Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

might ask if narratives could be constructed within the context of family, neighbourhood, community and society.

One way to summarise the ethical positions that are considered in this chapter is to place them within one of five broad categories: Ethical (or moral) constructivism is the view that moral values are socially provided. Ethical (or moral) formalism is the view that a system of morals can be devised (see especially Kant). Ethical (or moral) naturalism is the view that morals can be based on actual human behaviour, without calling on either ethical rules or some external source of morality. (The term ‘descriptive ethics’ might also be used for ethical naturalism. The system devised by Philippa Foot is derived from Aristotle and is the idea that the nature of human beings is itself a determinant of the good. In the last chapter we also saw that behaviourism in psychology is based on what people actually do, rather than what we try to describe as right and wrong. We might describe behaviourism as delivering ‘normative’ as opposed to ‘formal’ values.) Ethical objectivism is the view that ethics have some kind of external source, as explored in Chapter 18, such as broader values, meanings and ideals on which our ethics and morality should be based. And finally, ethical relativism is the idea that moral values should be based on circumstances — this might be described as ‘consequentialism’ (see below) — or it might be described as pragmatism.

The above summary however, is often reduced to three key ideas — ‘consequentialism’, ‘deontological ethics’ and ‘virtue ethics’.

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