normative ethics
- Key People:
- Derek Parfit
normative ethics, that branch of moral philosophy, or ethics, concerned with criteria of what is morally right and wrong. It includes the formulation of moral rules that have direct implications for what human actions, institutions, and ways of life should be like. It is typically contrasted with theoretical ethics, or metaethics, which is concerned with the nature rather than the content of ethical theories and moral judgments, and applied ethics, or the application of normative ethics to practical problems.
(Read Peter Singer’s Britannica entry on ethics.)
The central question of normative ethics is determining how basic moral standards are arrived at and justified. The answers to this question fall into two broad categories—deontological and teleological, or consequentialist. The principal difference between them is that deontological theories do not appeal to value considerations in establishing ethical standards, while teleological theories do. Deontological theories use the concept of their inherent rightness in establishing such standards, while teleological theories consider the goodness or value brought into being by actions as the principal criterion of their ethical value. In other words, a deontological approach calls for doing certain things on principle or because they are inherently right, whereas a teleological approach advocates that certain kinds of actions are right because of the goodness of their consequences. Deontological theories thus stress the concepts of obligation, ought, duty, and right and wrong, while teleological theories lay stress on the good, the valuable, and the desirable. Deontological theories set forth formal or relational criteria such as equality or impartiality; teleological theories, by contrast, provide material or substantive criteria, as, for example, happiness or pleasure (see utilitarianism).
The application of normative theories and standards to practical moral problems is the concern of applied ethics. This subdiscipline of ethics deals with many major issues of the contemporary scene, including human rights, social equality, and the moral implications of scientific research, for example in the area of genetic engineering. See also bioethics, legal ethics, business ethics, animal rights, environmentalism.