Ethical Perspectives Virtue Ethics Generally, Virtue Ethics Essay

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Ethical Perspectives

Virtue Ethics

Generally, virtue ethics emphasizes the motivation, or reason, for any particular act to determine whether or not it is ethical (Hursthouse, 1999). For example, if a person you know with certainty is totally innocent of a crime for which police are seeking to take him into custody, virtue ethics would permit you to lie to the authorities about his whereabouts and to permit that person to decide what he wants to do (including flee the state if that is his choice). As long as your true motivation was morally defensible (such as to protect an innocent person from wrongful arrest or prosecution) as opposed to motivated by a non-virtuous reason (such as for pay), virtue ethics would support your decision (Hursthouse, 1999).

Utilitarian Ethics

Generally, utilitarian ethics emphasizes the effect of a course of action on the entire community (Beauchamp & Childress, 2009). In the same case involving the person who is innocent of the crime but being sought by police, utilitarianism would prohibit lying to the police under the theory that the police are the duly appointed manifestation of law and that the entire community benefits from allowing the course of justice under the criminal justice system to run its course.

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According to utilitarian ethics, it would not be in the interest of the community for every person to decide which police investigations are justified and which ones are not. If lying to the police is illegal, utilitarian ethics would require you to divulge the person's whereabouts even if you thought he was innocent (Beauchamp & Childress, 2009).

However, if you genuinely believed that the police were corrupt or acting under policies that violate serious ethical principles such as human rights, utilitarian ethics, much like virtue ethics, would permit you to lie to the police. An example would be the dilemma of whether or not to lie to the Gestapo about the whereabouts of Jews hiding from persecution in Nazi Germany during World….....

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