Reference no: EM133978015

Question

When we care about people it's usually because we hold strong emotions for them. Ethical theories until recently have not placed much value on emotions. In fact, philosophers have traditionally been quite dubious of their value for philosophy. They believed that emotions distracted us from clear reasoning. Feminist ethics has reintroduced the idea that emotions should contribute to ethical thinking. The emotions, they argue, are integral to all decision making and it is impossible to separate moral thinking from emotions. Recall that all objective ethical theories covered so far have tried to do just that. Egoists spoke of one's best self-interest, or of rational self-interest, which meant that one should steer clear of emotional reactions and think clearly of one's interests in the long term. Utilitarians argued that the Greatest Good may not be good for you and yours, and that one the emotion of happiness is the only emotion to be considered. Kantians and Natural Law theorists attempted to ground ethics in clear rational principles derived either from reason alone or from human nature. Virtue theorists insisted that acting from Virtue must be dispassionate and carefully seek the mean between excess and deficiency. So, the question for this week is,

Are the feminist ethicists right to reintroduce the emotions as important factors in approaching ethical decision making?