Is Ethics Based on Character?: Character-based Ethics
Until recent decades modern ethics was dominated by two approaches that focus on action. The movement that focuses on character rather than action has come to be known as virtue ethics. Looking at ethics in terms of who you are and how your life is ...
Is Ethics Based on Character?: How to Address Ethical Issues
One way to approach moral philosophy is to take each of the different ethical theories in turn and see how it would address a single moral question. Seneca, the Roman writer saw life as a series of concentric circles. What you are doing today has si...
Is Ethics Based on Character?: Using Virtue Ethics in Complex Situations
In contrast to utilitarianism and Kantianism, virtue ethics is helpful in making sound judgments in complex situations. The virtue at work here is what Aristotle calls phronesis-- practical intelligence or wisdom. You learn for yourself why it is im...
Is Ethics Based on Character?: Virtue Ethics--A Learned Skill
In ancient philosophy, virtues are often compared to skills. Each of the basic parts of human nature has its own special virtue or standard of how people ought to be. As a guideline Aristotle recommends seeking the mean or middle course between extr...
Moral Dilemmas...Can Ethics Help?: Moral Dilemmas...Can Ethics Help?
The parents and medical staff caring for a premature baby struggling for life are faced with the decision of whether or not to continue treatment. Philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose ideas have influenced modern medical ethics, would answer such a ques...
What is Human Nature?: Plato's View of Human Nature
In 4th century B.C.E. Athens the philosopher Plato tries to define the basic parts of human nature using the metaphor of a charioteer and his pair of winged horses. He believes that a human being is essentially a soul with three parts: the rational ...
What is Philosophy?: Socrates and His Method
Perhaps the most famous example of how "to do" philosophy was provided by Plato's teacher, Socrates. Socrates loved to be with people, to talk with them, argue with them, and ask them what they thought about a variety of subjects. In Plato's Apology...
What is Human Nature?: Existentialism and Human Nature
The 20th century existentialist Jean-Paul Satre asserts that man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. There is no human nature because there is no God to have a conception of it. The bond among humans is the universality of condition,...
What is Philosophy?: Plato's Myth of the Cave; Its Relevance Today
Plato's parable of the cave, written in the 4th century B.C.E., portrays how philosophy works. In the parable prisoners sit in the bottom of a cave, their heads chained so they can only see shadows cast by objects moving in front of a fire. We are l...
Can Rules Define Morality?: Kantian Ethics
"Can Rules Define Morality?" addresses Immanuel Kant's rights-based theories of ethics, the categorical imperative. What was new about Kant's moral philosophy is that a superhuman authority is not necessary to determine morality. Our own reason, he ...