A Brief Overview Of Ethical Bases From Vantage Point Of Philosophy

A brief discussion on ethics in our previous episode, showed that ethical language doesn t only deal with moral preferences or emotions, but also implies a moral obligation or moral responsibility towards the individuals. So, in order to justify the imperative nature of morality, one needs to have a strong basis for it to be so.

Philosophy has so far offered three basic ideas as from where and how morality may sprout. These are: Natural Law, Utilitarianism and Categorical Imperative.

Natural Law:

The most important underlying claim that this approach makes is that this life is governed by a purpose. Now according to Aristotle, that supreme good or sole purpose for which human beings spend their lives is: Happiness (eudaimonia). Adding to this, Plato gave his idea that all forms, specially form of the good have a permanent reality, independent of our minds and perceptions, making the acts right or wrong in an independent and objective way.

So, Natural law proposes that something is right if its fulfilling its purpose and wrong if it isn t.

This approach is much related to the philosophy of Religion taking this world as a purposeful creation of God. It is about the nature of man as seen through the eyes of reason, not merely a natural response to a situation.

Utilitarianism:

The roots of utilitarian theories are found in the basic idea of hedonism. Hedonism is the term used for philosophy which regards the achievement of happiness as the prime goal in life. Epicurus gave a view in fourth century that the main purpose of our life is to gain pleasure, or broadly speaking well being. Pain, he believed was of shorter duration than pleasure, and death is just the dissolution of atoms that we are made up of, with no after life to fear. Though he distinguished intellectual pleasures from the animalistic ones, and Epicureans were not considered hedonists in the popular sense.

Therefore, utilitarianism is a theory based on the expected results of an action, rather than any sense of right or wrong.

It can be broadly divided into act utilitarianism, rule utilitarianism and preference utilitarianism. The one already discussed is act utilitarianism that makes judgment based on the consequences of an act.

Whereas rule utilitarianism considers the overall benefit that will be gained by a society if a particular rule is established.

Rule utilitarianism can be further divided into two forms.

1. Strong and 2. Weak. A strong utilitarian will argue that it s never allowed to break the rule if the rule is for the benefit of the whole society. Whereas a weak rule utilitarian will argue that there may be special cases in which breaking the rule is allowed, though the overall benefit of society for not doing so, should also be taken into consideration.

Preference utilitarianism takes into preference the wishes and preferences of all those concerned in a particular case/account.

The Categorical Imperative:

German philosopher Immanuel Kant made a huge contribution in the field of ethics. He argued that in case of morality, people do have a sense of moral obligation. He further stated that moral obligation presupposes three things:

1. A person needs to be free to choose whatever act he wants to do.
2. God: Otherwise there cannot be a true guarantee that doing whatever is right will ultimately lead to happiness.
3. Immortality: Even if doing right leads to a higher good, this might not be possible within this short life span e.g giving one s life to save someone else, thus the need of an afterlife.

He didn t mean that a person has to believe in the above three categories in order to be moral, he meant that a sense of moral obligation itself displays a conscious or unconscious belief in these things.

He further elaborated the categorical imperative in three principles.

1. Act only on that maxim (or principle) which you can- at the same time- will that it should become a universal law.
2. Act in such a way as to treat people as ends and never as means.
3. Act as though you were legislating for a kingdom of ends.

The first principle states that one should only do that act which he/she thinks should be done by others as well. The second principle manifests that if you want to moral autonomy then you should accept that others want the same. While the third one can be elaborated in a simple way that one feels oneself responsible for legislating in a kingdom where everyone is an autonomous moral being.

So the main western moral narrative can be summarized as follows: Fulfillment of a purpose, assessment of results and the sense of moral obligation are the main reasons why humans behave morally. Now compare it with what Islam says about morality, giving us a holistic and ready made package comprising of almost the same ingredients but in a practical and manageable form without contradictions and ambiguities.