The Ethics of the Everyday: Can Normative Ethics Guide Daily Decisions?

Abstract

This thesis asked whether normative ethics could tell us what is the right thing to in daily life. A case-study was employed that analyzed whether each theory could satisfy two requirements: the theory must be act guiding and the agent needs to able to justify the act to herself and to the relevant parties. The thesis discussed four ethical theories: act-consequentialism, rule-consequentialism, Kantianism and contractualism. Act-consequentialism was found to have a structural issue in that the second requirement is only another feature that is put into its calculus and not a starting point for evaluating the rightness of our actions. The other three theories could not satisfy the two requirements simultaneously, either. Each theory is forced to resort to judgment when we require them to weigh between two seemingly equivalent obligations. It would seem then that judgment is a better tool for deciding moral dilemmas than normative theory.