In general, I've seen philosophers "bucket" normative ethics into 3 primary categories:
- Virtue Ethics: Emphasize moral character
- Deontology: Emphasizes duties or rules
- Consequentialism: Emphasizes the consequences of actions
However, I would prefer to combine virtue ethics and deontology to create a binary distinction:
- Means: Virtue Ethics and Deontology
- Ends: Consequentialism
I'm not an expert philosopher by any means (heh), but this makes more intuitive sense to me. When we think about "how to do good", the 1st clear question is "are you thinking about your actions (means) or the outcomes of those actions (ends)?" For me, virtue ethics and deontology are two ways to think about your actions. i.e. Deontology—Do your actions align with some duty/rule? Or Virtue Ethics—Do your actions align with some moral character traits?
Questions:
- Is it actually true that philosophers (generally) give the 3-category version over the 2-category version?
- What am I missing about virtue ethics/deontology that implies I shouldn't categorize them both into "means"?
- Whatever the answers to #1 and #2, what do you find to be the most helpful categorical breakdown of normative ethics?
Thanks!
I think there's a certain prima facie plausibility to the traditional tripartite division. If you just think about the world in general, each of actors, actions, and states seem salient. It wouldn't take much to convince me that--appropriately defined--actors, actions, and states are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive in some metaphysical sense.
Once you accept the actors, actions, states division, it makes sense to have ethical theories revolving around each. These corresponds to virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism.