Actions should match…

Sir,

Most people claim to have almost every answer to ethical questions even though they have not studied ethics and know very little about the research that has been done on ethics. Some will say we have a conscience which guides and tells us whether a course of action is right or wrong, good or evil. But do we really have the right kind of conscience that can deliver us ethical truths?

In the practical sense, when we talk of ethics, we talk of how one should live, how he or she should relate to other people and the environment.

Ethicists will tell you that an ethical person cannot just walk past a beggar in the street and pretend like that beggar does not exist.

Ethics dictate that if there is a person who needs help, ethical people cannot just turn a blind eye on that person, but must help. Ethics dictate that people must care for the environment and we should care about the suffering of animals.

In the ethicist’s mind, it is a concern the way in which dogs are hit and killed by cars on public roads and are left there to rot with no one to remove the body to a more appropriate place.

Actions

Actions should match what a virtuous person would do in a given circumstance. Thus actions are evaluated based on whether they express virtue.

Deontology-duty based ethics, by Immanuel Kant, assert that to act ethically, is to act from duty, because we all have an obligation to act right. Kant says a person has a good will, and must act right at all times regardless of the consequences of the action.

Thus philosophically speaking, if one claims to be ethical, that person must be in a way following one or all ethical theories.

However, these theories seem not to agree with each other. Which one is the right one to follow?

M Shabangu