Virtue Ethics Reflection Paper

752 Words4 Pages

Ethics has opened my world significantly, no longer do I only think in black and white or good or bad, I now think in gray. Without ethics I feel no one can possess an opinion and without knowing your ethical priorities, what makes you think the way you do. Virtue ethics is the closest alignment of my thinking. The value of nature and other beings is very important to me. Without these emotions, how do we connect to an issue or form an opinion on a topic. In utilitarianism every decision should be made to benefit the majority of people and deontology everything is judged on a set of rules. In both of these styles of ethics reason is valued higher than emotion. There are times when it is not possible to be just a virtue ethics thinker because of the society we have been raised in. The world today is still slightly oppressed. When I say oppressed I mean …show more content…

In the old Catholicism days church and state were one thing. They united the people using the church and controlled them using the Bible and their status as religious leaders. When the United States was formed we made a distinct separation between church and state. The founding fathers saw that people were much more peaceful and united despite their different religious beliefs. George Washington in his farewell address said, “of 'all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” The Catholics would have argued that religion and morality are the basis of every thought and therefore you cannot have a government free of a national religion. These arguments on both sides have their own pros and cons and who is to say that one is “good” and the other is