Re: Virtue Ethics, Deontological Ethics, and Biotechnology

David,
I've studied ethics. I've taught ethics. I've checked the /Encyclopedia
of Philosophy/ and a couple dictionaries of philosophy. I've not found
any reference to virtue ethics. The standard pair among philosophers is
deontological ethics (duty centered) and teleological or axiological
ethics (value centered). There are also such irrational variants as
emotive ethics, which taught that the intensity of feeling is the sole
determinant of the ethical status of an action or attitude.

There are variations on both broad categories. There are naive
deontological ethics, such as the claim that our duty is given in the Ten
Commandments. This is futile, for they do not cover all eventualities.
More sophisticate members give a rule for determining duty, as Kant did.
Teleological ethics will specify the value or hierarchy of values that
determine the morality of an action.

One of the matters I found interesting is that most of the ethical
systems produce the same evaluation of behavior. There are aberrations,
of course. The guy now at Princeton who favors infanticide on utilitarian
grounds. PETA which favors the non-human above the human.
Dave

On Fri, 12 May 2006 22:39:20 -0400 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
I'm starting work on a paper that will examine a virtue ethics approach
to biotechnology patent law. I'm getting reasonably well-versed in
virtue ethics from secular and Catholic social theory perspectives, but
I'm also trying to dig up evangelical perspectives. It seems there is
some tension between deontological and virtue approaches within
evangelicalism -- or maybe that's just my misperception based on early
stage research. Anyway, I'd be grateful if anyone here is aware of any
good sources from an evangelical / protestant perspective. (I'm aware of
Hauerwas and the anabaptist tradition).

Thanks.
Received on Sat May 13 00:58:22 2006