MODULE ONE

At the end of the lesson, the students should

be able to:
a. Understand the importance of ethics;
b. differentiate the branches of ethics;
c. apply the basic principles of ethics; and
morality in the different situations of life.
 ETHICS AS PHILOSOPHY
The word "ethics" is derived from the Greek "ethos" (meaning
"custom" or "habit"). Ethics differs from morals and morality in
that ethics denotes the theory of right action and the greater
good, while morals indicate their practice. Ethics is not limited to
specific acts and defined moral codes, but encompasses
the whole of moral ideals and behaviors, a person's philosophy
of life (or Weltanschauung).
Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, said that what we will be
discussing is no small matter, but how we ought to live.
Ethics may not be as important as the new discoveries of the
contemporary world or may be considered to some as a
subject to discuss that belongs to antiquity, yet value always
shines in every decision and every act executed. Plato
even reminded us that it is no small matter since involves how
we ought to live our lives not only in relation to one’s self but
most especially to others.
Ethics (or Moral Philosophy) is concerned with questions
of how people ought to act, and the search for a definition
of right conduct (identified as the one causing the greatest
good) and the good life (in the sense of a life worth living or a
life that is satisfying or happy).
 Socrates
- regarded as the father of Western
ethics
- asserted that people will naturally do
what is good provided that they know
what is right, and that evil or bad
actions are purely the result
of ignorance:

"There is only one good, knowledge,

and one evil, ignorance".
Aristotle
- Asserted "Nature does nothing in
vain", so it is only when a person
acts in accordance with their
nature and thereby realizes their full
potential that they will do good and
therefore be content in life.
- He held that self-realization is the
surest path to happiness, which is
the ultimate goal, all other things
being merely means to an end.
Socrates (469-399 b.c.); Plato (ca. 427-ca. 347 b.c.); and Aristotle (385-322 b.c.)
 IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS
1. Guides Human Behavior
Ethics provides a framework for making moral decisions. It helps individuals
distinguish between right and wrong, leading to responsible and respectful
actions in daily life.

2. Builds Trust and Integrity

In personal and professional relationships, ethical behavior fosters trust,
honesty, and reliability. When people act ethically, others feel safe,
respected, and valued.

3. Promotes Justice and Fairness

Ethical principles uphold justice and equality by encouraging fairness in
how people are treated, regardless of their background, status, or beliefs.
 IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS
4. Strengthens Society
A society that values ethics tends to be more peaceful and orderly. Ethical laws, institutions,
and leaders promote public welfare, reduce corruption, and protect human rights.

5. Supports Personal Growth

Practicing ethics encourages individuals to reflect on their values, develop empathy, and
become more self-aware, leading to a meaningful and morally grounded life.

6. Encourages Responsible Citizenship

Ethics teaches people to consider the consequences of their actions not just for themselves,
but for their communities and the environment, promoting social responsibility.

7. Essential in Professional Fields

From medicine to business, law to education, ethics ensures that professionals act in the best
interest of those they serve and maintain accountability.
 BRANCHES OF ETHICS
Normative Ethics (or Prescriptive Ethics)
Is the branch of ethics concerned with establishing how
things should or ought to be, how to value them, which things
are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong. It
attempts to develop a set of rules governing human conduct,
or a set of norms for action.
Normative ethical theories are usually split into three main categories:

Consequentialism
Deontology
Virtue Ethics:
Normative ethical theories are usually
split into three main categories:

A. Consequentialism (or Teleological

Ethics) argues that the morality of an
action is contingent on the
action's outcome or result. Thus,
a morally right action is one that
produces a good outcome
or consequence. Every advantage in the past is
judged in the light of the final
issue. — Demosthenes
o Rule Consequentialism, which is a theory (sometimes seen
as an attempt to reconcile Consequentialism
and Deontology), that moral behaviour involves
following certain rules, but that those rules should be chosen
based on the consequences that the selection of those rules
have.
o Negative Consequentialism, which focuses on minimizing
bad consequences rather than promoting good
consequences.
Some consequentialist theories include:

o Utilitarianism. which holds that

an action is right if it leads to
the most happiness for
the greatest number of people
("happiness" here is defined as
the maximization of
pleasure and the minimization of
pain).
The origins of Utilitarianism can be traced back as far as the
Greek philosopher Epicurus, but its full formulation is usually
credited to Jeremy Bentham, with John Stuart Mill as its
foremost proponent.
John Stuart Mill was Jeremy Bentham,
an English philosopher, best known for his
economist, and exponent advocacy
of utilitarianism. of utilitarianism
o Epicureanism is a
more moderate approach (which
still seeks to maximize happiness,
but which defines happiness more
as a state of tranquility than
pleasure).
o Hedonism which is the philosophy
that pleasure is the most important
pursuit of mankind, and that
individuals should strive
to maximize their own total
pleasure (net of any pain or
suffering).
o Egoism which holds that an action is right if it
maximizes good for the self. Thus, Egoism may
license actions which are good for the
individual, but detrimental to the general
welfare.
o Individual Egoism holds that all people
should do whatever benefits him or herself.
o Personal Egoism holds that each
person should act in his own self-interest,
but makes no claims about what anyone
else ought to do.
o Universal Egoism holds
that everyone should act in ways that are
in their own interest.
o Asceticism, which is, in some ways,
the opposite of Egoism in that it
describes a life characterized
by abstinence from egoistic
pleasures especially to achieve
a spiritual goal.
o Altruism, which prescribes
that an individual take actions
that have the best
consequences for
everyone except for himself,
according to Auguste Comte's
dictum, "Live for others". Thus,
individuals have a moral
obligation to help, serve or
benefit others, if necessary at
the sacrifice of self-interest.
Normative ethical theories are usually split into three
main categories:

B. Deontology is an approach to ethics that focuses on

the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed
to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those
actions.
• It argues that decisions should be made considering the
factors of one's duties and other's rights (the
Greek 'deon' means 'obligation' or 'duty').
• Some deontological theories include:
o Divine Command Theory: a form of deontological
theory which states that an action is right if God has
decreed that it is right, and that an act is obligatory if and
only if (and because) it is commanded by God.
Thus, moral obligations arise from God's commands,
and the rightness of any action depends upon that
action being performed because it is a duty, not because
of any good consequences arising from that action.
o Natural Rights Theory (such as that espoused by Thomas
Hobbes and John Locke), which holds that humans
have absolute, natural rights (in the sense of universal rights
that are inherent in the nature of ethics, and not
contingent on human actions or beliefs). This eventually
developed into what we today call human rights.
 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES
ARTICLE III

Bill of Rights

SECTION 1. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor
shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.

SECTION 2. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
against unreasonable searches and seizures of whatever nature and for any purpose shall be
inviolable, and no search warrant or warrant of arrest shall issue except upon probable cause to
be determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation of the
complainant and the witnesses he may produce, and particularly describing the place to be
searched and the persons or things to be seized.
o Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative, which roots
morality in humanity's rational capacity and asserts
certain inviolable moral laws. Kant's formulation is
deontological in that he argues that to act in the morally right
way, people must act according to duty, and that it is
the motives of the person who carries out the action that make
them right or wrong, not the consequences of the actions.
o Pluralistic Deontology is a description of the deontological
ethics propounded by W.D. Ross (1877 - 1971). He argues
that there are seven prima facie duties which need to be
taken into consideration when deciding which duty should be
acted upon:
1. beneficence (to help other people to increase their
pleasure, improve their character, etc.)
2. non-maleficence (to avoid harming other people)
3. justice (to ensure people get what they deserve)
4. self-improvement (to improve ourselves)
5. reparation (to recompense someone if you have acted
wrongly towards them)
6. gratitude (to benefit people who have benefited us)
7. promise-keeping (to act according to explicit and implicit
promises, including the implicit promise to tell the truth)
o Contractarian Ethics (or the Moral Theory of
Contractarianism) claims that moral norms derive
their normative force from the idea of contract or mutual
agreement. It holds that moral acts are those that we
would all agree to if we were unbiased, and that moral rules
themselves are a sort of a contract, and therefore only
people who understand and agree to the terms of the
contract are bound by it.
o The theory stems initially from political Contractarianism and
the principle of social contract developed by Thomas
Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, which
essentially holds that people give up some rights to a
government and/or other authority in order to receive, or jointly
preserve, social order.
o Contractualism is a variation on Contractarianism, although
based more on the Kantian ideas that ethics is an
essentially interpersonal matter, and that right and wrong are a
matter of whether we can justify the action to other people.
Normative ethical theories are usually split into three
main categories:

C. Virtue Ethics, focuses on the inherent character of a person

rather than on the nature or consequences of specific actions
performed.
• The system identifies virtues (those habits and behaviors that
will allow a person to achieve "eudaimonia", or well being or
a good life), counsels practical wisdom to resolve any conflicts
between virtues, and claims that a lifetime of practicing these
virtues leads to, or in effect constitutes, happiness and the good
life.
o Eudaimonism is a philosophy originated by Aristotle that
defines right action as that which leads to "well being", and
which can be achieved by a lifetime of practicing
the virtues in one's everyday activities, subject to the
exercise of practical wisdom.
o Agent-Based Theories give an account of virtue based on
our common-sense intuitions about which character traits
are admirable (e.g. benevolence, kindness, compassion, etc),
which we can identify by looking at the people we admire,
our moral exemplars.
o Ethics of Care was developed mainly by Feminist writers,
and calls for a change in how we view morality and the
virtues, shifting towards the more marginalized virtues
exemplified by women, such as taking care of others,
patience, the ability to nurture, self-sacrifice, etc.
▪ It is a value-free approach to ethics which examines
ethics from the perspective of observations of actual
choices made by moral agents in practice. It is the
study of people's beliefs about morality,
and implies the existence of, rather than
explicitly prescribing, theories of value or of
conduct. It is not designed to provide guidance to
people in making moral decisions, nor is it designed
to evaluate the reasonableness of moral norms.
The main difference between normative
ethics and descriptive ethics is
that normative ethics analyses how
people ought to act whereas
descriptive ethics analyses what people
think is right.
It is more likely to be investigated by those
working in the fields of evolutionary
biology, psychology, sociology, history or anthr
opology, although information that comes from
descriptive ethics is also used in philosophical
arguments.
▪ Applied Ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts to
apply ethical theory to real-life situations. Strict, principle-
based ethical approaches often result in solutions to specific
problems that are not universally acceptable or impossible to
implement. Applied Ethics is much more ready to include the
insights of psychology, sociology and other relevant areas of
knowledge in its deliberations. It is used in
determining public policy.
The following would be questions of Applied Ethics:

"Is getting an abortion immoral?"

"Is euthanasia immoral?“
"Is affirmative action right or wrong?"
"What are human rights, and how do we determine
them?“
"Do animals have rights as well?"
Can you add more?
The major meta-ethical views are commonly divided into
two camps: Moral Realism and Moral Anti-Realism:

Moral Realism:
Moral Realism (or Moral Objectivism) holds that there are objective moral values, so that evaluative
statements are essentially factual claims, which are either true or false, and that their truth or falsity
are independent of our beliefs, feelings or other attitudes towards the things being evaluated. It is
a cognitivist view in that it holds that ethical sentences express valid propositions and are therefore truth-
apt.

Moral Anti-Realism:
Moral Anti-Realism holds that there are no objective moral values, and comes in one of three forms,
depending on whether ethical statements are believed to be subjective claims (Ethical Subjectivism), not
genuine claims at all (Non-Cognitivism) or mistaken objective claims (Moral Nihilism or Moral
Skepticism):
Emotivism - is a meta-
ethical view that claims
that ethical sentences do
not express propositions
but emotional attitudes.
Some ethical principles are:
Truthfulness
Honesty
Loyalty
Respect
Fairness
Integrity
Ethics covers the following dilemmas:

how to live a good life

our rights and responsibilities
the language of right and wrong
moral decisions – what is good and bad?
Where does ethics come from?

Philosophers have several answers to this question:

God and religion

Human conscience and intuition
a rational moral cost-benefit analysis of actions and
their effects
the example of good human beings
a desire for the best for people in each unique situation
political power
What use is ethics?

Ethics can provide a moral map

Ethics can pinpoint a disagreement
Ethics doesn’t give right answers
Ethics can give several answers