The Basis of Rightness

What Makes an Act Ethically Right

Sep 27, 2006 C. G. Prado

Too many of us try to be ethical without thinking enough about what it is that makes an act ethically right--or ethically wrong.

What makes an act ethically right? Most people think vaguely in terms of "doing the right thing," but few give serious thought to what actually makes an act ethically right. This lack of reflection and delving into poses a danger because when there's a conflict between two apparently ethically right acts, people will be at a loss about what to do.

There are three basic grounds for an act ethical rightness. One is religious: what's right is what God wills be done; the second is consequentialist: what's right is what yields the best results; the third is deontological: what's right is what duty requires. The religious grounding is evident in the codes of the world's great religions, in the Ten Commandments and similar codes; the consequentialist grounding is clearest in John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, the view that what is right is what results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number; the deontological grounding is articulated in Immanuel Kant's ethical philosophy, in which the imperatives to act as you would have anyone act in the same circumstances and to treat people as ends in themselves generate duties.

Most people use all three: they justify their actions by appealing to God's will, or to good consequences, or to the demands of duty. Strictly speaking, this doesn't work from a philosophical perspective because the three grounds of ethical rightness are exclusive. It's easy to see why by imagining likely conflicts. Telling a lie may have the best consequences, but it goes against God's will and duty's requirements. Fulfilling a duty can have bad consequences, as when telling the truth causes pointless suffering. Doing what benefits the greatest number can be unfair to the few.

If we go back to the ancient Greeks and remember our Nietzsche, we realize there's another ground for ethical rightness, and that is the impetus for self-creation or self-definition as a person. As Michel Foucault stressed, a crucial aspect of ethics has to do, not with the self's relations to others, but with the self's relation to itself. Each person has an ethical obligation to make himself or herself the best she or he can be. Both Nietzsche and Foucault spoke of the making of oneself as the creation of a work of art. So we have to add fruitful self-definition to the other three grounds of ethical rightness.

So, are these competing or complementary grounds? Stay tuned.

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