Michael Lambek's Toward An Ethics Of The Act

Burke's Pentad includes five categories, which help classifying arguments as dramatic actions. The first part is the "act"; What is done by the unit? The second part of his evaluation is the "scene"; What is the history behind the "act"? The third category of Burke's Pentad is the "agent"; Who is the source of the message? How the "agent" accomplishes its "act" is defined as the "agency" in the fourth term of the Pentad. The final piece to Burke's analysis is to the define the "purpose" of the action.

1. The Mayor of a large city was given a free membership in an exclusive golf club by people who have received several city contracts. He also accepted gifts from organizations that have not done business with the City but might in the future. The gifts ranged from $200 tickets to professional sports events to designer watches and jewelry.

In chapter 2 of the Ethics Primer Svara discusses many important ideas. Some of these included the importance of people who work for the government doing their civic duty , 3 types of ethical reasonings brought up by a student, and Lawrence Kholbergs model of moral judgement. In the book Svara brings up how people in certain roles have a job to do. They must meet the expectations expected of them or they aren’t serving the public in a full capacity. As you read on the 3 types of ethical reasonings are discussed. They are virtue, principle, and to be a public employee. This student I feel has a pretty spot on idea of how people should act. Honesty and following the law are just things ethically sound people should be doing. It doesn't take a genious to understand right from wrong. Finally a major point of the chapter discussed Lawrence Kohlberg and his model of moral judgement. “Lawrence kholberg (1981) offers a model of moral judgement to help understand how the capacity for ethical reasoning develops and explains the motives for acting at different stages of development”.(23) More specifically he gives the six stages of maturity children go through. These being punishment and obedience, instrumental relativist, good boy;nice girl, society maintaining/law and order, social contract, universal ethical

Wonderful, short, summary of the views applicable to this case, and the defense for the view that you hold most. However, I believe that there is more to the Christian-principle based view of ethics, than what you give credit for. According to Arthur F. Holmes’ book, Ethics: Approaching Moral Decisions, one would find that the Christian view holds four tenants, or ideas, to shape the understanding of ethics, in which these views are: cases, area rules (moral rules), principles, bases (theological and philosophical). Thereby, one must go through these four sets of criteria to figure out if an action is right or if it is wrong. Following this line of logic, and if one were to look in the Bible for the answers, one would find torture is not right.

Christine Korsgaard’s view begins to take shape with her belief in the Constitutional Model. Under this model, Korsgaard argues that an action differs from behavior or physical movements in that an author can be clearly determined. In other words, an action can be specifically attributed to the person who committed the action, and was performed in accordance with his own self-constitution. In her view, action is an exercise of intentional agency and an expression of self-identity. In other words, actions are behaviors that we are responsible for.

The life of a person may be measured in years, moments, and the number of laughs or cries but what if one were to measure a life on good deeds or on that person’s virtues? The theory and idea of ethics and virtue as conceptualized by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics and as it is expressed in the pages of The Fundamentals of Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau is a complex and dubious notion. It is one that is easily related to characters in Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner.

In his writing, A Practical Companion to Ethics, Anthony Weston explains people are more judgmental and it causes a lot more problems than solutions. Anthony Weston feels Ethics requires us to be mindful thinkers, because it helps fight unjust prejudgment. I personally feel this could help fix court systems, federal, and state wide corruption. Most importantly being a mindful thinker could help businesses. There are so many reasons that could fall under Anthony’s theory. Getting to know the author and his work. I feel his mindful thinking is to reach out to others and interact with more people in an expressive way. Weston believes this will help our community progress in a positive manner towards others. I think he feels ethics requires us

like manner build an affiliation's certainty by showing to others that a specialist of the

Ethical relativism is not just simply one concept. It can be divided into two categories cultural relativism and ethical subjectivism. Cultural relativism states that what a culture finds correct is what is correct, within its own realm. Ethical subjectivism are what people as individuals find correct, or the values a person stands for and what they support whereas culture relativism is has a certain standard of morality held within a culture or society. These both view people as being in charge of their own morality. However, there are some problems with the view ethical relativism itself. For instance marital rape, machismo in Hispanics culture and premarital sex. In this dissertation I will be discussing problems with ethical relativism, while using the examples above.

Free Will: “For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue have been hunting for is a feature of agency that is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their conduct.” (2)

This view gives us a deeper understanding of behaviours as performances. A personal example of looking at a performativity culture and analyzing it, is the roles people play in everyday life. The role of a

In the article Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Laws, Arthur A. Leff took an agnostic approach when determining what morality should be comprised of. He suggested that humans struggle with desiring to follow a predetermined and unchallengeable set of moral rules, while at the same time wanting the autonomy to create those rules.

Performance. The interactions are viewed as a performance, constantly being shaped by the environment and audience, with the objective of providing others with impressions that are consonant with the desired goals of the actor. Specifically Goffman states as “all the activity of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers” (1959, 32). Goffman (1959) uses the

On the other hand although their similarities are close knit; they each have a distinct difference depending on the individual. For instance, recently the complex next door caught fire due to bad wiring. The company put all the tenants up for the weekend because they believed that this is what they ought to do. After the weekend the tenants were told that the situation had been turned over to their insurance company and it was out of their hands. The tenants believe that the company should hold their self-responsible and accommodate them much more.

When we first started learning about Aristotles’ theory, I did not understand the importance. Aristotle wrote, Nicomachean Ethics many years ago. It did not seem like any of it would pertain to my life. After reading into his theory, I found it to be quite interesting. It was a lot more relatable than I originally thought. When we know what we are looking for, we can find aspects of his theory everywhere.