Difference Between Hedonism And Deontology

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All the ethical models look at this problem very differently. Utilitarian’s would turn to the principle of utility to try and find the outcome that offers the most happiness for the most people. While deontologists would try to find some metric to judge the actions, ignoring the consequences. Perhaps even finding a categorical imperative applied here. Virtue ethics can also judge the morality of this situation from the view on the individual. Delving deeper into each will give us a clearer view of which would be the biggest benefit for mankind to follow. Utilitarian ethics stems from ancient Greek hedonistic models. Hedonism, put simply, is that a person ought to pursue happiness and pleasure. While the utilitarian model generally disregards …show more content…

The act version of deontology believes every situation should be judged individually and no overarching rules can fully determine every situation as morally right. Instead of hard set rules act deontologists have guidelines for how someone should act. This makes a very situational ethical theory that could have very different answers for similar situations. This high variance is a common agreement against act deontology. On the other side rule deontology is very rigid and set in stone. The rules must be followed to be morally right. The universal rules that act deontology uses comes from universalizability. Universalizability states that an action is morally right if it can be applied for all similar actions, no exceptions. For example, if lying was morally right in all instances then all communication would be in jeopardy, that would fail the test of …show more content…

In this situation, a utilitarian would try to produce the most amount of happiness. The death of a single person would have less impact on overall happiness compared to the death of five. I would assume the individual making the choice would be equally distraught with each outcome. On one hand, they would do nothing while five people die, on the other their direct action would cause the death of one person. The intensity and type of pain will be similar for all the loved ones of the deceased so the extent of pain produced will be the determining factor in which action is morally right. Obviously if one person dies fewer people will be affected compared to five. Due to this fact, a utilitarian would be forced to act switching the track so the lone person would be

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