Moral Virtue Theory

490 Words2 Pages
------------------------------------------------- Moral Virtue Theory, Duty Theory, & Utilitarianism Latoya Gibson October 12, 2014 October 12, 2014 Virtue Ethics is a classification within what is called Normative Ethics. Normative ethics will attempt to classify and discover what might be deemed of moral character, and then to apply the moral character as a base for a person’s choices and actions. The basic concept behind Virtue Ethics is that it focuses on what an individual should choose for his/her own personal character behavior rather than the individual relying solely on the external laws and customs of the person's culture, and if a person's character is good then so should the person's choices and actions be good. There is value in the ideals of Virtue Ethics, namely the value of directing the individual's attention away from following popular opinion while placing the attention back upon the individual themselves. Duty theory is a moral theory, especially connected with Kant, according to what actions are right or wrong because of their inherent content, and the motive from which they are done. Stealing is wrong principally because we can't make taking property a universal law. In general, philosophers usually call duty-based ethics deontology. It focuses on the act and not its consequence. The morally binding nature of a deontological norm derives from the person’s obligation to perform some act in some specified manner, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes it is not. Duty-based approaches are focused more on the obligation, in the sense that a person who follows this ethical paradigm believes that the highest virtue will come from doing what you are supposed to do, either because you have to, or, following the law, or because you agreed to by following an employer's policies. It matters little whether the act leads
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