Normative Ethics

The systematic philosophical investigation and justification of moral systems. Normative ethical systems typically divide into three distinct groups:

  1. Consequentialism (or Teleological Ethics) - maintains that the rightness of an action depends solely upon the consequences of the actions,

  2. Deontological Ethics - maintains the rightness of an action is determined by some feature of the action itself, and

  3. Virtue (or Aretaic) Ethics - maintains that the rightness of an action is in some way determined by the character of the moral agent.