Institutional Issues Involving Ethics and Justice

This article provides an introduction to the more general issues that are taken up within this theme. In particular it introduces issues dealing with fundamental matters of ethics and justice. In the first instance the matter of how ethical claims are to be justified, and related to that, how ethical disputes are to be adjudicated, is discussed. It is suggested that rational objectivity, involving among other things a commitment to looking for reasons and to giving reasons for your beliefs, is crucial. Consideration is then given to several influential views about the content of ethics; that is, the substantive values and principles that provide the content of judgments about what ethics requires. The views discussed are consequentialism, rights, and virtue ethics. While these by no means exhaust the field, they provide a good sample of the kinds of views that have dominated discussion.