Ethical Perspectives Virtue Ethics Generally, Virtue Ethics

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. 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 War II.

Deontological Ethics

Generally, deontological ethics prohibits violating rules, irrespective of the actual consequences or the justice of adhering to rules in exceptional circumstances (Halbert & Ingulli, 2008). Unlike virtue ethics and utilitarian ethics, strict deontology would prohibit lying to the police under any circumstances if that is illegal or if lying is considered immoral. In principle, the idea behind deontological ethics is that society is better off in the aggregate and in the long run when all rules are always obeyed. Under deontological analysis, the fact that strict adherence to rules may sometimes produce undesirable consequences is not sufficient cause to violate an established rule or law (Halbert & Ingulli, 2008).

Personal Experience

When I was in high school, I had a friend who lived in my neighborhood who used to hide from his father at my house. His father was verbally and emotionally abusive and sometimes physically abusive. I was taught never to lie to adults but when his father called my house looking for my friend, I always lied and said that I did not know where he was. I know it was the right thing because my parents also allowed me to do it and sometimes they took the phone calls and lied to his father too.