, can be discerned or discovered, the all
human would have contact with the basis for the moral life that all
cultures and societies need.
Business Ethics, can generally be classified as
follows:
• Consequentialist (utilitarianism is an example) or Teleological ( from
Greek Telos means “end”) ethics;
• Deontological or duty-based ethics (“Kantianism” would be an example);
• Pure Aretaic ethics(primarily Aristotelian-virtue ethics).
 UTILITARIANISM
• Would consider only the consequences of an action: the act itself, the
agents character, and past occurrences or traditions bearing upon the act
are irrelevant except insofar as they make a difference for the action
effects.
 DUTY BASED THEORY
• Hold that only the intrinsic character of the action is relevant to evaluating
it: consequences do not matter, and neither do traditions or the agents
character.
 PURE ETHICS
• Makes the agent character paramount, which is true of Aristotelian virtue
ethics. The fourth alternative, the view that only traditions and past
influence matter in the evaluation of an action, is a possible view, but it is
rarely defended by ethiscist.
 RIGHT THEORY
• A right refer to a person’s just claim entitlement.
• A right is an individual’s entitlement to something.
• Right can be understood in several ways. They can be interpreted as
absence of prohibitions authority, or existence of prohibitions.
 CATEGORIES OF RIGHT THEORY
• LEGAL RIGHT: define by system laws
• MORAL RIGHTS: based on ethical standard
 DECISION MAKING RULE
• Let a person freely pursue certain actions without interference from others.
• Define justice as the ideal, morally correct state of things and person
• JUSTICE can be handled in three sub categories:
Distributive justice - refers to the extent to which society's institutions ensure that benefits and
burdens are distributed among society's members in ways that are fair and just.
Retributive justice- is a matter of giving those who violate human rights law and commit crimes
against humanity their "just deserts." Punishment is thought to reinforce the rules of international
law and to deny those who have violated those rules any unfair advantages.
Compensatory justice- refers to the extent to which people are fairly compensated for their injuries
by those who have injured them; just compensation is proportional to the loss inflicted on a person.
 VIRTUE ETHICS
• The virtue approach to ethics emphasizes people’s character: an ethic of
virtues (vices) focusses on the process of personal moral character
development. It stresses how the good habits or virtues inherent in a
persons character give them the propensity to act in ways that promote the
human race to flourish.
• Which take the concept of character to be central to the idea of being a
good person in business-keeps at bay the treat of situational (external)
determinism:
 VIRTUE ETHICS
• Overcomes “moral schizophrenia” or the need to step out of one’s role and
wear, say, the Kantian hat if the agent prefers to solve the moral dilemma
from the deontological perspective, or the utilitarian hat if he desires to
take the teleological approach as it avoids focusing on rules governing
action and rather concerns the fundamental character and motivations of
an individual agent.
• Involves the individual pursuing moral excellence as a goal in and of
itself, ethics becomes an objective rather than a constraint.
 Virtue of the Virtue Ethics as follows:
• It is personal.
• It focuses on the motivations of the actor and the sources of action,
bringing a dynamic to ethical understanding.
• It is contextual, highlighting the importance of understanding the
environment as it affects both actor and his or her acts.
• It compliments other disciplines addressing human behavior
• It focuses on the conformity between right thinking and desire.
 Virtue of the Virtue Ethics as follows:
• It treats virtue as a manifest, perceptible feature of action.
• It conceives of human activity as continuous.
• It stresses the importance of individuals being able to make contributions
of value to a society or communal enterprise.
• It preserves a role for excellence and helps counter the levelling tendency
of deontological ethics.
• It stresses that people become what they are within a community.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• The development of ethical theory in Western civilization has been by the
gradual accretion of insights, rather than by a systematic evolution in a
straight line of progress. The first principal influence had been the classic
Greek philosophers, who conceived ethics as relating to the “good life”
and, thus, can be considered the first in western history to examine virtue
and character ethics.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• Possesses deep historical importance and its roots can be traced to such
great ancient historian such as SOCRATES, PLATO, and CICERO.
• PLATO, through the influence of SOCRATES was convince that there is
an objective truth which is not simply relative to an individual belief’s –
philosophized a great deal on important ethical concepts, including some
specific virtues: he wrote CHARMIDES which was about temperance; the
LACHERS was about courage, and the EUTHYPHRO was about piety.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• Believing that man is deprived of true life for as long as he remains
chained to the body since the essence of man is his soul, Plato’s ethics
essentially looked to freeing the soul its bondage to the body.
• For Plato the life which is most closely reflects the divinity – which he
conceived as a multiplicity possessing diverse characteristics – is the life
of virtue.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• Aristotle’s NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS is widely viewed as the most influential
early work on virtue ethics. Historically, Aristotle’s Ethics is the first systematic
treatment of ethics in Western civilization: it belongs in the tradition that stresses
both the supremacy of our rational nature and purpose nature of the universe.
Aristotle pointed out that an ultimate end for people must be one that is self-
sufficient, final, and attainable; he maintained that happiness is the goal that meets
these requirements. So Aristotelian virtue ethics is concerned with pursuing a certain
type of morally inclusive excellence, called EUDAIMONIA in EHICS, which can be
roughly translated as happiness or human flourishing through moral excellence.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• In this classic virtue theory, four human virtues stands out as being the
“hinge” or “cardinal” virtues:
• COURAGE
• MODERATION
• JUSTICE
• PRUDENCE
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• Aquinas maintained that as human we have two sources of truth rather
than one: those that human faculties provide, and those that God reveals.
• The TELEOLOGY of Aquinas, thus, differentiates and raises his ethics
from that of Aristotle: that all human action has an end, and that this end is
the first and most important source of morality human action, but that
these particular ends pressure a last end which communicates its finality.,
and this none other than divine causality. Hence, the eternal law – the plan
containing what is God wants to do – is the supreme norm of morality.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• DAVID HUME, carrying on the work of SHAFTSBURY, HUTCHESON,
BUTLER and others, in emphasizing the role what we may call the
emotional aspects of human nature in man’s moral life, maintained that
moral distinction are derived ultimately, not from reasoning, but from
feeling and moral sentiment. Having examined the overwhelming case
against reason, Hume came down squarely on the side of sentiments as the
source of morality.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• IMMANUEL KANT, to whom we owe the largely DEONTOLOGICAL
branch of ethical theory, believed in and thought the existence of a priori
moral principles which are held by all rational beings such as necessary
and universal – independent of our actual experience.
 VIRTUE ETHICS: HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
• Elizabeth Anscombe, particularly through her essay “MODERN MORAL
PHILOSOPHY” and Alasdair Maclntyre through his all – important book,
“AFTER VIRTUE”. Maclntyre viewed was one of the most prominent
proponents, defines virtue as acquired human qualities that enable a
person to achieve the “good” in their chosen profession.
•END OF THE
LESSON…… THANK
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