Aristotle and Plato explained the morality as a type of interpretation. They attempted to give fundamental details of moral and civil virtues by connecting one ethical principle to the others to summarise the main impression of moral as personal happiness. Dworkin 2011 contemporary philosophers also use the terms “moral and ethical” in a differing way and they interpret moral values how we “ought to treat others” and “how we ought” to live ourselves Dworkin 2011.
The western philosophers typically they divided the theories of ethics into three different theoretical categories; “meta-ethics”, “normative ethics”, and “applied ethics”.
Meta-ethics; deals with the nature of “moral judgement”. “It looks at the origins and meaning of ethical principles” by focusing on the expression of individuals feel.
Normative ethics; is deals with the content of “moral judgements” and the criteria for what is “right or wrong”. This may include the consequence of our behaviours such as our duties and our good habits towards others.
applied ethics; looks at controversial topics, and typically divided into diverse fields. for instant occupational ethics professional ethics biomedical and environmental ethics etc.
the above three theories of ethics contribute to part of the decision-making framework for decision making when ethics are in play these principles represent the aspects from which individuals seek support as they make decisions. every theory highlights diverse points for a different decision-making method or a decision rule such as predicting the outcome and following one’s duties to others in order to reach what the individual considers is an ethically right decision. In order to understand ethical decision-making, it is important for us to understand that not everyone makes decisions in the same way by using the same message or applying the same decision rules.
Historically in the philosophy of ethics there are also four critical principles of ethics such as “respect for autonomy which means to respect others`, choices and human dignity. beneficence brings about good in every action justice is the obligation to treat others` “equally and fairly “and non-maleficence which controls the amounts of harm caused. furthermore, there are different classes of ethical philosophies to discuss ethical issues. Such as deontology, utilitarianism, social justice, social contract theory, virtue ethical theory and right. these are included with another important perspective such as feminist perception of ethics and general perspective of justice in order to understand further an ethical principle. the purpose of this paper is to look over and compare the Aristotle and Immanuel Kant`s theories of ethics in terms of their judgmental applications to actions of the good life
