Basic Ethical Theories
Soraj Hongladarom
Department of
Philosophy, Faculty of
Arts, Chulalongkorn
University
Outline
What is ethics?
 Normative ethics and metaethics
 Ethical theories

Consequentialism
 Non-consequentialism


Application
What is ethics?
Ethics is a branch of philosophy dealing
with the questions of what ought to be
done or what ought not to be done, under
what kinds of reasons.
 Ethical deliberation is as important as
human culture itself; it originated as
something based on religion, but later
developed to be more secular.

Major Ethical Theories

Ancient/Religious
Major religions: Christianity, Buddhism, Islam,
etc.
 Indigenous belief systems
 What they share with one another.


Virtue ethics
Based on the thoughts of the Greek,
systematized by Aristotle
 Emphasis on development of character.

Major Ethical Theories

Modern

Immanuel Kant - deontological ethics
• ‘deontos’ is Greek for ‘duty’
• Emphasis on the role of duty and conforming to rational
ideal.

J. S. Mill - utilitarianism, or consequentialist ethics
• “Greatest good for the greatest number”
• Calculation of goods and utilities.

What these two theories share in common.
Major Ethical Theories

‘Postmodern’ theories
F. Nietzsche - ‘revaluation of all values’;
‘genealogy of morals’
 Basic assumption of the postmoderns distrust in the power of reason, belief that
true objectivity cannot be found, ‘truth’ is a
construction.
 What this means for applied ethics.

Mapping

So we have four major theories, or groups
of theories.
The ancient/religious and the virtue ethics
groups can be put together, since they do not
subscribe to the modern belief in individual
power of reason.
 The postmoderns also distrust individual
power of reason, but they share with the
moderns distrust or disbelief in metaphysics.
