Four Dominant Theories on Ethics

Morgan La Femina

Ethical Issues in Social Policy

Ethics is deigned coarsely as the actions of goodness and badness that we observe in people.

Morals have this inherent definition but add a second meaning, which is the ability to act out the good

or bad by choice and not by force (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 3). These choices affect us in society

because we are social beings and live in societies. Methods for analyzing and exercising ethics in our

judgments when policy is studied or comprised have been proposed and are each effective in various

cases. These tools provide a framework to base each case on fact and not rhetoric built on the

presumption of feelings (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 4).

Our American society shares values, which bind us together politically and culturally. These

values are reflected in the policies our country has pursued since before its inception. Clusters of these

values have been built from English common law as well as their liberties, Puritan theology as well as

their political theory, the French Enlightenment, and German idealism. Specifically theory and

refinements of Immanuel Kant and Georg Friedrich Hegel have merged into our competing and

blending cultural norms and values (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 6). Individual rights are a cornerstone

of our American values foremost in Lockean formulations such as the pursuit of Life, Liberty, and

Property. The flavor of the early American colonists was of natural rights, nature, and the American

social contract (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 7). American individualism but with moral overtones of a

civil and internal conscience dominated and is debated down to today (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 9).

In order to break down and analyze the concordant and discordant complexity of our public policy four

theories have been formulated.

Four dominant theories that have emerged that proved a systematic method for which to

implement ethical analysis are: Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Prudent Pragmatism.

These methods were born out of European philosophy. Each of these theories provide a view of one of

the core threads that run through the American culture, but only a view; when taken together they

provide the best complete methodology we have to date to understand US public policy.

Libertarianism was born out of American populism and the political thoughts of Thomas

Hooker and Anne Hutchinson. Equality and individual rights such as the freedom from need and the

ability to succeed spring from the theory of Liberalism (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007 p 9). Jeffersonian

optimism became reborn through the transcendentalism of philosophers such as Thoreau and Emerson

in the 1800's (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 10). The freedom of individual choice and of policy that is

reflected in the US Bill of Rights can be seen in the policies of Johnson and Kennedy administrations

with wealth re-distribution and the implementing of EOP programs which were attempts to bring about

a fair start for the “American Dream”. One chief advocate of these policies is John Rawls.

Jeremy Bentham, who was an English philosopher who lived from 1748 to 1855, originally

formulated utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is one of the ribbons of social frameworks with which we can

view US policy objectively (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 22). According to Bentham, the quantity of

good in an act can be found out by how much pleasure and pain produced as a whole and not by the

person or policies good intentions. This view was brought about by more than 200 years of religious

ideological and social conflict that have been occurring in Europe at that time. His theory can be

summated in that all the goods and bads should be added up and the result should be positive if the

policy is to be worthwhile or effective, a calculus of sorts. All pleasures and pains must be combined

and calculated to form a gross total.

Utilitarianism was born out especially where punishments for crimes in England were

moderated where they were often quite severe: “Let the punishment fit the crime,” (Bluhm & Heinman,

2007, p 22). Utilitarianism is most often seen when roads, parks, buildings, or long-term plans are

being formulated for a community. One cheviot to Utilitarianisms is that of our human tendency to

maximize society’s well-being instead of our own many times. John Stuart Mill and J.J Rousseau

countermanded with the addition of inherent benevolence of human nature as a reason for this tendency

(Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 24).

Another theory that aids us to analyze and implement policy is Deontology or Kantianism. The

meaning of deontology is the inability to divide and identify what is good from what we understand as

right. Deontology’s view or perspective is that inherently there are decisions or acts that are right or

wrong regardless of the consequences. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) formulated this ethical framework

of law. His view was that of law and that this world is governed by a specific set of laws these natural

principles are thus extended to us because we are a part of this natural world. Human nature is

governed by natural law because it stems from the world around us. His reasoning therefore was that

we do not act arbitrarily but we are self-given to observe these laws and are capable of exercising our

will to do what is right.

According to Kant, what is right is universal in nature (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 25). What is

universal to Kant is ways in which we act that would not be self-defeating; if everyone borrows, money

without paying it back then no person would be able to borrow money anymore (Bluhm & Heinman,

2007, p 260. As free agents of society, we are to treat others as an end rather than utilitarian means

(Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 27). One example would be to lie about detainees if your government

thought it would save lives.

Case method or Prudent Pragmatism as the authors William T. Bluhm and Robert A. Heinman

in Ethics and Public Policy, Methods and Cases refers to can be traced back as a means of policy

evaluation to Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophers (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 27). He viewed

practical reasons as a means to decide possibilities on a case-by-case means (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007,

p 28). Moderation and virtue are the methods by which reason can be used in each case based on each

case’s facts. Experience refines virtue, moderation, prudence resulting, as such, and a better feeling of

what facts are relevant, and what rules apply to each circumstance. According to Julius Korvesi in

Moral Nations, there are universal moral ideas such as murder being wrong, but prudent pragmatism is

a means of deciding how to apply the universalities. One example of this is a punishment of a murder

based on intent, as well as the circumstance and relevant facts. In a murder, punishments based on

intent include murder 1, murder 2, or manslaughter. Causality is best illustrated by willful malice or

intent to harm (Bluhm & Heinman, 2007, p 38).

References

Bluhm, T. W., & Heineman A. R. (2007). Ethics and Public Policy: Methods and Cases (C. J. Owen

Ed.) Upper Saddle River, New Jersey