Descriptive Ethics

Descriptive ethics deals with what people actually believe (or made to believe) to be right or

wrong, and accordingly holds up the human actions acceptable or not acceptable or

punishable under a custom or law.

However, customs and laws keep changing from time to time and from society to society.

The societies have structured their moral principles as per changing time and have expected

people to behave accordingly. Due to this, descriptive ethics is also called comparative ethics

because it compares the ethics or past and present; ethics of one society and other. It also

takes inputs from other disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, sociology and history

to explain the moral right or wrong.

Normative Ethics

Normative Ethics deals with “norms” or set of considerations how one should act. Thus, it’s a

study of “ethical action” and sets out the rightness or wrongness of the actions. It is also

called prescriptive ethics because it rests on the principles which determine whether an

action is right or wrong. The Golden rule of normative ethics is “doing to other as we want

them to do to us“. Since we don’t want our neighbours to throw stones through our glass

window, then it will not be wise to first throw stone through a neighbour’s window.  Based

on this reasoning, anything such as harassing, victimising, abusing or assaulting someone is

wrong. Normative ethics also provides justification for punishing a person who disturbs

social and moral order.

Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Kant’s deontological ethics, Mill’s consequentialism

(Utilitarianism) and the Bhagwad Gita’s Nishkam Karmayoga are some of the theories in

Normative Ethics.
Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics focuses on one’s character and the virtues for determining or evaluating ethical

behaviour. Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas were major advocates of Virtue ethics. Plato

gave a scheme of four cardinal virtues viz. prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude

(courage). His disciple Aristotle categorized the virtues as moral and intellectual. He

identified some of the moral virtues including “wisdom”.

Deontological ethics

Deontological ethics or duty ethics focuses on the rightness and wrongness of the actions

rather than the consequences of those actions. There are different deontological theories such

as categorical imperative, moral absolutism, divine command theory etc.

First famous deontological theory is Immanuel Kant’s Categorical  Imperative or Kantianism.

Kant said that the human beings occupy special place in creation and there is an ultimate

commandment from which all duties and obligations derive. The moral rules, as per Kant,

should follow two principles viz. universality and principle of reciprocity.  By universality,

he meant that a moral action must be possible to apply it to all people. By principle of

reciprocity, he meant said “do as you would be done by. Such premise of morality is found in

all religious systems, including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism etc.

Second famous deontological theory is Moral absolutism. It believes that there are absolute

standards against which moral questions can be judged. Against these standards, certain

actions are right while others are wrong regardless of the context of the act. For example,

theft is wrong, regardless of context in which theft was carried out. It ignores that sometimes

wrong act is done to reach out to right consequence.

has decreed it to be right. As per this theory, the rightness of any action depends upon that

action being performed because it is a duty, not because of any good consequences arising

from that action.

Consequentialism (Teleology)

Consequentialism or teleological ethics says that the morality of an action is contingent with

the outcome of that action. So, the morally right action would produce good outcome while

morally wrong action would produce bad outcome. Based on the outcome, there are several

theories such as Utilitarianism {right action leads to most happiness of greatest number of

people}, Hedonism {anything that maximizes pleasure is right}, Egoism {anything that

maximizes the good for self is right}, Asceticism {abstinence from egoistic pleasures to

achieve spiritual goals is right action}, Altruism {to live for others and not caring for self is

right action}.

The core idea of consequentialism is that “the ends justify the means“. An action that might

not be right in the light of moral absolutism may be a right action under teleology.

Meta Ethics

Meta Ethics or “analytical ethics” deals with the origin of the ethical concepts themselves. It

does not consider whether an action is good or bad, right or wrong. Rather, it questions –

what goodness or rightness or morality itself is? It is basically a highly abstract way of

thinking about ethics. The key theories in meta-ethics include naturalism, non-naturalism,

emotivism and prescriptivism.

Naturalists and non-naturalists believe that moral language is cognitive and can be known to

be true or false. Emotivists deny that moral utterances are cognitive, holding that they consist
of emotional expressions of approval or disapproval and that the nature of moral reasoning

and justification must be reinterpreted to take this essential characteristic of moral utterances

into account. Prescriptivists take a somewhat similar approach, arguing that moral judgments

are prescriptions or prohibitions of action, rather than statements of fact about the world.

Applied Ethics

Applied ethics deals with the philosophical examination, from a moral standpoint, of

particular issues in private and public life which are matters of moral judgment. This branch

of ethics is most important for professionals in different walks of life including doctors,

teachers, administrators, rulers and so on. There are six key domains of applied ethics viz.

Decision ethics {ethical decision making process}, Professional ethics {for good

professionalism}, Clinical Ethics {good clinical practices}, Business Ethics {good business

practices}, Organizational ethics {ethics within and among organizations} and social ethics.

It deals with the rightness or wrongness of social, economical, cultural, religious issues also.

For example, euthanasia, child labour, abortion etc.