Ethical Theories Compared

This is a quick overview of some relations between utilitarian, deontological, and Aristotelian ethical
theories. For links to many excellent internet resources on these ethical theories and others, see
Lawrence Hinman's Ethics Updates site.

Rosalind Hursthouse's Comparison

Here is a brief indication of the way Rosalind Hursthouse describes the relationships between the three
kinds of theory in the first section of her essay "Virtue Theory and Abortion":

  Consequentialism Deontology Virtue Theory

example Mill's utilitarianism Kantian ethics Aristotle's moral theory

abstract An action is right if it An action is right if An action is right if it is what a

description promotes the best it is in accordance virtuous agent would do in the
consequences. with a moral rule or circumstances.
principle.

more concrete The best consequences A moral rule is one A virtuous agent is one who acts
specification are those in which that is required by virtuously, that is, one who has and
happiness is maximized. rationality. exercises the virtues.  A virtue is a
character trait a human being needs
to flourish or live well.

Classification of Ethical Theories

Here is the chart I used in class.

 

A More Detailed (But Very Tentative) Comparison

Here are some suggestions about how some of the chief ethical theories would address various issues. 
This is all pretty tentative, in part because different ethical theories tend to focus on different issues, so
it's not always easy to determine how one theory would address the issues that are the chief concern of
another theory. Also, many of the categories in the table are not strictly parts of the moral theories, but
rather views on other topics (such as personal identity or the nature of rationality) which seem to mesh
well with a particular ethical theory.

  Consequentialism Deontology Virtue Ethics

example utilitarianism Kantianism Aristotelianism

model of
means-ends reasoning:  how do how do I determine what's what habits should I
practical
I get what I want/what's good? rational? develop?
reasoning

personal will & reason + desires will & reason (desires are will& reason + desires +
identity (what thought of as outside forces character traits
is essential to with the potential to thwart
the self?) rationality)

doing what reason requires

having the kinds of desires
(at a minimum, not having
rationality getting what you want which reason determines
inconsistent or self-
are best
contradictory  policies)

what's the best sort of

central what ought I to do? what ought I to do?
person to be?
question (act orientation) (act orientation)
(agent orientation)

primary object
consequences (states of affairs) acts people (agents)
of  evaluation

right action itself (? or

BASIC NOTION whatever results from the
possibly states of affairs
actions of good people? 
brought about by right
the good (for most consequentialists, happiness?   acquisition of
action?  or states of affairs
maximum happiness or goods internal to practices
in which people who act
something similar) (MacIntyre)?
rightly are rewarded?)

the sort of thing a virtuous

the right actions that maximize the good BASIC NOTION person would do in the
situation

being disposed to maximize BASIC NOTION

utility (for simple versions of
consequentialism, there will be positive attitude toward (but may be analyzed, e.g.
virtue
just one big virtue; more doing one's moral duty(?) as those dispositions
complex versions might have necessary for the
many) attainment of happiness)

There are two fundamental types of ethical theory:

Those based on the notion of choosing one’s actions so as to maximize the value or values to be
expected as consequences of those actions (called consequentialist or teleological theories [from the
Greek telos, meaning aim or purpose]; and those based on the notion of choosing one’s actions
according to standards of duty or obligation that refer not to consequences but to the nature of actions
and the motives that are held by those performing them (called deontological theories [from the Greek
deon, meaning that which is necessary or binding]). We will consider each type more fully and give
specific instances of each type as illustrations.

 Teleological theories: hold that an action is morally right either if a person’s doing it brings
about the best attainable consequences in the situation, or if the action is of a kind which would
have the best attainable consequences if everyone did it in that sort of situation. it is the
goodness or badness of the consequences of actions alone that makes them right or wrong,
rather than anything intrinsically good or bad about the actions themselves. Thus, on this view,
there would be no universal moral prohibition against deliberately killing another human if so
doing would produce a greater balance of good over evil than any other course of action open at
that time. Because these theories usually involve the notion of utility in producing good
consequences, they are often called utilitarian theories.

 Utilitarian theories have three parts: a theory of value, a principle of utility, and a decision
procedure.

 There are several theories of value held by individuals who have been called Utilitarians.

 Hedonism: equates good with pleasure, bad or evil with pain.

 Eudemonism: equates good with happiness, bad or evil with unhappiness.

 Agathism: views good as an indefinable, intrinsic feature of various situations and states,
evil as either an indefinable, intrinsic feature of other situations and states, or simply as the
absence of good.

 Agapeism: equates good with live, bad with hate.

 Values pluralism: holds that there are many good, including pleasure and happiness, but
also knowledge, friendship, love, and so forth. These may or may not be viewed as differing
in importance or priority.

The philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart and Harriet Taylor Mill were hedonists; Aristotle
and Paul Kurtz are characterized as eudemonists; the British philosopher G. E. Moore was an agathist;
the theologian and ethicist Joseph Fletcher (author of Situation Ethics) is an agapist; and Plato, Nicolai
Hartmann, and G. E. Moore were pluralists (Moore because he thought that beauty, aesthetic
experience, knowledge, and personal affection were goods because each exhibits the property of
intrinsic goodness). Bentham and the Mills differed over whether all pleasures were qualitatively the
same: Bentham thought so, the Mills did not.

 Principle of (Universal) Utility: an act is right if it brings about the greatest increase in
the world of consequential good of all the alternative actions available, or the least
 increase in evil consequences of all the alternatives. This utility value is, in theory, a
function of all the consequences of the act, direct and indirect, not merely those that
one can foresee. But in practice one is enjoined to choose that act that has the best
foreseeable balance of good over evil as one’s prima facie obligation. If one’s
calculations show accurately that there are two possible courses of action either one of
which will have greater utility than any third alternative, but which are equal in such
value to each other, they are both permissible and the choice between them is not a
moral matter. In these calculations, one weighs the good and bad of all persons equally,
giving no preference to any individual or group.

 Decision Procedure: The third part of utilitarian theories has to do with how the
judgment is made that a particular act is of relative maximum utility or relative
minimum disutility. Utilitarian theories divide into two types over this issue: act
utilitarian theories and rule utilitarian theories. a. An act tilitarian theory holds that the
utilitarian principle of utility is to be applied to particular situations. We must find out
for each alternative possible act in the situation what its net utility function is. The right
act is then defined as the one that has greater net utility than any other alternative. To
do any of these other alternatives would be wrong because to do any of them would not
be to maximize the balance of positive over negative value in the world, and a person’s
duty is always to do that which has such maximization as its consequence. Act
utilitarianism is sometimes called situation ethics.

b. A rule utilitarian theory holds that we are generally, if not always, to tell what to do in particular
situations by appeal to a rule like that of truthtelling, rather than by asking what particular action will
have the best consequences in the particular circumstances. These rules are to be determined by a
retrospective calculation of which possible rules have the greatest net utility. Thus, it may be right to
obey a rule like telling the truth because it is so useful to have the rule, even when in a few

individual situations telling the truth may not in fact lead to the best consequences. A rule utilitarian is
prepared to revise his or her rules in the light of experiences, incorporating as exceptions those types of

situation in which acting in according with the simple truth-telling rule leads regularly to worse
consequences than not (e.g., a modification allowing “white lies”). Rule utilitarians reject the situation-
by-situation calculations of act utilitarians because they doubt our ability to predict accurately the
consequences of our actions in an efficient and reliable manner; they hold that experience may be most
reliably and usefully encapsulated into general rules, and that a better long-run result will be

achieved by following rules than by situational calculations.

B. Individualistic theories can best be defined in contrast to utilitarian ones. Whereas in the latter my
duty is to seek everyone’s good, counting my own as only one good of no greater importance than
anyone else’s, in individualistic theories my duty is to seek my own good exclusively, or at
least primarily. If my own good is best served by seeking the good of others, then that becomes my duty
as well, but only derivatively, as conducive to my own well-being. Individualistic theories differ from

utilitarian ones over the Principle of (Universal) Utility. Their range of values and decision procedures is
the same, but instead of the utilitarian’s principle of universal utility, they hold:

2A. The Principle of (Individual) Utility: an act is right if it brings about the greatest amount of
consequential good possible among the alternatives, or the least amount of consequential evil possible
among the alternatives, for the agent, the one doing the act. One’s own pleasure or happiness (or

whatever) is to count higher than anyone else’s, unless one has identified another’s good with his own.

Prominent individualists include Epicurus, Thomas Hobbes, Friedrich Nietzsche (individualists are
frequently called egoists). Consequentialist calculations can become rather complicated, particularly for
act utilitarians and act individualists. For, one must take into account at any given decision point all the
possible consequences of one’s contemplated action, and must make allowances for the likelihood, or
probability, of each. Thus, even if one had a quantifiable value (such as amount of pleasure), one would
have to determine which alternative action to choose by multiplying the value quantity associated

with each possible consequence of each alternative act by the likelihood of obtaining that consequence
given doing that act, then adding the results together algebraically to obtain the net expected value of
the act; this result is then compared with the net expected value of the alternative acts one could
choose to do in the situation. The one with the greatest expected value is the alternative

action one ought to choose. A fundamental criticism of utilitarian theories is that they do not offer an
obvious way of deciding between distributions of good consequences, some of which are

just and some of which are unjust. That is, although the good of two persons is to be calculated, equally,
provided those goods are equally strong, if it turns out that we can, say, visit disaster on a few and
thereby achieve an equal or greater amount of pleasure in toto (say, because others are enabled by
witnessing these disasters on television to find their own lives more tolerable as a result), some unjust

distributions seem not capable of being ruled out by the theory. As an example, it was a widely shared
belief that enlightened slavery in the antebellum South provided a greater quantity of pleasure or
happiness in toto than would have been possible if black slaves had been left free in Africa, or had been
freed to work in the factories of the North (See James Michener’s Chesapeake for some of these

arguments). One finds similar arguments in opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment proposal, and
this type of argument has been given to support the view that the state’s obligation is to provide only
custodial care for the retarded and mentally ill. (See my “Autonomy, Personhood, and the Right to
Psychiatric Treatment"). For those who oppose slavery as unjust and morally impermissible,

this argument, if sound in its psychological assumptions, would amount to a refutation of utilitarianism;
for those who favored slavery, given the psychological assumptions, it showed what a good theory
utilitarianism was. And for utilitarians who opposed slavery, it gave grounds for suspecting the
psychological assumptions.

A fundamental criticism of individualistic theories, particularly those what are explicitly egoistic ones, is
that they cannot be taken to provide a coherent account of what ethical behavior is for everyone. For
example, consider just two individuals, each egoists: it is best for the first if the second always considers
the wants of the first before his own; likewise, it is better for the second if the first

always considers the wants of the second before his own. Suppose there is just enough food available
for one person to eat his fill and not go hungry. The ethical thing for the first person to do, from his oint
of view, is to take it all for himself; from his point of view, the ethical thing for the second person to do is
to let him have the food. But exactly the reverse holds for the second person: from his point

of view, the ethical thing for hm to do is to take the food; the ethical thing for the first person to do is to
let him have it. Thus on this account, the first individual ought and ought not to take the food; he ought
and ought not to let the other person have it; and similar contradictions are implied for the second
person.

There are, of course, defenses against these criticisms that have been developed by proponents of
utilitarianism and of egoism. There are also modifications of each view that can be made so as to avoid
the contradictory conclusions, but at the expense of weakening the “purity” of the position. Since our
aim is chiefly exposition, let us pass on to the other main type of ethical theory, deontological

ethics.

II. Deontological theories: hold that an action is morally right if it is required by duty, or permitted by
duty and not in conflict with any other action required by another duty. Deontologists are frequently
also absolutists, but some deontologists do hold that what is morally right in a given situation may differ

from what is morally right in any other given situation. What deontologists are united in is their
opposition to purely consequentialist moral thinking; some even hold that a morally wrong may have
entirely good consequences, and a morally right on entirely bad consequences.

There are similar differences between act and rule deontologists as between act and rule utilitarians.

A. Act deontologists hold that every judgment of moral obligation is completely particular (e.g., “In this
situation I ought to tell the truth”) and that general maxims or rules (e.g., One ought always to tell the
truth”) are unavailable, useless, or at best inductive generalizations from particular

experiences. We must decide separately in each particular situation what is the right thing to do. Act
deontologists differ over what they use or appeal to for making such judgments, but rules are out, and
looking to the consequences to see what will promote the greatest balance of good over

evil for oneself or the world is out.

1. Some act deontologists are intuitionists, holding that by becoming clear about the facts in a case we
are enabled by a special faculty of moral intuition (sometimes identified with conscience) to perceive
what is the appropriate or fitting action, to know what our duty is in the circumstances. Deontologists
such as E. F. Carritt, H. A. Pritchard, and Samuel Butler have held such a view; something like it is also
found in some Catholic thought.

2. Some deontologists, like the Existentialist, hold that decision, rather than intuition, is central. One
makes such choices in the awful knowledge of one’s freedom from determinants and guidelines, and
thus in knowledge of one’s responsibility for the decision and its results. It is “bad faith” to attempt to
shift this responsibility either to some rule (for one must decide on the rule and thus take responsibility
for it) or to some utilitarian calculation (for one must make the calculation, and in

so doing decide on what values to prefer as well as what probabilities to assign to their resulting from
what alternative actions on e might take). To reason according to rules or codes of ethics is to overlook
the fact that humans live in a world otherwise void of sources of value and obligation, that they are,
through their choices and decisions, authors of value and obligation (and even of themselves). Jean-Paul
Sartre is a major exponent of this version.

3. There is a religious version of act deontology as well. On this view the source of duty is the divine will,
and what one ought to do in the particular situation is what God wills for one to do in that situation, as

given directly or through an inspired mediator. An example of this view might be found in the Biblical
story of Abraham and Isaac, his most beloved son. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his most

beloved son. He prepared to do the awful thing, but was stopped in the nick of time by a contravening
command. Before the second order it was his duty to kill his son; after, it was his duty not to kill his son.
(See theological voluntarism, below, under Religious Rule Deontology.)

B. Rule deontologists hold that there is a non-teleological standard of duty consisting in one or more
rules; one’s duty in any situation consists in acting so as not to violate any of those rules. Usually the rule
deontologist has in mind a set of rather specific rules, such as the Biblical 10 Commandments,

each one saying that we ought always to act in a certain way in a certain context (a positive duty), or to
refrain from acting in a certain way in a certain context (a negative duty) The major difficulty with such
multiplicity of obligations is that situations sometimes generate a conflict between the duties,

as when one’s mother or father asks one to lie or to steal, or as when the physician must choose
between preserving life and relieving suffering in a patient, where to do the latter of necessity involves
shortening life. Some rule deontologists seek to avoid such conflicts by appealing to a single rule, such

as the Golden Rule: Do under to others as you would have them do unto you [in a similar situation if
your positions were reversed]. Such general maxims may fail in concrete situations to determine our
duties completely, and may not result in a rational agreement among all parties as to the morally correct

course of action: such a result is often due to the ability of a situation to bear more than one description.
1. Religious rule deontology takes two forms: theological voluntarism, which holds that the standard or
fight and wrong is God’s will (meaning that what ultimately determines whether an act is right or wrong
is its being commanded or forbidden by God and nothing else): and what I will call

theological revelationism, which holds that God only reveal moral law to a mankind otherwise incapable
of knowing adequately what is right and wrong, but does not make it so by command. (Socrates, in
Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, asks: “Is something right because God commands it or does

God command it because it is right?” Theological voluntarists ope for the former; theological
revelationists hold with the latter.)

2. Immanuel Kant’s rational rule deontology.

a. There are several features to be noted.

i. In contrast with teleological accounts for which the notion of value is primary and duty is derivative,
Kant takes the notions of duty and of right and wrong as fundamental, and views valuational concepts

as falling outside the sphere of ethics proper.

ii. Kant holds that the fundamental laws of morality are the same for every rational being, whether
human or divine, since the ultimate criterion of rightness is deducible from the concept of a rational

being as such. (Kant would have been a theological revelationist had he not thought that the human
reason is capable of discovering moral law for itself.)

iii. Kant’s theory doesn’t give us a set of concrete rules like the 10 commandments, the way that the Law
of Gravitation gives us the Laws of Planetary Motion. Rather, it consists in several formulations of formal
tests for substantive rules of conduct (as logic provides tests for the validity of arguments without
providing the arguments themselves. He is thus thought of as a formalist in ethics, as contrasted with
others who list specific rules or duties.

b. The major points of Kant’s theory are these:

i. Nothing is intrinsically good but a good will.

ii. A good will is one that habitually wills rightly.

iii. The rightness or wrongness of a volition depends wholly on its nature or motive, and not on its actual
consequences or its intended consequences (except as the expectation of these is part of the motive).

iv. There are two kinds of voluntary actions — those on impulse and those on principle. The former are
done because of situationdependent emotions or feelings, as when I stop on the highway to

help a beautiful woman change a tire because I find her attractive and not because I am prepared to do
it simply for anyone similarly in trouble. Kant held that an action cannot be morally right unless it is
done on some general rule or principle which the agent accepts as binding on everyone in a similar
situation.

v. But the foregoing isn’t a sufficient condition of rightness. There are two classes of rules of conduct:
hypothetical imperatives and categorical imperatives. The former are prudential principles of

conduct accepted simply as rules for gaining desired ends. If I am a utilitarian and accept the principle
that lies ought not to be tole, I do so because lies undermine confidence and thus reduce human

happiness. My rule, then, depends on my desiring human happiness as an end of my actions; this is my
ultimate motive for not lying. A categorical imperative would be one accepted on its own merits and

not as a means for gaining some desired end. Kant held that an action is right if and only if it is done on a
principle which is a categorical imperative, not contingent on one holding something as an end.

vi. There are three formulations of what Kant calls “the Moral Law or the Supreme Principle of Morality”
(but what he should have called “the Supreme Criterion for Categorical Imperatives” — for it is a

second -order principle that states necessary and sufficient conditions that any first-order principle of
conduct must have if it is to be a categorical imperative and if action determined by it is to be morally

right): a. It is necessary and sufficient that the maxim shall be such that anyone who accepts it as his or
her principle of conduct can consistently will that everyone else should also make it their principle of
conduct and act on it.

b. Treat every rational being, including yourself, always as an end and never as a means only.

c. A principle of conduct is morally binding on me if and only if I can regard it as a law which I impose on
myself. (Kant means to eliminate cases where the principle is accepted merely on tradition or merely
out of fear of catching Hell if one doesn’t act in accordance with it.) To illustrate, let us consider how a
Kantian would deal with an impulse toward suicide. First, such a contemplated act has to be brought
under a maxim, or categorical imperative, in order to see whether it can be justified as right. Such an

imperative might be, “Whenever life holds promise of more pain and suffering than one is prepared to
endure, one ought to take one’s own life.” Kant then subjects this maxim to the various tests listed
above. He finds that it violates b; to kill oneself in order to avoid pain and suffering is to treat oneself as
a means to some other end and not as an end in itself. hence, the maxim doesn’t pass the supreme

test, and the action that is contemplated is not morally right. Or consider one who is thinking of telling a
lie in order to gain an advantage in a business dealing. The maxim that such would seem to fall under
might read, “Lie whenever it suits your interests.” This imperative, however, cannot be consistently

willed as a principle of conduct for everyone, says Kant; for, if everyone were to adopt it, the advantage
of lying would be lost since no one would take what anyone else did at face value where there might be
a matter of significance (such as a loan) hanging in the balance. Such a maxim depends on not being
universally accepted for its success, and this serves to disqualify it as a morally acceptable one.
Kant felt so strongly about his supreme principle that he even essayed a criticism of God in the story of
Abraham and Isaac. God’s motive for first ordering Abraham to sacrifice Isaac appears to have been one
of wanting to test Abraham’s loyalty to God in order to determine whether he would be a fit leader for
the people of Israel. Kant thought that this involved a violation of the second formulation of the
supreme principle, in that God was treating Abraham and Isaac as means to his own ends and not as
ends in themselves. Whether one finds that a disturbing feature of Kant’s ethics or not, many find thE
following to be most disquieting. Kant sees his ethic as applying to all, and only, rational beings. It was
clear to him that non-human animals were not rational beings, so that the question of what our duties
were in regards to them really couldn’t be decided within his ethic. But also, since babies, the insane,
the comatose, the severely retarded are not rational beings, it looks equally like there is no basis in
Kant’s ethic for limiting what we may do to such beings or for indicating what our positive obligations to
them are. The best Kant could offer was admonition against cruelty to animals, on the grounds that it
tends to lead to cruelty to humans.

Contemporary ethical theories seem to involve either refinements of consequentialist ethics or

of deontological ethics, or perhaps attempts to combine them into a hybrid theory that retains the best
of each while appealing to the other to plug up the gaps. Richard Brandt has argued for what he calls
Extended Rule utilitarianism, in which there is a special and additional commitment made to just

distribution of benefits and disbenefits, so than an institution such as slavery cannot be justified on the
grounds that the balance of good over evil is greater under it than without it. A similar conclusion is
drawn by William Alston, who endorses both a principle of beneficence and a principle of justice as
cornerstones of his ideal morality, with justice (roughly the second formulation of Kant’s supreme
principle) being given priority in most cases of conflict. At this point in such a lecture as this, it is usual
for the speaker to declare himself or herself for one of the options that have been enumerated and
described. I shall decline to do so, for two reasons. First, my interest is in getting you to understand

your own attitudes and those of others with whom you may disagree as expressions of theoretical
traditions with long and noble histories, and with extensive bodies of literature in their support, rather
than merely as expressions of curious, regrettable (if not noxious) personality traits. Second, I think
there is value n both the struggle to come to grips with one’s own moral intuitions and trying to ground
them theoretically, and in the nagging suspicion that when all is said and done, there is no ultimate truth
perceivable in ethics, no absolute right and wrong which one may grasp, and no attainable point at
which one may justifiably sit back and quit worrying about ethical questions. Perhaps the most we can
hope for in dealing with the perplexing questions of ethics are not final, but simply good and better
answers.