Ethics

Ethics Study Guide echoed later in the Declaration of Independence of the United States as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The ideas are built into the United States Constitution and society (freedom of speech, free public education, freedom of information, etc.) and interpretations of these ideas form the basis for various political ideologies. Criticisms of Natural Law Theory It is these differing interpretations that highlight the questions about the Natural Law theory. There is disagreement among philosophers regarding the essence of human nature. There are those who posit that humans are by nature deceitful, selfish, and evil. Other critics make the point that just because something exists in nature, it is not automatically good (i.e. disease, drought, flood, etc.) Additionally, the theory can be used to support widely divergent concepts at the same time. For example, it has been used to support capitalism, socialism, and libertarianism. Furthermore, as the law is based on observation of nature, the theory of evolution, which is based on mutation and survival of the fittest, makes end goals (the good) arbitrary. 5.3 Communitarianism Philosophers have identified two features of human nature that seem to make human beings unique: their rationality and their sociality. Human beings do not merely live in groups like some other animals. Rather, they understand themselves in light of the identities they share as members of groups and the attachments they have with the people around them. This human characteristic led to a position in moral philosophy called communitarianism , which holds that morality is constituted by the ideals that define and hold together human groups. Communitarian ethics is based on the position that everything fundamental in ethics is derived from communal values, traditional practices, social goals, and cooperative virtues. Communitarians believe in the idea of a “common good.” Communitarians look at shared values, ideals, and goals of a community, rather than focus on a collective individual welfare (as in utilitarianism). They believe that even people with very different values will also have shared values. The important truth in communitarianism is that we are not separate brings, but linked to our community. Communitarians reject the idea of timeless universal ethical truths based on reason. They believe that moral thinking has, at its core, historical traditions of communities. Communitarianism accepts the standards of existing groups as the norm rather than inherently specifying proper moral standards on its own. This is a problematic approach as it forms morality to the pre-endorsed standards of a people, which are often considered patently immoral themselves. For this reason, many philosophers who originally endorsed the communitarianism theme realized that communities, once deemed to align with moral standards, then seemed oppressive (for example, traditional religious communities have held sexist views in that they have endorsed the theory that women are meant to obey and serve men.) ©2018 Achieve Page 39 of 116