Understanding Ethical Theory and Moral Judgment

Ethical Theory and Behavior Ethics is a topic that can be confusing. It covers the concepts of good and bad. While people aim to be “good” a majority of the time it is still an area that needs to be studied. Ironically, while moral correctness is something society tries to strive for, it is still unclear what is morally correct or where it came from. An ethical theory attempts to define those rules in a subject that is highly difficult to pin down and definitively answer what moral correctness entails.

Ethical theory can simply be defined as the principles of moral conduct. The study of ethical theory then delves into the nature of people and the basis for moral judgment. Some philosophers believe that human nature has an effect on moral judgments. This has caused is a divide even amongst ethics philosophers. There are some who believe that humans can be trained to be good while others believe that people are innately selfish (Clark & Poortenga, 2003, p. 2-3). Depending on a person’s view on human nature it will dictate how they then make judgments for

These beliefs can be grounded in religious or cultural background. For example, some feminist thinkers, like Wollstonecraft and Gilligan, believe that the basis of normally accepted ethical theory does not properly include the female search for fulfillment since ethical theory is often centered around male fulfillment (Clark & Poortenga, 2003, p. 3; Fieser, n.d.) This then brings into question whether or not men and women have different methods of making moral judgments. If there are other methods for making moral judgments then it also brings up the question why there is such a thing as normative ethics, which contains thoughts like, “We should do to others what we would want others to do to