Quotes About Ethics

Victory carries a moral burden the vanquished never know

Ethics are important because they give direction to people and societies who have some sense that they cannot flourish without being moral.

Morality is primarily concerned with questions of right and wrong, the ability to distinguish between the two, and the justification of the distinction.

Most people use the terms morality and ethics interchangeably. Technically, morality refers to the actual content of right and wrong, and ethics refers to the process of determining right and wrong. In other words, morality deals with moral knowledge and ethics with moral reasoning.

descriptive ethics is a sociological discipline that attempts to describe the morals of a particular society, often by studying other cultures.

normative ethics refers to the discipline that produces moral norms or rules as its end product.

metaethics is an area of ethics that investigates the meaning of moral language, or the epistemology of ethics, and also considers the justification of ethical theories and judgments.

aretaic ethics is a category of ethics that focuses on the virtues produced in individuals, not the morality of specific acts.

Fourth, although a bit more difficult to do than the previous three considerations, you should attempt to evaluate the character of the moral actor. Character is the tendency of a person to act in predictable ways over time. Virtue theorists have led the way in insisting that any ethic that does not concern itself with character and virtue is incomplete and reduces ethics to merely a preoccupation with actions, specifically moral dilemmas that people do not often face.

Ethical systems may be classified as either action-oriented systems or virtue-based systems. Under these two major divisions are three subcategories by which ethical systems may be further classified: deontological systems, teleological systems, and relativism.

First, deontological systems are systems that are based on principles in which actions (or character, or even intentions) are inherently right or wrong. There are three primary deontological systems: (1) divine command theory, (2) natural law, and (3) ethical rationalism. The Christian will tend to be more deontologically oriented

relativism refers to an ethical system in which right and wrong are not absolute and unchanging but relative to one's culture (cultural relativism) or one's own personal preferences (moral subjectivism).

Ethical egoism is the theory that the morality of an act is determined by one's self-interest.

When deliberating about blowing the whistle, many employees become ethical egoists, using their own self-interest as the determining factor for what they should do in the situation.

Some have even suggested that the Bible is entirely egoistic and simply changes the categories of what constitutes a person's self-interest. However, that is too strong a statement. While the Bible never condemns self-interest, it does require that it be balanced with concern for others (Phil. 2:4). It is one thing to occasionally appeal to rational self-interest as the Bible does, but quite another to claim that egoism is a sufficient ethical system, as do thoroughgoing ethical egoists.

A final criticism of Kant is that his categorical imperative is only a procedural morality and does not offer any guidance in terms of the content of morality.

And what of ourselves? Are we really completely outside this mechanism? The people who come after us, won't they find aspects of sacrificial thinking even in the way we use anti-sacrificial theory?

Ray-Ray had been on track for a golden-rule life of selfless service.

Our choices lie between the lesser of two evils, but it is still within our power to make these choices

he's the only one who didn't slide a piece of paper across the table with a number on it

mustache, and

Like every other hypocrite alive, he was very good at applying unyielding standards to others. Bozic

Surely no one would ever use such a weapon against a city. There are no limits in war, Volger said, still staring out the window.

He shook with another sob, sinking to one knee and realizing that the survival of that one ship – one girl, really – had been for a moment more important than the war itself, or a city's millions. Then the wind shifted, and Alek breathed in the burnt-meat smells that filled the room behind him. Important enough for him to kill a man, it seemed.