Ethics Around the Globe: Exploring Ethical Principles and Theories

This essay delves into the realm of ethics, also known as moral philosophy, exploring its fundamental principles and significance in guiding human behavior. It defines ethics as a set of moral values that influence how individuals and groups conduct activities, emphasizing the importance of making morally sound decisions. The essay discusses the variability of ethical perspectives across different cultures, religions, and individual ideologies, highlighting the influence of philosophy and culture on moral codes. It then examines consequentialist theories, outlining their key features, such as considering the consequences for specific groups or individuals, and the focus on achieving specific goods like happiness or well-being. The essay further explores utilitarianism, focusing on its emphasis on maximizing good for the greatest number of people, and ethical egoism, which prioritizes self-interest in decision-making. It concludes by contrasting utilitarianism and ethical egoism, elucidating their differing approaches to moral conduct and the implications of each in various ethical dilemmas. The essay provides a comprehensive overview of these concepts, offering a solid foundation for understanding the complexities of ethical considerations in a global context.

Running Head: Ethics Around The Globe
ETHICS AROUND THE GLOBE

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Ethics
Ethics is also termed as moral philosophy. These are some of the disciplines that
are concerned with identifying what is morally bad and good, wrong and right. Ethics are the
moral values of human beings. Ethics are a set of moral principles that govern the behaviour of a
person or the way a person uses to conduct an activity. In moral philosophy, Ethics constitutes a
branch of philosophy which involves systematising, defending, and recommending various
concepts in relation to what right and what wrong. Ethics led a human being to conduct every
activity in the right manner. In other words, ethics are a set of morals that are practiced by an
individual or group of individual. The seven principles of ethics are justice, accountability,
fidelity, beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and veracity. Ethics of a human deal with
some well-based standards on how a human being ought to act by allowing them to resolve
questions regarding human morality by assisting them in defining the concept of right and
wrong, good and evil, justice and crime, virtue and vice (britannica.com, 2019).
Reason for which ethics vary from one person to another
Ethics comprised of philosophy or moral code which guides a person to make his/her
own choices and behaviours throughout life. It is solely concerned with the responsibilities and
rights of human being and their use of language and means to allow human beings to live a well-
maintained ethical life and to make a moral decision. People around the world are similar in
terms of body structure but they are different in terms of thoughts, ideas, believes and faith. All
these differences result from different races, religions, languages and individual ideologies of
people and make one person different from another person in terms of ethics. Furthermore, the
concept of ethics is derived from philosophies, religions, and cultures which make ethics vary
from one person to another.
Key features of consequentialist theories
There are three main features of consequentialist theories such as –

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1. The type of group or individual required to be taken into consideration while evaluating
the consequences decide the expected results in relation to a specific action of that group
or individual that might be good or right for one person but bad for other person or
persons. Some consequentialists those who are called egoists use to claim that moral
decision-makers must consider only the consequences to herself or himself whereas
others give attention to the members of his/her generation or own group.
2. A person uses to make his/her decision by considering pleasure, well-being, flourishing,
happiness, and knowledge
3. Some consequentialist theories believe that attention must be placed for attaining specific
goods like human interest, perfecting traits of a human, preference satisfaction whereas
other consequentialist philosophers focus on happiness or pleasure as basic good which
matters (Bramble, 2015).
Key features of utilitarianism
The features of utilitarianism include the choice that is able to favor or support a good
choice over a bad choice. Some other main features of utilitarianism include one's right act
always produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and hedonic calculus which
is a pure quantitative means that used for calculating the one's happiness attached to his/her
given action. It is a measure that calculates happiness by deducting the volume of pain from
happiness (Lyons, 2015).
Key features of ethical egoism
The key features of ethical egoism are as follows –
 It recognises that the decision made by one person always stands as the best
decision for the decision maker or that particular person.

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 People sometimes stuck into some situations where they have to make their own
choices which often seem selfish choices to others whereas those choices stand as
the most beneficial to them i.e. the makers of those choices
 Ethical egoism often goes against the impartiality principle
 It does not have any solution to provide when some problem arises due to the
conflicts of interest (thoughtco.com, 2019).
Differences between utilitarianism and ethical egoism
Utilitarianism is a concept that supports the concept that one must go against his/her
morals for doing something good for others or someone else. On the other hand, ethical egoism
says that what one must choose something which is best for him/her only and that choice might
not be beneficial to others (Vaughn, 2015). Utilitarianism uses to focus on the concept of the
greater good and intends to maximise good and well-being for most of the people. On the
contrary, ethical egoism concerned in one’s own good instead of concerning about others good.
Utilitarianism considers the idea of acting in an ethical manner for ensuring good for not only a
single person for a large number of people. If an action creates harm to some people than
utilitarianism seeks whether such action brings good for a large number of person and if so then
it supports that action for the greater good.
Ethical egoism is simply known as egoism and it holds that the moral conducts need to be
judged by considering self-interest. It focuses on one's good and ignores other's good as in
egoism, the actions of a person are often treated ethically for that particular person if the actions
provide benefit to the person only. It does not consider the negative consequences of one's
actions that are harmful to others but beneficial to the action maker. In utilitarianism, one's
actions are judged by considering the number of benefits such actions could generate for others,
not for the action maker only. If the actions include potential harm to others but are beneficial for
the action maker then such actions are declined for the greater good (euvolution.com, 2019).

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Reference List
Bramble, B. (2015). Consequentialism about meaning in life. Utilitas, 27(4), 445-459.
Britannica.com. (2019). Ethics: Philosophy. Retrieved on 15th March 2019 from
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethics-philosophy
Euvolution.com. (2019). The Differences Between Utilitarianism & Ethical Egoism. Retrieved
on 15th March 2019 from http://www.euvolution.com/prometheism-transhumanism-
posthumanism/the-differences-between-utilitarianism-ethical-egoism/
Lyons, D. (2015). Utilitarianism. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, 1-4.
ThoughtCo.com. (2019). What Is Ethical Egoism? Retrieved on 15th March 2019 from
https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-ethical-egoism-3573630
Vaughn, L. (2015). Doing ethics: Moral reasoning and contemporary issues. WW Norton &
Company.