Ethical and Philosophical Questions about Value and Obligation Essay

Ethical and Philosophical Questions about Value and Obligation I Recall the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics. Normative ethics deals with substantial ethical issues, such as, What is intrinsically good? What are our moral obligations? Metaethics deals with philosophical issues about ethics: What is value or moral obligation? Are there ethical facts? What sort of objectivity is possible in ethics? How can we have ethical knowledge? Recall, also, the fundamental dilemma of metaethics. Either there are ethical facts or there aren?t. If they are, what sort of facts are they? In what do they consist? If there are not, why do we think, talk, and feel as though there are? II Philosophical ethics is the integration of metaethics and normative ethics?the attempt to come to an integrated understanding of both. Given our current perspective, how can we view the philosophical ethics of Mill, Kant, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and the ethics of care? III For Mill, the question is what is the relation between his (metaethical) empirical naturalism and his (normative) qualitatively hedonist value theory and his utilitarian moral theory? One place we can see Mill?s empiricism is his treatment, in Chapter III, of the question of why the principle of utility is ?binding?, how it can generate a moral obligation. Compare Mill?s treatment of this question with Kant?s treatment of the question of why the CI is binding in Chapter III of the Groundwork. IV What is Kant?s metaethics? Since he holds that morality is both necessary and a priori, Kant must be some kind of rationalist. But, unlike Plato, he is not the kind of rationalist who holds that there are metaphysically... ...ception might underlie the ethics of care? Think about how we experience our relationships to others. Don?t we experience particular others as making claims on us? Personal relationships are probably the best examples, but aren't relationships with strangers quite similar. Think, for example, of fundamental forms of human exchange like gift-giving, promise, and contract. Indeed, the original root meaning of ?obligation? refers to bond created between individuals by such exchanges. As in, ?much obliged.? VIII Of course, we have only been able to pursue some of the many different ways in which philosophers have tried to think through the ethical and philosophical questions about value and obligation that any thoughtful human being faces. In the end, it is up to each of us to decide what answers to these questions we find most convincing.