Three normative theories

AQA studies three normative theories — accounts of how we ought to act:

• Natural Law (Aquinas) — reason discerns purposes built into human nature.
• Situation Ethics (Fletcher) — do the most loving thing.
• Virtue Ethics (Aristotle) — become a good person, not just do good acts.

Natural Law and virtue ethics are broadly deontological/agent-based; situation ethics is teleological (consequence-sensitive).

Aquinas: natural law

Aquinas holds that God's eternal law is reflected in a natural law that human reason can grasp. The core synderesis principle: do good and avoid evil.

From this flow the five primary precepts (rational goals of human nature):

• Preserve life
• Reproduce
• Educate / nurture the young
• Live in an ordered society
• Worship God

Secondary precepts are worked out from these (e.g. "do not murder", "do not abort"). Aquinas distinguishes real goods (truly fulfilling our purpose) from apparent goods (only seeming to).

Double effect and acts

Aquinas weighs both the interior act (intention) and the exterior act (the deed). The doctrine of double effect permits an action with a bad side-effect if:

• the act itself is good or neutral,
• the bad effect is foreseen but not intended,
• the good effect is not achieved by means of the bad one,
• there is proportionate reason.

Example: giving a dying patient pain-relief that may shorten life is permissible if the intention is to relieve pain, not to kill.

Primary or secondary?

Fletcher: agape as the only law

Joseph Fletcher's situation ethics steers between legalism (rigid rules) and antinomianism (no rules). The one absolute is agape — selfless, Christian love.

Four working principles:

• Pragmatism — the loving thing must actually work.
• Relativism — rules bend to the situation.
• Positivism — love is chosen as the starting value (a faith commitment).
• Personalism — people come before rules.

Among his six propositions: only love is intrinsically good; love is the ruling norm; love and justice are the same thing; the end justifies the means; love decides situationally, not prescriptively.

The one rule

Aristotle: virtue and eudaimonia

Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) asks not "what should I do?" but "what sort of person should I be?" The goal of life is eudaimonia — flourishing or living well, the final end sought for its own sake.

• Virtues are settled dispositions of character, acquired by habit (practice), like learning an instrument.
• A moral virtue lies at the golden mean between two vices — an excess and a deficiency.
• Phronesis (practical wisdom) judges the right mean in each situation; the virtuous person is the standard.

Example: courage is the mean between the deficiency cowardice and the excess recklessness.

The golden mean

Comparing the theories

• Natural Law: clear and rational, but does human nature really have fixed purposes? Is it too absolutist? (Reply: double effect and secondary precepts add flexibility.)
• Situation Ethics: flexible and person-centred, but is "the loving thing" too subjective and hard to predict? Can it justify almost anything?
• Virtue Ethics: realistic about character, but gives little concrete guidance in a dilemma and can be culturally relative.

Sort each idea by theory

Tap a claim, then drop it under the theory it belongs to.

Match the key term

Tap a description, then the term it belongs to.

The big ideas to hold together

You can now outline and compare all three normative theories with their key vocabulary. Press Finish to see your score.