An ethicist is one whose judgment on
ethics and
ethical codes has come to be trusted by a specific
community, and (importantly) is expressed in some way that makes it possible for others to mimic or approximate that judgment. Following the advice of ethicists is one means of acquiring
knowledge about what that ethicist says (see
argument
An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
,
argument from authority).
The term
jurist
A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Uni ...
describes an ethicist whose judgment on
law becomes part of a
legal code, or otherwise has force of law. This may be due to formal (
de jure)
state sanction.
Some jurists have less formal (
de facto) backing by an ethical community, e.g. a
religious community. In
Islamic Law, for instance, such a community following (
taqlid) a specific jurisprudence (
fiqh) of
shariah mimics judgment of a prior jurist.
Catholic Canon Law has a similar structure. Such a jurist may be a
theologian or simply a prominent teacher. To those outside this tradition, the jurist is simply an ethicist who they may more freely disagree with, and whose input on any issue is advisory. However, they may find it hard to avoid a
fatwa
A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist i ...
or
excommunication or other such
shunning by the religious community, so it may be hard advice to ignore.
Other meanings
"Ethicist" may also mean a person who subscribes to ethicism, which can be defined either as a philosophy based on
ethics or "the view that a work of art's moral point of view affects the work's overall aesthetic evaluation". "Ethicist" may also mean a person with a tendency to
moralize.
See also
*
List of ethicists, demonstrates the extreme range of people who claim to have made, or contributed to, ethical debates.
Notes
{{Authority control
Ethics