Normative Ethics

Abstract

Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy that theorizes the content of our moral judgments or, as a limiting case, denies that any such theories are possible (the position of the so-called anti-theorists). While meta-ethics focuses on foundational issues concerning the semantics of moral utterance and how our moral views fit more broadly into a general conception of reality, normative ethics focuses on the major theoretical approaches to the content of moral reflection. It is shaped by the historical inheritance of the tradition of moral philosophy in the West in its focus on deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics as the major forms of normative ethical theory. These standard theories have been more recently complemented by the new field of feminist ethics, and innovations in ethical theory have added hybrid theory and contractualism to the list. All of these views continue to be the subject of intense debate and further refinement.