While reading the article titled “Thinking Ethically”, I found it very interesting that there were this many recognized approaches to thinking ethically. It is something that I guess I had never really thought about before, and this article made me do just that.
It starts by talking about the Utilitarian approach, where we look at a decision and make it based on which action will cause the most positive outcomes and the least negative outcomes. Honestly, this was one that I felt like was a basic approach to decision-making, and I did not realize it had a true name. The second topic it talks about is the Rights approach. This approach is one that I had not heard of before and was unfamiliar with. Essentially, it says that when you are making a decision, you must take into account if that decision takes everyone’s rights into account. This, I thought, was an interesting one that was kind of similar to the Utilitarian approach, but different because it focuses on rights instead of just overall effects.
It continues on talking about many other approaches to making ethical decisions, but one of them stuck out to me, and this is the Common-Good Approach. I found this one interesting because the way it is described, it seems like it would be the “perfect world”. Public safety, world peace, clean environment, good legal systems, etc. How this approach works is when you are making decisions, you look to see if which outcome of the decision will take you closer to the society you want to become. I thought this was a very interesting way to look at it, as you are looking at the decision as a stepping stone towards the society you want to get to. This made me think of my life, and how when making decisions now, I look at how they are going to help me to get where I want to be in my life. So interestingly enough, in a way, I use the Common-Good approach a lot, and I did not even know.
Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre,Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer. (2015, August 1). Thinking Ethically. Santa Clara University. https://www.scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/thinking-ethically/