Ethical Theory and Business - Chap. 1 Contempary Theories

Rights Theories

Right-based theories hold that rights form the justifying basis of obligations because they best express the purpose of morality, which is the securing of liberties or other benefits for a rights-holder.

Virtue Ethics

In philosophy, the phrase virtue ethics refers to ethical systems that focus primarily on what sort of person one should try to be. Thus, one of the aims of virtue ethics is to offer an account of the sort of characteristics a virtuous person has. The ultimate aim of virtue ethics is eudaimonia, roughly meaning ‘flourishing’ or ‘success.’ According to virtue ethicists this is the aim to which all humans endeavour - to lead a good, happy and fulfilling life.

Feminist Ethics

Feminist Ethics is an attempt to revise, reformulate, or rethink those aspects of traditional western ethics that depreciate or devalue women's moral experience. Among others, feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar faults traditional western ethics for failing women in five related ways. First, it shows little concern for women's as opposed to men's interests and rights.
Second, it dismisses as morally uninteresting the problems that arise in the so-called private world, the realm in which women cook, clean, and care for the young, the old, and the sick. Third, it suggests that, on the average, women are not as morally developed as men.
Fourth, it overvalues culturally masculine traits like independence, autonomy, separation, mind, reason, culture, transcendence, war, and death, and undervalues culturally feminine traits like interdependence, community, connection, body, emotion, nature, immanence, peace, and life. Fifth, and finally, it favors culturally masculine ways of moral reasoning that emphasize rules, universality, and impartiality over culturally feminine ways of moral reasoning that emphasize relationships, particularity, and partiality.

Common Morality Theory

Theory believes that all people share by virtue of communal life and that this morality is ultimatly the source of all theories of morality.