Ethics in America:

DANTES Final Exam Outline 

Each topic will be covered in class. 

    

Ethical Traditions (43% - 45%)

 

• Greek views:

  • Thucydides: Wrote the History of the Peloponnesian War.

  • Socrates: felt that ethics was born of human conflict.

  • Plato: Believed the organization of the soul of a good person is similar to the organization of the social classes in an ideal society.

  • Aristotle: The good for which all humans aspire is happiness, which is the activity of the soul.

 

• Religious traditions: The morally right action is the one that God commands.

 

• Moral law:

  • Epictetus: Our moral responsibility lies in the things we control.

  • Aquinas: Put forth the notion of eternal law as the road map for ethics.

  • Hobbes: He believed that all acts are ultimately self-serving.

  • Locke: Everybody must be moved by a desire for his or her own happiness or pleasure.

  • Rousseau: in an ideal society, no one above rules.

  • Jefferson: Believed moral philosophy is found in the evidence offered by human nature.

  • Kant: Divided moral philosophy into two domains, that of justice or law on the one hand, and that of ethics or virtue on the other.

  • Royce: Social groups own their own values.

  • King: Moral responsibility to obey laws that are just.

  • Rawls: Envisioned a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights cooperating within an egalitarian economic system.

  • Nozick: Best known for his version of an "externalist" theory of knowledge.

 

• Consequential ethics: Epicurus, Smith, Bentham, Mill, Rand. Consequentialists hold that choices, acts, and/or intentions are to be morally assessed solely by the states of affairs they bring about.

 

• Feminist ethics: Gilligan, Noddings. Feminist ethics was an attempt to revise, reformulate, or rethink traditional ethics to the extent it depreciates or devalues women's moral experience.

 

Ethical Analysis of Issues and Practical Applications (55% - 57%)

 

• Morality: Issues of right and wrong as they relate to an individual's religious and/or cultural belief.

  • Relationships: The most fundamental and dependable relationship that one person has with another person.

  • Sexuality: Religious texts that are 1800-3000 years old still govern and guide a large part of the population on matters of sexuality.

 

• Life and death issues: Fundamental principles that guide our understanding on issues such as saving a life and euthanasia.

 

• Economic inequity, poverty, and equal opportunity: Lack of economic equality and how it relates to living conditions and opportunities.

 

• Racism and affirmative action: Issues on discrimination based on race and attempts at providing equal opportunities through legislation and policies.

 

• Punishment: Checking the power of the individual so that punishment is a means of repairing social order and not a means of satisfying and individuals need for reparation.

 

• War and peace: Justifying war and the politics of peace.

 

• Life-centered and human-centered ethics: The rights and duties of the individual as a person as opposed to the individual as a part of the environment.

 

• Human rights: Fundamental rights of all peoples that are universally protected

 

• Biomedical ethics: Issues of right and wrong in medicine and biomedical science