Response – Virtue Ethics

Response – Virtue Ethics

Question One

According to Rosenstand (2020), morality refers to the virtues of civility, honesty, and decency, among other positive virtues. Rosenstand goes further to explain that the word moralizing has two meanings to people. On the positive side, it refers to the morals of guidance, goodness, and humanitarianism, among other positive virtues that lead to successful living with others. On the negative side, it may refer to bigotry, persecution, and repression of others. Rosenstand concludes by saying that the word moralizing is used to express right or wrong opinions.

Sommer’s repudiation of moral relativism and ethics is quite straightforward. He discourages people from discussing complex life topics such as abortion, death sentencing, and culture cancellation. Instead, Sommer encourages people to focus on the smallest things, such as honesty, friendship, and consideration, which are the ones that matter. Rosenstand emphasizes that if these virtues are not learned at a young age, they may never be acquired throughout one’s life (Rosenstand, 2020). By learning these virtues, people will be able to develop their moral reasoning, which will go a long way in helping people associate positively with others.

Sommer’s position is justifiable even though Rosenstand feels that such a perspective is old-fashioned and backward. Every human being is responsible for their actions, whether right or wrong. Therefore, educators and parents are responsible for ensuring that their children are well-educated and informed about such issues. Teaching children these issues will help them navigate through life. This illustration shows the link between Sommer’s viewpoint and virtue ethics.

Question 2

I agree with Sartre’s perspective on anguish, authenticity, and bad faith among the three philosophers. Firstly, Sartre avers that externalism allows people to choose regardless of the situation (Rosenstand, 2020). Sartre emphasizes that we are all condemned to make a choice, thus essentially condemned to the freedom of choice. While making choices, external circumstances may affect people’s decisions. However, that does not mean anyone has to choose based on other people’s choices. On the other hand, bad faith essentially refers to inauthenticity, according to Sartre (Rosenstand, 2020). It is an attempt by people to escape the responsibility of discovering their authentic selves. Sartre encourages people to pay attention to their past actions to form the basis for future responses, and this is the primary import of the opposite of bad faith, which is good faith. Lastly, Sartre avers that authenticity is a personal conviction that transforms people’s lives through our decisions. Therefore, if one maintains a given line of identity throughout their lives, they may be able to make positive influences. After identifying the identity that makes positive changes, people should choose that identity every time. Sartre’s viewpoint on anguish, authenticity, and bad faith essentially means that morality is not accidental but an intentional way a person may choose to pursue.

Question 3

According to Rosenstand (2020), classical feminism calls for equal treatment of men and women. That means men and women should be considered human beings before their gender differences are considered. On the other hand, radical feminism seeks to expose the root cause of discrimination among either gender. Lastly, equity feminism opines that gender equality has been attained, and the battle of ensuring that women receive good treatment like their male counterparts is now in the past. Since gendered discrimination is a thing of the past, men and women should feel free to perform previously gendered tasks without fear of judgment.

I faced an ethical dilemma while staying with my spouse before we married. My partner was involved with a lot of schoolwork, which meant that she had limited time to perform household chores, but as a man, I would still use a lady’s help in performing household chores. In this case, classical feminism opines that my partner and I are human beings; hence, I should not force her to perform household chores. On the other hand, for equity feminism, the battle for gendered equality is over; hence, leaving the role of cooking to my partner is a thing of the past. The primary goal of feminist ethics is to end the oppression of women, and it is quite useful in real life.

Question 4

Gillingham avers that women prefer to prioritize ethics of care as opposed to men, who instead prioritize ethics of justice. By prioritizing ethics of care, it is not possible for women to operate on the basis of universal ethical principles. Instead, women’s morality is based on specific contexts and interpersonal relationships among them. Gillingham’s perspective shows that women do not stop developing their morality before men, and instead, their morality takes a different trajectory as opposed to men.

Emmanuel Levinas uses the concept of pregnancy and maternity to explain how men and women have different perspectives on morality. One of the highlights from Emmanuel’s viewpoint is that pregnant women should be treated with care. He also avers that in their state, women deserve to be given a heightened social status. Emmanuel Levinas’s viewpoint aligns with Gillingham’s position on morality, which emphasizes that women’s views about morality depend on different contexts. Emmanuel further defines a woman as a home to whom a man goes. On the other hand, the man is meant to go out to the world and fend for the woman. This position primarily tends to differ from Gillingham’s feminist ethics, which asserts that gendered roles are a thing of the past and, hence, no longer a concern in modern dispensation.

References

Rosenstand, N. (2020). The moral of the story: An introduction to ethics. Mcgraw-Hill Education.

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Post a brief response to each of the four controlling questions below. These should be in the form of a basic overview of your understanding of the issue(s) addressed in each question, plus your answer to the question. On this first pass, your response may be somewhat tentative or speculative. Do your best, in about 200-250 words (for each question) to come up with an answer you could more fully explain and defend in an essay of greater depth and length. You need not cite any external sources in these first sets of four responses, but if you do quote, paraphrase, or take any content from another source, please limit those sources for this first set of responses strictly to the course textbook or other course content. Please post these four brief responses in a single thread.

CONTROLLING QUESTIONS:
1.) In Week One, we looked at the view of Ruth Benedict (discussed in Chapter 3 of Rosenstand’s The Moral of the Story) a 20th-century anthropologist, who says that “Normality…is culturally defined,” and “the concept of the normal is properly a variant of the concept of [the] good” (Benedict [from “Anthropology and the Abnormal (1934),]” qtd. in Rosenstand, p. 151, 8e). Benedict is saying that what any culture or society deems to be a good, right, or correct action and morally good, or at least morally appropriate, behavior will in fact be such in relation to the belief system and practices of that culture or society. This leaves the door open for a wide variety of ways of life, ethical codes, and individual behavior to be acknowledged as acceptable and morally good.
By contrast, Christina Hoff Sommers argues that basic human virtues are not relative to time, place, circumstance or situation. Sommers writes, “It is wrong to mistreat a child, to humiliate someone, to torment an animal. To think only of yourself, steal, lie, and break promises. And on the positive side: it is right to be considerate and respectful of others, to be charitable and generous.” (Sommers, qtd. in Rosenstand, p. 479, 8e). Just after this passage, Rosenstand asks whether Sommers is right: “Can we just pronounce the virtues of decency, civility, honesty, and so forth the ultimate values without any further discussion? For many, what Sommers is doing is just old-fashioned moralizing…” (p. 489).

*What does Rosenstand mean by “moralizing”?
*Explain your understanding of Sommers’s repudiation of moral and ethical relativism. Is her view convincing enough to make a relativist change her stripes?
*How does Sommers’s view connect with virtue ethics? [Note: You can get a quick survey of Sommers’s viewpoint in brief video commentaries here: https://www.aei.org/scholar/christina-hoff-sommers/]

2.)Explore the concepts of angst or anguish, authenticity, and bad faith through a discussion of the philosophical views of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre and use an original example either from your own life experience or from a work of fiction or film to illustrate your discussion.
Which of these three existentialist thinkers most closely captures your own approach to living an ethical life (or at least attempting to do so)? Explain and defend your answer using whatever evidence you believe to be relevant.

3.)Give a brief account of the similarities and differences between classical, difference, radical, and equity feminism and then decide which of these strands of feminism is the most relevant in today’s world.
Consider at least one example of an ethical issue or dilemma (either real or fictional) in your evaluative discussion and (a) show how at least two different varieties of feminism would approach or attempt to resolve the issue and (b) compare and contrast any feminist approach to the issue or dilemma with any other ethical viewpoint we have studied throughout the course.

Does feminist ethics add anything essential to our current understanding of the human situation and what it means to live an ethical life? Why or why not?

4.)Read the excerpt from Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice. She writes: “…women come to question the normality of their feelings and to alter their judgments in deference to the opinion of others…The difficulty women experience in finding or speaking publicly in their own voices emerges repeatedly in the form of qualification and self-doubt….Women’s deference is rooted not only in their social subordination but also in the substance of their moral concern. Sensibility to the needs of others and the assumption of responsibility for taking care lead women to attend to voices other than their own and to include in the judgment other points of view” (qtd. in Rosenstand, Ch. 12).
*Evaluate Gilligan’s position here in relation to any of the ethical views we’ve studied in the course, as well as your own view of the moral landscape, in particular with respect to gender differences.
*How do these claims of Gilligan line up with the views of altruist Emmanuel Levinas? Is Gilligan correct in the claim that women see moral qualities such as being just or being good differently from the way men do?
Explain and defend your answer using whatever evidence you believe to be relevant. Read more from Gilligan here: Gilligan-women-self and morality-1985.pdf