Various Ethical Frameworks from James Rachels’ The Elements of Moral Philosophy
In his book, The Elements of Moral Philosophy (Rachels, 2019), James Rachels defines some of the most significant ethical frameworks. He also lays out two assumptions that create the “minimum” definition of ethics that all frameworks must agree with: first, “Morality is… the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason—that is, to do what there are the best reasons for doing…” and second, “giving equal weight to the interests of each individual affected by one’s action [The Principle of Equal Treatment].”[1] Using these two assumptions, Rachels introduces four ethical frameworks - Ethical Egoism, the Social Contract Theory, Cultural Relativism, and Utilitarianism - along with some arguments for and against them.
Cultural Relativism is an ethical framework built to explain why different cultures have different ethics. This theory claims there is no “absolute rational standard”[2] for morality. The basic argument for this claim is: 1) different cultures have different moral codes and 2) no culture’s morality is special thus 3) there is no absolute moral code.[3] However just because cultures have different morals and beliefs does that mean that all ethical frameworks are equal or right. To illustrate this point, consider the flat Earth. Just because some cultures believe the Earth is flat and other do not does not mean that the Earth can be flat or round. Because the denial of absolute morality does not follow logically from the assumptions, Cultural Relativism is “invalid.”[4]
Ethical Egoism is defined as the belief that the right thing to do is always what benefits us most. Arguments for Ethical Egoism generally rest on the assumption that altruism causes net harm. Those arguments are faulty because: how can feeding a child who would die without food be harmful?[5] Altruism is not harmful, and thus if we should do what helps everyone most, which ethical egoism accepts, we should not be an Ethical Egoist.[6] Another argument for Ethical Egoism holds that ethical egoism is in fact the basis for our commonsense ethics. This is flawed because if one could profit from murder and then escape, Ethical Egoism can’t explain why you should not kill, even though our commonsense reasoning objects to murder. Rachels’s main argument against ethical egoism claims the framework is “unacceptably arbitrary”; it violates the Principle of Equal Treatment that Rachels defined in his two assumptions about any moral framework. It breaks this principle because it treats the interests of the self unobjectively, and thus, Ethical Egoism isn’t valid.
Social Contract Theory is based on the undesirability of the “State of Nature,” or the place where there are no enforceable social rules.[7] To escape this, humanity formed social contracts for mutual benefit. This contract created a “set of rules… rational people will accept… [if] other[s] accept them [too].” Rachels main refutation of the theory is that, according to the framework, we should not consider the interests of populations that don’t benefit us, such as future generations, when making the mutually beneficial rules of society. If a population can’t pay the price of the contract, why do they deserve the benefits? As Rachels says, the implications are “unacceptable.” Thus, this theory is invalid.
Utilitarianism claims that whatever actions maximize pleasure and minimize pain is always the right thing to do. An issue that Rachels has with Utilitarianism is that pleasure is not all that matters. For example, we value friendship for a reason that utilitarianism can’t explain.[8] The most significant criticism that Rachels offers focuses on the primacy that Utilitarianism gives to The Principle of Equal Treatment. Utilitarianism uses this theory to justify treating everyone’s pleasure the same, including non-human creatures, which means that one must treat a stranger with the same kindness they would treat their family. This would require us to dissolve all family bonds: how is family possible if all must be treated equally? However, “hard-nosed” Utilitarians don’t see an issue with any of this if net pleasure is increased and net pain minimized.[9] These Utilitarians don’t wish to reconcile Utilitarianism with common sense, believing the latter to simply be either wrong or rooted in Utilitarianism.
[1] Rachels, S., & Rachels, J. (2019). {Insert Title/Section Here}. In The elements of moral philosophy (pp. 1–2). essay, McGraw-Hill Education.
[2] Ibid. (pp. 30)
[3] Ibid. (pp. 19)
[4] Ibid. (pp. 19)
[5] Ibid. (pp. 72)
[6] Ibid. (pp. 72-73)
[7] Ibid. (pp. 82-84)
[8] Ibid. (pp. 113)
[9] Ibid. (pp. 122)
In chapters 11 and 12, Rachels (2018) discusses virtue and care ethics, as well as the relationship between them. He ultimately concludes that both are insufficient without a more action-focused ethical framework to combine them with.
Virtue ethics was created in the ancient city state by Aristotle and was one of the very first ethical theories. It claims that a virtuous person will always be a moral person by the very nature of virtue. In this theory, the virtue of a given action (honesty, self-discipline, etc.) is the mid-point between the two vices of that action (Rachels, 2018). Rachels (2018) points out the two main arguments for virtue theory as such: First, because the theory is so appealing to our natural gut feeling and second, it can easily deal with the issue of impartiality by stating that some virtues, such as decency, require impartiality but that some others, such as love, are by their nature partial. The theory that there is no right or wrong actions, rather only virtues and vices, can be attractive because of how many questions it answers. However, these two benefits come with trade-offs. The first of which is that by describing who we should be rather than what we should do, virtue theory fails in advising one on how to act (Rachels, 2018). Virtue theory does not, then, is not a complete ethical framework. Its use is not alone, but it can be useful if it is treated as a supplement for other, more action-focused, ethical frameworks such as utilitarianism or Kantianism.
Care ethics arose out of a modern feminist movement against women’s historic marinization in ethical philosophy, especially in virtue theory, and it is the de-facto official ethical framework among modern feminist (Rachels, 2018, p. 153). Care ethics holds that that the basis of all morality is relationships, with some radical supporters going so far as to argue that relationships are all that gives life its moral worth (Rachels, 2018). This ethical framework has been closely linked with feminism because of the difference in the way that women tend to think more socially than men (Rachels, 2018, pgs. 151-153). Care ethicists believe that “living well” comes from caring for and maintaining the trust of those relationships (Rachels, 2018, p. 154). Care ethicist, who deny the assumption of impartiality, argue that bias towards those you have relations with is the only moral way to live one’s life. They ask us to consider why bias towards loved ones is so bad (Rachels, 2018.) After all, we literally all do it, or else we would no longer have any loved ones. Some radical care ethicists have gone so far as to suggest that, by consequence of this hyper-focus on relationships, we are only morally obliged to help others if we have a relationship with them. This view, as Rachels points out, is just as horrible in consequence as ignoring relationships all together (Rachels, 2018). It would seem to justify not caring about the sufferings of others we do not know, which cannot reasonably be true in an ethical theory without running into large issues. This criticism is valid, and thus care ethics cannot stand by itself, but rather to be grafted on to the historically male theories of ethics to make them less sexist. However, far from minimizing the impact of this first female-created ethical framework, Rachels (2018) and Berges (2015) both are quick to point out that the combined benefits from both the female, more relationship-focused, and the male, more virtue focus, will be superior to the benefits of either one, and thus the goal of feminists who adopted the theory is achieved: recognition of women’s virtues in ethical philosophy.
References:
Berges, S. (2015). A feminist perspective on virtue ethics. ProQuest Ebook Central https://about.proquest.com/en/products-services/ebooks-main
Rachels, J. (2018). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (9th Edition). McGraw-Hill Higher Education (US). https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9781260213003