Approach to Ethics
The ethical approach that is most appealing to me is the consequentialist ethics. This is because it focuses on the highest good for the greatest number of people. In other words, it emphasizes on what benefits the highest number of people in society. It uses the potential consequences of a given action to examine its moral status. For example, a specific action is only wrong or right after reviewing the eventual results of undertaking it. Consequential ethics, therefore, focuses on the impact that behavior will have on the world, whether my behavior is doing more good or harm and whether my behavior is making the world a better place. Consequential ethics is the best known and significant moral theory in place because its core idea is that the morality of right or wrong action is a subject of their consequences (Beauchamp, Bowie & Arnold, 2004). And it is essential to note that the only consequences of actions are the good or bad outcomes that come out.
I believe that the main intention of morality is to improve quality of life by producing more good things such as happiness and pleasure in society and reducing bad things such as sorrow and pain. This makes utilitarianism to be at the center of my moral perspective. I believe that what makes a morality to be justifiable or true is the positive contribution it has to humans or non-human elements. An action is right if it maximizes the overall wellbeing of the society and considered wrong if it brings harm than good to the people (Beauchamp, Bowie & Arnold, 2004). This theory tends to associate wellbeing with the happiness of the people. As a result, actions are treated as good if it gives joy to the greatest number of people in the world and the vice versa. For instance, I believe that the killing of Osama Bin Laden was a good action because he was a dangerous man who was planning to kill thousands of people. Eliminating one man to save hundreds of thousands of others was an ethical choice to make.
One of the biggest advantages of this approach is it fits well with a common-sense and practical approach to moral issues. An act is needed if it produces the best overall results. If you care about people, then you want to do things that make them happy. It is a natural way of life – to judge an action based on its consequences. Consequential ethics is also not influenced by pre-existing rules in the broad field of ethics.
One of the weaknesses of consequentialist ethics is that it tends to tell that, in certain situations, it is morally right to act in ways that may be brutal or harmful. Specific consideration of the effects on justice or rights of minorities or individuals is not factored in. It only takes the overall consequence of action on the general population. Judging an action by its consequences or the end result through logical extension normally leads to the concept of the “end justifies the means” – a philosophy associated with dictatorship and tyrannies.