Optional Theme: Ethics
What is tested
Ethics essays require you to apply and criticise normative theories, or to assess metaethical claims about moral truth, in relation to a concrete issue. The exam rewards accurate reconstruction of a theory before you attack it.
Core concepts
- Consequentialism: Bentham's hedonic calculus; Mill's qualitative distinction between pleasures and the harm principle; Singer's preference utilitarianism and the drowning child.
- Deontology: Kant's categorical imperative-universalizability and the humanity formulation (never treat persons merely as means); Ross's prima facie duties.
- Virtue ethics: Aristotle's eudaimonia, the golden mean, phronesis; MacIntyre on practices and tradition.
- Metaethics: Moore's naturalistic fallacy; Ayer's emotivism; Mackie's error theory; moral realism versus anti-realism; relativism.
- Applied debates: euthanasia, animal ethics, global poverty, environmental obligation, moral responsibility and free will.
Worked example
"Torture is never permissible." Kantian reasoning: torture uses a person merely as a means to information, violating the humanity formulation, and cannot be universalized. Utilitarian reasoning: in a ticking-bomb case, torture may maximize welfare. Evaluate: rule-utilitarians reply that permitting torture predictably erodes institutions and invites abuse, so the empirical premise matters more than the principle; the Kantian must show the humanity formulation admits no exceptions. Conclude with a defended position on which premise is doing the work.
Traps
Describing a theory without applying it; ignoring the difference between act and rule utilitarianism; presenting relativism as obviously true; asserting that Kant forbids all consequences-based reasoning without textual care.