Free «Theory and Ethics» Essay Paper

Knowledge on theories helps in understanding the role and place of ethics in different disciplines and profession such as medicine, business and workplaces. In others words, it enhances rooted familiarity with different fields of application such as bioethics, business ethics, geoethics, relational ethics, military ethics, public sector ethics and political ethics. It creates a furtherance of understanding everyday application of ethics in social and political setting as well as explaining the general human behavior in relation to reasoning, will, mind and allegiance to religion. Therefore, knowing theories becomes the foundation for developing the capacity to systemize, defend and recommend moral concept out of a more elucidated point of view.

St. Thomas Aquinass point of view delineates that virtue stand for a perfection of power. It means that perfection is chiefly determined in consideration to an end which is regarded as act of power. He also coined meaning for four cardinal virtues namely, temperance, fortitude, prudence and justice. Aquinas depicts that the four are natural and revealed in a way that they are binding on every person (Williams, 1985). Notably, he also specified human law as positive; being a form of natural law governments employ to govern societies while divine law is exclusively revealed from the scriptures. According to Immanuel Kant, moral requirements are founded on the basis of standard of rationality he termed categorical imperative (Sullivan, 1989). It then implies that immorality entails violation of tenets of categorical imperatives hence irrational.

On the same note, John Stuart Mill asserts that an action is permissible as long as the consequences of the action are good in nature as those of any particular action available to the agent. By this, he meant that examination of motives behind an action is the most appropriate for agent evaluation instead of the act of evaluation. On the other hand, John Rawls maintains that it is possible to design and evaluate different social institution and practices in place with social justice as the fundamental basis founded on the concept of original position (Kelly, 2006). For Aristotle, happiness is the common end direction of all human activities and is attained through development of virtuous life (Broadie, 1991). Additionally, Aristotle perceives that moral virtue is the relative mean between extremes of deficiency and excess.

Each theory developed by these philosophers confirms and shades more light on views on ethical standards humans adapt to in different settings such in religion, economy, politics and technology. The theories presents good ground for defending certain human actions, laws and behaviors adopted by people on daily basis.