Card 3.2 · Root III — Ethics and Axiology
Normative Ethics
What should I look at to tell whether an act is right?
Normative ethics asks what makes an act right or wrong — not what "wrong" means, which is 3.1, but which acts actually are.
Where it sits
Under III. Ethics. Contains 3.2.1 to 3.2.6. Depends on 3.1 Meta-ethics. Feeds 3.3 Applied ethics.
Narrower questions under this one:
- 3.2.1 Consequence-Based Approaches If an act produces the best outcome, can it be wrong?
- 3.2.2 Duty-Based Approaches Are some things wrong even when they would do good?
- 3.2.3 Character-Based Approaches Should ethics ask what to do, or who to be?
- 3.2.4 Contract-Based Approaches Could you justify this to everyone it affects?
- 3.2.5 Care and Relational Approaches Does morality start with rules, or with the people you are responsible for?
- 3.2.6 Divine Command Approaches How does a command create an obligation?
The rival answers
| Approach | Look at | Right-making feature |
|---|---|---|
| Consequence-based | The outcome | It produced the best results |
| Duty-based | The act's form | It conformed to a principle you could universalise |
| Character-based | The agent | It is what a person of good character would do |
| Contract-based | Agreement | Rational parties would accept the rule permitting it |
| Care-based | The relationship | It responds appropriately to those dependent on you |
| Divine command | The command | It accords with what has been commanded |
| Confucian role ethics ◈ | The role | It fulfils what this relationship requires of someone in your position |
| Ubuntu ◈ | The community | It expresses and sustains personhood held in common |
| Pluralist | Several at once | Multiple duties, weighed without a master rule |
Key figures
| Figure | Dates | Tradition | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Confucius | trad. 551–479 BCE | Chinese | Rightness located in role and ritual propriety |
| Mozi | c. 470–391 BCE | Chinese | Impartial benefit as the criterion |
| Aristotle | 384–322 BCE | Greek | Virtue and the mean |
| Immanuel Kant | 1724–1804 | European modern | The categorical imperative |
| Jeremy Bentham | 1748–1832 | European modern | The greatest happiness principle |
| W. D. Ross | 1877–1971 | Analytic | Plural prima facie duties |
| Carol Gilligan | b. 1936 | Psychology | Proposed an influential care-oriented 'different voice' in moral reasoning |
| Desmond Tutu | 1931–2021 | African | Ubuntu articulated for a wide audience |
Connections
→ 3.1, 3.2.1, 3.2.2, 3.2.3 · ↔ 3.3, 3.5, 6.4, 3.4 · ◇ utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, contractualism, care ethics, role ethics, Ubuntu · ○ Axial Age; Early modern; Modern; Tables 4 and 5
→ narrower questions · ↔ questions it borders · ◇ the positions, mapped in Part III of the book · ○ the eras and comparison tables (Parts IV and V)
The full card is in the book
In The Coordinates of Thought this card goes on to a worked example that sets the answers against one case, and to where the question touches daily life — page 138.
On Coordinates of Thought
Conversations about this question in Moral theories:
- The buyer at the gate offers more than the cooperative: does a promise bind when breaking it pays? 6 replies
- Reading group: Kant’s Groundwork, Section I, the good will and the honest shopkeeper 6 replies
- Reading group: Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (1982), read forty years on 6 replies
- The crane logs were falsified and reporting them might shut the terminal: what each theory told me 6 replies
- Williams’s integrity objection, not the arithmetic, is the deepest problem for utilitarianism 6 replies