Branches of Ethics
Normative Ethics
➔ Concerned with criteria of what is right and wrong
➔ Formulation of moral constructs
I.
Virtue Ethics
II.
Consequentialism
-Utilitarianism
-Ethical Egoism
-Ethical Altruism
-Hedonism
III.
Deontological Ethics
-Gandhian Ethics
-Kantian Ethics
-Nishkama karma
Descriptive Ethics
Applied Ethics
I.
Bioethics
II.
Business Ethics
III.
Military Ethics
IV.
Political Ethics
V.
Environmental Ethics
VI.
Publication Ethics
Meta-Ethics
➔ Origin of ethical principles, divine or human
➔ What do the words good, bad, right, or wrong mean
➔ Whether moral judgments are universal or relative
I.
Moral Realism
● There are moral facts
-Moral Absolutism
● There are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged
-Moral relativism
● More than one moral position on a given topic can be correct
-Cultural relativism
● Descriptive Cultural relativism
-People's moral beliefs differ from culture to culture
● Normative cultural relativism
-Its not your beliefs but moral facts themselves that differ from culture to
culture
II.
Moral AntiRealism
● There are no moral facts
-Moral subjectivism
● Moral statements can be true and false, right or wrong, but they refer only to
people's attitudes rather than their actions.