Why is it important to study multiple moral theories in applied ethics?

"Introduction Moral theories are general theories that try to answer the questions ‘what is morally good?’ and ‘how can we distinguish good from bad?’ In applied ethics , we often use principles that we can trace back to these theories. Therefore, it is vital that we know moral theories and what the weak points of these moral theories are. In the following chapter, we discuss four approaches: utilitarianism , deontology , virtue ethics , and care ethics . But before we start, a warning is in order. When confronted with certain ethical questions from a specific field of study, such as biomedicine, we usually do not pick out our favourite theory and apply it. Although some ethicists consider themselves as strictly ‘utilitarian’ or ‘deontologian’—this view is called ethical absolutism or monism — ethical questions are often too complex and too diverse to be solved with one theory. For example, ethical questions can pertain to policymaking, interpersonal relations, or both. Moreover, we can ask ourselves whether there is always one good answer to an ethical dilemma. This does not mean that there cannot be better and worse answers in any case. At the same time, knowing the different aspects of morality through these moral theories, and the challenges that each approach has, helps you look at a specific ethical question through different angles. Courses on applied ethics , such as bioethics, often start with an overview of moral theories and principles, as does this book. This ubiquity of moral theories might give the impression that they represent opinions about which underlying framework of morality is the best. Indeed, that may be the way they were conceived in the first place. It is more helpful, however, to view them as describing aspects of morality . As such, they are valuable tools: you should try to look at ethical dilemmas using different approaches and theories and know the drawbacks to each approach. Moreover, it is essential to realize that a specific type of reasoning may be utilitarian or deontological, but that does not mean that applying utilitarianism or deontology to a specific ethical dilemma yields straightforward answers. We will see some examples later in this chapter. © 2025 Compost Collective, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0449.02"