How My Brother Leon Brought Home A Wife Essay Example

ethical scrutiny (Newton, Internet). Newton (Internet) believes that if ethics is about human beings, we should be able to determine the structure of our moral obligations from three basic, simple, readily observable facts about human beings: People are embodied. They exist in time and space and are subject to physical laws. They have needs that must be satisfied if they are to survive. They must control the physical environment to satisfy those needs. Failure to do so leads to pain and suffering.

The implication for ethics is that the relief of that suffering and the satisfaction of those needs should be out first concern, giving rise to duties of compassion, non-maleficence, and beneficence. People are social. Whatever problems they have with their physical environment, they have to solve them in groups, which creates a new set of problems. They must cope with a social environment as well as the physical one. The social environment produces two further needs: for a social structure to coordinate social efforts, and for means of communication.

The implication for ethics is that we must take account of each other in all our actions. We have obligations to the group in general and to other members of the group of particular. People are rational. People are able to consider abstract concepts, use language, and think in terms of categories, classes and rules. Because people are rational, they can make rational choices, they are autonomous moral agents. They can also realize that they could have done it differently, so they can feel guilty and remorse and assume responsibility for their choices.

Rationality’s implication for ethics is that we have a duty to

respect this freedom of choice. From these facts about human nature, the author derives three fundamental premises or imperatives of applied ethics (Newton, Internet): Beneficence. This imperative, central to any profession, holds that the professionals must take care of, or look out for the interest of, the client. Beneficence has several sub-imperatives conjoined in it: first, to do no harm, second, to prevent harm or protect from harm, and third, to serve the interests or happiness of the client. Respect for persons.

The command to respect the autonomy and dignity of the individuals with whom we deal, to attend to their reasons and honour their self-regarding choices, is the command underlying all of our interpersonal dealings. In professional relationships, however, it also limits the boundaries of professional beneficence. The professional’s expertise may tell him that the client’s best interests will be served by certain services that the professional is able to provide; it may even tell him that the client needs, on pain of loss of life or liberty, certain of his services.

But if the client chooses not to avail himself of them, and only his own interests are concerned, the professional may not impose those services on the client. Justice. This imperative demands that the professional look past both art and client, and take responsibility for the effect of professional practice in the society as a whole. In every profession or practice, we can find examples of injustice. For example, in medicine, the rich get immediate and adequate care and the poor get late and inadequate care.

The demand of justice upon the professionals is that they work within their professional associations, and

in their individual practices, to blunt the effects of injustice in their fields. The professional who ignores this demand fails to fulfil all the duties of professional status. Because these imperatives are logically independent, they can be (and often are) in conflict. Yet, as Newton says, we may not abolish one or another; we cannot even prioritize them, which leads her to conclude that applied ethics is not the science of easy answers.

As professionals are struggling to solve moral and ethical dilemmas, the engage in the process of moral reasoning. There are different forms of moral reasoning (Newton, Internet): the first is consequentialist (or utilitarian or teleological) reasoning, in which ends are identified as good (i. e. values) and means are selected that will lead to those ends; the second is non-consequentialist (or deontological) reasoning, in which rules are accepted as good and acts are judged right or otherwise according to their conformity to those rules; finally.