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Applied ethics is the practical aspect of moral considerations. It is ethics with respect to real-world actions and their moral considerations in private and public life, the professions, health, technology, law, and leadership. For example, bioethics is concerned with identifying the best approach to moral issues in the life sciences, such as euthanasia, the allocation of scarce health resources, or the use of human embryos in research. Environmental ethics is concerned with ecological issues such as the responsibility of government and corporations to clean up pollution. Business ethics includes the duties of whistleblowers to the public and to their employers.
In moral philosophy, consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act is one that will produce a good outcome. Consequentialism, along with eudaimonism, falls under the broader category of teleological ethics, a group of views which claim that the moral value of any act consists in its tendency to produce things of intrinsic value. Consequentialists hold in general that an act is right if and only if the act will produce, will probably produce, or is intended to produce, a greater balance of good over evil than any available alternative. Different consequentialist theories differ in how they define moral goods, with chief candidates including pleasure, the absence of pain, the satisfaction of one's preferences, and broader notions of the "general good".
Chinese philosophy originates in the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period, during a period known as the "Hundred Schools of Thought", which was characterized by significant intellectual and cultural developments. Although much of Chinese philosophy begun in the Warring States period, elements of Chinese philosophy have existed for several thousand years. Some can be found in the I Ching, an ancient compendium of divination, which dates back to at least 672 BCE.
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. The main branches of ethics include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.
Mohism or Moism was an ancient Chinese philosophy of ethics and logic, rational thought, and scientific technology developed by the scholars who studied under the ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi, embodied in an eponymous book: the Mozi. Among its major ethical tenets were altruism and a universal, unbiased respect and concern for all people regardless of relations or affiliations. The ideology also stressed the virtues of austerity and utilitarianism.
Normative ethics is the study of ethical behaviour and is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates questions regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense.
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. Although different varieties of utilitarianism admit different characterizations, the basic idea behind all of them is, in some sense, to maximize utility, which is often defined in terms of well-being or related concepts. For instance, Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, described utility thus:
That property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness ... [or] to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness to the party whose interest is considered.
Mozi was a Chinese philosopher, logician and essayist who founded the school of Mohism during the Hundred Schools of Thought period. The ancient text Mozi contains material ascribed to him and his followers.
The School of Names, or School of Forms and Names, was a school of Chinese philosophy that grew out of Mohism during the Warring States period. Followers of the School of Names were sometimes called Logicians or Disputers. Figures associated with it include Deng Xi, Yin Wen, Hui Shi, and Gongsun Long. A contemporary of Confucius and the younger Mozi, Deng Xi, associated with litigation, is cited by Liu Xiang as the originator of the principle of xíngmíng, or ensuring that ministers' deeds (xing) harmonized with their words (ming).
The Hundred Schools of Thought were philosophies and schools that flourished during the late Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period. The term was not used to describe these different philosophies until Confucianism, Mohism, and Legalism were created. The era in which they flourished was one of turbulence in China, fraught with chaos and mass militarization, but where Chinese philosophy was developed and patronized by competing bureaucracies. This phenomenon has been called the Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought.
Xunzi, born Xun Kuang, was a Chinese philosopher of Confucianism during the late Warring States period. After his predecessors Confucius and Mencius, Xunzi is often ranked as the third great Confucian philosopher of antiquity. By his time, Confucianism had suffered considerable criticism from Daoist and Mohist thinkers, and Xunzi is traditionally regarded as a synthesizer of these traditions with earlier Confucian thought. The result was a thorough and cohesive revision of Confucianism, which was crucial to the philosophy's ability to flourish in the Han dynasty and throughout the later history of East Asia. His works were compiled in the eponymous Xunzi, and survive in excellent condition. Unlike other ancient compilations, his authorship of these texts is generally secure, though it is likely that Western Han dynasty historian Liu Xiang organized them into their present form centuries after Xunzi's death.
China is a special case in the history of logic, due to its relatively long isolation from the corresponding traditions that developed in Europe, India, and the Islamic world.
Consequentialist libertarianism, also known as consequentialist liberalism or libertarian consequentialism, is a libertarian political philosophy and position that is supportive of a free market and strong private property rights only on the grounds that they bring about favorable consequences such as prosperity or efficiency.
The rectification of names is originally a doctrine of feudal Confucian designations and relationships, behaving accordingly to ensure social harmony. Without such accordance society would essentially crumble and "undertakings would not be completed." Mencius extended the doctrine to include questions of political legitimacy.
Deng Xi was a Chinese philosopher and rhetorician who was associated with the Chinese philosophical tradition School of Names. Once a senior official of the Zheng state, and a contemporary of Confucius, he is regarded as China's earliest known lawyer, with clever use of words and language in lawsuits. The Zuo Zhuan and Annals of Lü Buwei critically credit Deng with the authorship of a penal code, the earliest known statute in Chinese criminology entitled the "Bamboo Law". This was developed to take the place of the harsh, more Confucian criminal code developed by the Zheng statesman Zichan.
Yangism was a philosophical school founded by Yang Zhu, extant during the Warring States period, that believed that human actions are and should be based on self-interest. The school has been described by sinologists as an early form of psychological and ethical egoism. The main focus of the Yangists was on the concept of xing (性), or human nature, a term later incorporated by Mencius into Confucianism. No documents directly authored by the Yangists have been discovered yet, and all that is known of the school comes from the comments of rival philosophers, specifically in the Chinese texts Huainanzi, Lüshi Chunqiu, Mengzi, and possibly the Liezi and Zhuangzi. The philosopher Mencius claimed that Yangism once rivaled Confucianism and Mohism, although the veracity of this claim remains controversial among sinologists. Because Yangism had largely faded into obscurity by the time that Sima Qian compiled his Shiji, the school was not included as one of the Hundred Schools of Thought.
Fa is a concept in Chinese philosophy that concerns aspects of ethics, logic, and law. It can be translated as 'law' in some contexts, but more often as 'model' or 'standard'. First gaining importance in the Mohist school of thought, the concept was principally elaborated in Legalism. In Han Fei's philosophy, the king is the sole source of fa ('law'), taught to the common people so that there would be a harmonious society free of chance occurrences, disorder, and "appeal to privilege". High officials were not to be held above the fa, nor were they allowed to independently create their own fa, uniting both executive fiat and rule of law.
The Xunzi is an ancient Chinese collection of philosophical writings attributed to and named after Xun Kuang, a 3rd-century BCE philosopher usually associated with the Confucian tradition. The Xunzi emphasizes education and propriety, and asserts that "human nature is detestable". The text is an important source of early theories of ritual, cosmology, and governance. The ideas within the Xunzi are thought to have exerted a strong influence on Legalist thinkers, such as Han Fei, and laid the groundwork for much of Han dynasty political ideology. The text criticizes a wide range of other prominent early Chinese thinkers, including Laozi, Zhuangzi, Mozi, and Mencius.
Negative consequentialism is a version of consequentialism, which is "one of the major theories of normative ethics." Like other versions of consequentialism, negative consequentialism holds that moral right and wrong depend only on the value of outcomes. That is, for negative and other versions of consequentialism, questions such as "what should I do?" and "what kind of person should I be?" are answered only based on consequences. Negative consequentialism differs from other versions of consequentialism by giving greater weight in moral deliberations to what is bad than what is good. Due to this, it can be considered an instance of what has been called "suffering-focused ethics", the view that the reduction of suffering has moral priority over any other possible duties we may think of.
The Mozi, also called the Mojing or the Mohist canon, is an ancient Chinese text from the Warring States period (476–221 BC) that expounds the philosophy of Mohism. It propounds such Mohist ideals as impartiality, meritocratic governance, economic growth and aversion to ostentation, and is known for its plain and simple language.
References
- 1 2 Ivanhoe, P.J.; Van Norden, Bryan William (2005). Readings in classical Chinese philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-87220-780-6.
"he advocated a form of state consequentialism, which sought to maximize three basic goods: the wealth, order, and population of the state
- ↑ Fraser, Chris, "Mohism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Edward N. Zalta.
- ↑ Deen K. Chatterjee (6 October 2011). Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer. p. 1170. ISBN 978-1-4020-9159-9.
in this sense, one can interpret Xunzi's political philosophy as a form of state utilitarianism or state consequentialism
- ↑ Fraser, Chris (2016). The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 17, 249.
- ↑ Di Mo; Xunzi; Di Mo Xunzi Fei Han; Professor Burton Watson (1967). Basic Writings of Mo Tzu, Hsün Tzu, and Han Fei Tzu. Columbia University Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0-231-02515-7.
- 1 2 Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward L. (2011). The Cambridge History of Ancient China . Cambridge University Press. p. 761. ISBN 978-0-521-47030-8.
- ↑ Van Norden, Bryan W. (2011). Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-60384-468-0.
- ↑ Jay L. Garfield; William Edelglass (9 June 2011). The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy. Oxford University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-19-532899-8.
The goods that serve as criteria of morality are collective or public, in contrast, for instance, to individual happiness or well-being
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