Summary |
Moral philosophers construct theories that attempt to systematize our moral thinking. A natural next step is to compare and contrast these theories and debate which of them gives the best account of morality. This may be done in a very specific way (e.g., comparing the moral theories of W.D. Ross and G.E. Moore) or a more general way. The general way involves pointing to theoretically important properties that some moral theories share and then categorizing moral theories based on whether they have or lack these properties. Examples of such general categories include: consequentialism, deontology, virtue ethics, agent-relative, agent-neutral, agent-centered, and patient-centered. A lot of work in normative ethics is concerned with the general comparison of moral theories. One concern is with how to understand and distinguish different categories (e.g., what is consequentialism and how does it differ from deontology?). A second concern is with which categories best capture the most fundamental divisions in moral theorizing (e.g., is it more important to know whether a moral theory is agent-relative or to know whether it is non-consequentialist?). A third concern is with assessing which general types of theories are better (e.g., are consequentialist approaches to ethics generally better than deontological approaches?). |