Ethical formalism is a type of
ethical
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of morality, right and wrong action (philosophy), behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, alo ...
theory which defines moral judgments in terms of their
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premis ...
al form (e.g., as "laws" or "universal prescriptions") rather than their content (e.g., as judgments about what actions will best promote human
well-being
Well-being, or wellbeing, also known as wellness, prudential value or quality of life, refers to what is intrinsically valuable relative ''to'' someone. So the well-being of a person is what is ultimately good ''for'' this person, what is in t ...
). The term also often carries critical connotations.
Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aest ...
, for example, has been criticized for defining morality in terms of the formal feature of being a "universal law", and then attempting to derive from this formal feature various concrete moral duties.
Ethical formalism is related to, but not identical to,
Harry J. Gensler's relatively recent (circa 1996) theory of
formal ethics Formal ethics is a formal logical system for describing and evaluating the "form" as opposed to the "content" of ethical principles. Formal ethics was introduced by Harry J. Gensler, in part in his 1990 logic textbook ''Symbolic Logic: Classical a ...
. Formal ethics is similar to ethical formalism in that it focuses on formal features of moral judgments, but is distinct in that the system of formal ethics is explicitly (and intentionally) incomplete. Specifically, while some ethical formalist systems (e.g., arguably Kant's "universal laws") view a set of formal features as both necessary and sufficient, formal ethics views such formal features as necessary but not sufficient.
Ethical formalism is "considered as an absolutist system, if something is wrong, it is wrong all the time" (Pollock, 2004). Just the same, if something is right, it is then right all the time.
See also
*
Axiological ethics
Axiological ethics is concerned with the values by which we uphold our ethical standards and theories. It questions what, if any, basis exists for such values. Through doing so, it explores the justification for our values, and examines if there ...
*
Ethical naturalism
Ethical naturalism (also called moral naturalism or naturalistic cognitivistic definism) is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
# Ethical sentences express propositions.
# Some such propositions are true.
# Those propositions are made true ...
*
Ethical subjectivism
Ethical subjectivism or moral non-objectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that:
#Ethical sentences express propositions.
#Some such propositions are true.
#The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the (act ...
*
Moral objectivism
*
Moral relativism
Moral relativism or ethical relativism (often reformulated as relativist ethics or relativist morality) is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. ...
*
Universal prescriptivism
Universal prescriptivism (often simply called prescriptivism) is the meta-ethical view that claims that, rather than expressing propositions, ethical sentences function similarly to imperatives which are universalizable—whoever makes a mor ...
References
*Kant, Immanuel, ''Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals'', tr. H.J. Paton. London. 1948.
*Warnock, G.J. ''Contemporary Moral Philosophy'' (London, 1967).
Formalism (philosophy)
Meta-ethics
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