Key Ethical Frameworks: Kant, Rawls, Hedonism, Utilitarianism

Kantian Ethical Formalism

Kantian ethical formalism centers on key characteristics such as autonomy (autonomous ethics), duty (ethical duty), and a formal ethics. According to Kant, humans are sensitive and rational beings. As for reason, humans are free, setting universal purposes to guide their lives.

• Reason gives its own behavior and conduct law, leading to autonomous reason.
• Humans are also beings influenced by feelings.
• One thing is to act in conformity with duty, and another is to act from duty. An action can be done in conformity with duty, but for other purposes or interests.

The moral value lies in the good will, independent of empirical outcomes. Duty is the necessity of an action done out of respect for the law.

Communicative Ethics

Communicative ethics involves two main shifts:

1. The passage from the field of moral consciousness and knowledge to a communicative language paradigm.
2. Abandoning the framework of the solitary conscience (monologic ethics) and relocating it within a community of subjects in dialogue.

Rawls's Principles of Justice

John Rawls proposed two fundamental principles of justice:

1. Each person must have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
   1. To be of the greatest benefit to the least advantaged (the Difference Principle).
   2. Attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Hedonism

Hedonism places happiness in hedonistic pleasure (from Greek hedone, meaning pleasure). Happiness consists in pleasure, or a specific set of pleasures, to the point that if something is good, it is because it causes pleasure. However, pleasure is not always considered purely sensual or indiscriminate. Epicurus, for instance, argues for the need to choose among a plurality of pleasures, emphasizing those that lead directly to happiness.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism holds that good is what is useful, based on the principle of utility. Utilitarianism determines that an action is good if it is useful for happiness. Happiness depends on the balance of pleasure over pain; in this regard, it shares similarities with hedonism.

Who benefits from this utility?

• For my happiness (Individualistic or Egoistic Utilitarianism).
• For the happiness of all (Universalistic Utilitarianism).

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory, meaning it interprets the goodness or badness of an action not by the action itself, but by its implications or consequences.