Ethics In Rossian Ethics

Rossian ethics is a moral belief system falling under the deontology family that allows for certain actions to be deemed right if they abide by the seven prima facie moral principles. These principles are fidelity, reparation, gratitude, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, and self-improvement. Ross also finds justice, pleasure, knowledge, and virtue to be intrinsically good. In other words, these are good in and of themselves and are not reliant on the intentions of the person doing the action. While Ross claims that these are all important factors, it is evident that he finds virtue to be the best and pleasure to be the least. In this way, forms of pleasure like sadism that do harm to others are not seen as the right thing to do

These constraints offer absolutes for certain actions that are deemed to be never permissible regardless of circumstances. Options exist in Rossian ethics as there is no prima facie principle held in higher regard than any other. As one of the principles is self-improvement, Rossian ethics allow for seeking to benefit oneself before benefitting others. Deontology in general also does not require one to do the most good every single time. This allows for duties of special relationships to take precedence over the duties to do good as a whole. For instance, if a building was burning and one had a single family member in the building, but there was a room with three children also in the building, it would be permissible to save the single family member before attempting to save the three children. It would be fair to consider Rossian ethics on the middle of the deontology spectrum. Unlike Kantian ethics, Rossian ethics are not as direct and structured and do not require universalizability for an action to be considered right. Rossian ethics are more structured than Moral Particularism, however. Moral Particularism defines the right action as being the one that is right

To begin with, I believe that all moral standards are flawed. Ethics and the moral standards related to them are the attempts of the flawed human species to reach and understand perfection. While I find the Rossian ethics’ tendency to accept human flaws and all that follows as an admirable trait, there are those that demand absolutes and perfection and will settle for nothing less. They, consequently, find Rossian ethics to be too loose to be permissible. There are also people that find the lax moral system of the prima facie principles to be too unaccountable. There are no guidelines to determine which principle takes precedence in different circumstances. While some might see this as being a problem, this is the absolute most important aspect of Rossian ethics to me. How many times will there ever be only one correct answer? Consider killing someone. Why would one do it? Perhaps one is ending the pain of a dying human. Perhaps one acted in cold blood. Both of those situations involve killing, but both are not always considered wrong. In an act of beneficence, the dying man might be given excessive amounts of pain killer to end his suffering. This would be the right thing to do in most situations. The person acting in cold-blood; however, would very much be in the wrong and punishable by law. This is also an important way to allow for cultural