Compare Moral Philosophies

In every business day everyone must make ethical decisions. Many decisions are not easy to make, and each person must decide what they believe is the best decision. One problem with this is that what one person make think is a correct ethical decision might seem to another person completely wrong. These differences come about because depending on where and how one was brought up will determine what they think is right or wrong and good or bad. The principles that people use to decide what is wrong or right are determined by what moral philosophy they subscribe to (O.C. Ferrell 94).

There are many strands of moral philosophies; these include teleology, deontology, relativist, virtue ethics, and justice (O.C. Ferrell 96). One thing that all of these philosophies have in common is that someone or something is to be benefiting from the decision. The difference in all of the strands is that the person or thing that is benefiting or being protected by the morals might not be the same.

A person that subscribes to teleology believes that a decision is acceptable if the decision produces desired consequences. There are two different teleogical philosophies, which are egoism and utilitarianism. The differences between these philosophies are that egoism strives to maximize the benefit for the individual while utilitarianism strives to maximize the benefit for the greatest number of people.

The second strand is deontology, the ethical doctrine that holds the worth of an action is determined by its conformity to binding rules rather than by its consequences, which is the focus of teleogy (Dictionary). Deontology focuses on what is right during the event rather that what is right at the conclusion. This strand of philosophy is brought up a lot during discussions of abortion, wartime casualties, and capital punishment (Steiker). For example, if there was a war that could be ended by one bomb, and would prevent many more months of battle, but some civilians died as...