Understanding Key Ethical Theories and Philosophers
Ethical Theory
Ethical theory provides the rationale that explains the moral behavior of individuals. These theories include efforts to understand human thought and offer a coherent and profound explanation of our actions.
Different Ethical Theories
We can distinguish three main groups:
- Ethical Purposes: These theories are interested in the consequences we enjoy if we follow a set of rules.
- Ethical Duty: These are not concerned so much with the consequences, but with what reason dictates is the most fair.
- Current Ethics: These focus on contemporary ethical problems, such as environmental ethics.
Aristotle’s Eudemonism
Aristotle wrote the first systematic treatises on ethics. His theory argues that the final goal of man is to reach happiness. Happiness is *eudemonism*. Aristotle believes it is necessary to use reason and not choose the options that are most beneficial at first glance, but the most prudent.
Epicurus’ Hedonism
This theory argues that the ultimate goal of human beings is happiness, understood as pleasure; hence the term *hedonism*. The maximum pleasure for Epicurus is located in the tranquility of spirit and the lack of worry and suffering.
David Hume’s Moral Emotivism
Hume’s moral emotivism explains moral behavior as the pursuit of joy, welfare, and happiness for the greatest number of people possible. For Hume, one cannot be happy in solitary ethics. This theory emphasizes feeling over reason.
Bentham and John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism
Bentham says that man always acts moved by the pursuit of happiness for as many people as possible, but adds a new concept: what gives us pleasure and happiness is good and useful. Stuart Mill adds to Bentham’s theory that pleasures differ not only in quantity but also in quality.
Kant’s Ethical Theory
Kant proposes an ethics radically different from all the previous ones. Kant explains that our behavior should not be based on finding a reward or avoiding punishment, but on what reason tells us is our duty. This act of goodwill is what Kant advocates. Moral laws are understood as universal moral norms.
Existentialist Ethics
Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the main representatives of this trend, proposes a pessimistic philosophy that concludes that human life lacks sense and that man is alone and abandoned to his freedom. Existentialist ethics is an ethics of duty and is based on two principles.
The Ethics of Dialogue or Communication
Habermas raises an ethic of duty that, unlike Kant’s, achieves universality through dialogue. A standard becomes valid when its elaboration has been achieved through this procedure based on communication and could be adopted by all those concerned, who should participate in such dialogue.
John Rawls’ Ethics of Justice
The American philosopher John Rawls, in his 1971 work *A Theory of Justice*, states that behavior is morally acceptable when it respects certain values called principles of justice. This is reflected in a hypothetical contract with two principles: the principle of maximum compatible freedom and the principles of social justice.