Abstract
Ethics is not the same thing as morality. For one thing, morality is more of a matter of accepted social conventions or religious traditions, without the requirement of any rational, empirical, or scientific justification. In fact, moral stances can appear somewhat arbitrary when they are unfamiliar within your culture. Furthermore, ethics is not the same thing as strongly held personal opinion, “gut feelings,” the law, or compliance with regulations. Each of these may be confused with ethics, but none of them requires rational, empirical, or scientific justification, and each can be just as unethical as some of the social conventions called morality. Ethics, in contrast, is the careful, reflective, systematic, critical and scientific study of morality whose goal is to identify well justified ways to lead one’s life and behave towards others. This chapter presents a brief review of the two great Western philosophical theories of ethics, as well as four less rigorous ‘alternative’ ethical theories that may enrich our understanding and guide our behavior.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
See B. Baker and S. Latham, et al., ed. The American Medical Ethics Revolution: How the AMA’s Code of Ethics Has Transformed Physicians’ Relationships to Patients, Professionals, and Society. JHU Press, 1999.
- 2.
Many people notice how much this sounds like the so-called Golden Rule in Christianity, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But it is equally similar to other, even more ancient religious texts such as the Hebrew Torah, Confucius’ Analects, and the Mahabharata—all from around 600–900 BCE. So it may well be that all religious traditions support the claim of Kant that this is the most fundamental rule of ethics.
- 3.
One might even speculate that the choice between these two theories is a false dichotomy, that is, one must consider both in order to be completely fair to an issue. But so far there is no grand theory that shows how to make them compatible; it might be the ethical equivalent of light as a wave and as a particle in physics. At least, using that analogy, there is no reason to think one or both theories must be wrong, and the entire field is useless. Both physics and ethics are very important.
- 4.
Rawls great lifework was A Theory of Justice, Harvard U Press, Cambridge Mass, 1971. For scholars of Rawls, it is also important to read his later works, Justice as Fairness. Harvard Press, Cambridge, 2001, and Political Liberalism. Columbia U Press, NY, 1993. For Singer one might start with his Animal Liberation that first came out in 1975, and has had many editions, or his The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, Princeton U Press, New York, 2011.
- 5.
Pellegrino, E.D., 1994. The Virtues and Obligations of Professionals. In: Beauchamp T.L., LeRoy W. ed., Contemporary Issues in Bioethics. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub, pp 51–57.
- 6.
The Abuse of Casuistry, Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, U California Press, Berkeley, 1988.
- 7.
A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739 and his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751. Hume’s ethics are sometimes skipped over in philosophy department ethics courses because of the need to cover Kant and Mill, who both came soon after Hume (and were both influenced by him). But in medical ethics, that would be a mistake because of Hume’s close friend, the physician John Gregory. Hume was also the most important philosopher in what is called ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ (which came before, and very much influenced the Enlightenment in France).
- 8.
For interesting contemporary views of the idea that ethics is natural, and emotional, see J.D. Trout, Why Empathy Matters: The Science and Psychology of Better Judgment (Penguin Books, New York, 2010), the interdisciplinary research in Moving Beyond Self-Interest by S.L. Brown, M. Brown, and L.A. Penner (Oxford, 2012), and the entertaining narrative The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison (Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, 2014).
- 9.
Carol Gilligan’s book In a Different Voice, Harvard UP 1993, set off much discussion about ethics as a part of psychological development, as she critiqued earlier work on the subject by Kohlberg as inherently sexist. However other feminist authors protested that this claimed ‘strength’ was a double-edged sword, implying that it opens the door to the insulting claim that women are by nature less ‘rational’ than men, and to the self-contradiction/absurdity/paradox of nurses being “ordered to care.”
- 10.
SM Reverby, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850–1945, Cambridge U Press, Cambridge England, 1987.
- 11.
Laura Purdy, Reproducing Persons, Ithaca NY, Cornell Press, 1996.
- 12.
Clifford Geertz’s 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, was an important influence, identifying the need for “thick descriptions” to understand human behavior.
- 13.
For more on narrative ethics, see Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness, second edition (2003), Oxford U Press, or Rita Charon and Martha Montello, ed., Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics, Routledge (New York, 2002).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Spike, J.P., Lunstroth, R. (2016). Using Ethical Theories as a Tool for Understanding Cases. In: A Casebook in Interprofessional Ethics. SpringerBriefs in Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23769-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23769-5_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23768-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23769-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)