Principles of Ethics Edward Perry Franciscan University Summary For a long time, people have often tried to understand the difference between morally wrong and morally right. As a result, philosophers offered their different perspectives as means of guiding the decisions that people make daily towards attaining a well-lived life. Philosophers like Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and Aristotle who offered original and insightful ideas relating to virtue, utilitarianism and deontological ethics dominate the subject of ethics. John Stuart Mill advocated for the theory of utility whereby the end justifies the means as long as the outcomes promote greater good. This argument assesses the pleasures of the outcomes and disregards the …show more content…
The virtue theory explains that morality entails acquiring good character that produces individuals who make decisions out of goodness as this promotes a virtuous or a happy life in the end. These theories are attached to the idea that morality is intimately attached to our functions as human. Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, offered novel ideas concerning morality and to him, morality is engraved in the present actions and not the outcomes. These three approaches can provide a solution the debate of abortion. Abortion should be an individual right because it weighs the consequences of giving birth against realities of the fact such as the life the child would live. If the mother consents to an abortion, it means that she has evaluated the necessary possibilities and understood that the life of the child would not be perfect and therefore it is unjust to give the child undesired life. Supported by the theories, abortion should …show more content…
However, Mill declared that valuable pleasures are those that employ higher faculties (Mill, 2002). The consequences often addressed on this theory are happiness and unhappiness, and there are no limits to these. The theory proposed by Mill believes that the best action taken at any moment is that which the consequences hold more value regarding the well-being of sentient entities (Mill, 2002). The ethical theory made sense to Mill because he believed that happiness is a virtue that must be highly valued and equality only arises when there are equal considerations of interests. Additionally, Mill believed that morality is attained based on how we name a type of action and whether it should be sanctioned and therefore, wrong morals are those that cannot bring harm and thus cannot be