CAS PH 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Moral Agency, Egotism, Deontological Ethics
28 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Ideal ethical theory - describes the perfect moral agent or society would be. Represents what things would be like in the ideal scenario but does not describe how things actually are, only how they should be. Members of socially oppressed groups tend to see this ideal that. Utilitarianism, ethical egoism, deontology, etc is propagated by their oppressors as harmful. Non-ideal ethical theory (normative strategy) - investigates actual problematic circumstances without first establishing the perfect moral agent/ society. Mills believes this is potentially universalist in its application. Does not say that these theories don"t also use ideals. What distinguishes them is that the ideal theories rely on idealization to the exclusion/ marginalization of the actual that explicitly represent abstract elements of an oppressive system. What tends to be lost in abstraction. In an ideal theory, all people are presumed to be equal and does not recognize the existence of social hierarchies.
