Three levels of ethics

• Meta-ethics asks what moral words mean and whether moral facts exist (e.g. what does "good" mean?).
• Normative ethics proposes standards for right action (e.g. natural law, utilitarianism).
• Applied ethics uses those standards on concrete issues (e.g. abortion, war).

Deontological and teleological

• Deontological ethics judges an act by the act itself — its rightness lies in duties, rules or intentions, not results (e.g. Kant, aspects of natural law).
• Teleological / consequentialist ethics judges an act by its end or consequences (e.g. utilitarianism, situation ethics).

Teleological ethics

Absolutism and relativism

• Moral absolutism: some acts are right or wrong for everyone, always, regardless of circumstances (e.g. natural law’s core precepts).
• Moral relativism: right and wrong depend on culture, situation or individual (e.g. situation ethics is relativistic — only love is fixed).

Relativism

The major approaches

• Natural law (Aquinas): reason discerns God-given precepts — largely deontological/absolutist.
• Kantian deontology: act only on maxims you could will as universal law — deontological/absolutist.
• Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill): maximise welfare — teleological/relativist.
• Virtue ethics (Aristotle): focus on character rather than acts or rules.

Classifying a theory

Cognitive and non-cognitive

In meta-ethics, cognitivists think moral statements can be true or false (they describe something); non-cognitivists think they express attitudes or commands rather than facts. You will study this in detail under Ethical Language.

Classify each approach

Sort each item by the concept it illustrates.

Term to definition

Match each concept to its definition.

The big ideas to know

Use these labels to dissect any ethical argument in an essay. Press Finish.