The Right Thing To Do By James Rachel

Within James Rachel’s educational essay ‘’The Right thing to do,’’ an exert from his controversial text ‘’Teachings of morality,’’ the author provides a clear and concise evaluation of the ethical theories, Relativism and the Divine Command Theory. Rachel, through examining and critiquing these ethical theories allows his readership to gain an increased understanding of both the merits and limitations of these respective ethical theories.

Within Rachel’s text, there exists both an examination and critique of the theory of Relativism. Relativism is an ethical theory which states that the desecration of right and wrong is relative to the conventions and customs of one’s society and that there is no universal, permanent criteria to determine

The divine command theory of ethics holds that an act is either moral or immoral solely because God has indicated as such. Rachel raises a number of logical questions to this theory. The author highlights that humans have practical difficulties in ‘’knowing’’ what God commands, indicating that various sources of scripture and church teachings are ‘’notoriously ambiguous’’ due to their extreme age and give often ‘’vague and often contradictory information’’ which have difficulty remaining relevant to contemporary societal issues such genetic research, climate change etc. Rachel also highlights that in order to truly gain a deep and intrinsic understanding of the question of morality, one must know the ‘standard of rightness’ that God commands, i.e. ask why do Gods commands the things that they do. Rachel argues that the answer to that question will reveal why some actions are right and why some actions are wrong. Rachel highlights many potential areas of ambiguity within this theory such as the questions there are many Gods in today’s society such as, which god do we listen to? What does that god say? How do we know what they command? Similarly, Rachel highlights two practical problems within the Divine Command Theory. The first consisting of the Euthyphro dilemma: are morally good acts willed by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God? For example, is torture wrong because God prohibits it, or does God prohibit torture because it is already wrong? The second being that If there are reasons for Gods wilt then these reasons constitute a basis for morality independent of god If there are no reasons for gods will, then these do not constitute a good basis for