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'Center for Ethics and Business

1. Philosophical ethics
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that explores the nature of moral
virtue and evaluates human actions. Philosophical ethics differs
from legal, religious, cultural and personal approaches to ethics by
seeking to conduct the study of morality through a rational, secular
outlook that is grounded in notions of human happiness or
well-being. A major advantage of a philosophical approach to ethics
is that it avoids the authoritarian basis of law and religion as
well as the subjectivity, arbitrariness and irrationality that may
characterize cultural or totally personal moral views. (Although
some thinkers differentiate between "ethics," "morals," "ethical"
and "moral," this discussion will use them synonymously.)
Generally speaking, there are two traditions in modern philosophical
ethics regarding how to determine the ethical character of actions.
One argues that actions have no intrinsic ethical character but
acquire their moral status from the consequences that flow from
them. The other tradition claims that actions are inherently right
or wrong, e.g, lying, cheating, stealing. The former is called a
teleological approach to ethics, the latter, deontological.
2. Teleological (results oriented) ethics
A teleological outlook is particularly appealing because it takes a
pragmatic, common-sense, even unphilosophical approach to ethics.
Simply put, teleological thinkers claim that the moral character of
actions depends on the simple, practical matter of the extent to
which actions actually help or hurt people. Actions that produce
more benefits than harm are "right";...