Question

Case Study: Kate’s Blog

• Kate: Maintains a popular “life on campus” blog

• Jerry: Another student; active in Whig Party

• At private birthday party, someone gives Jerry a Tory Party T-shirt as a gag, and Jerry puts it on

* Note: Whig Party and Tory Party are two opposing political parties

• Kate uses cell phone to take picture of Jerry when he isn’t looking, posts it on her blog

• Story read by many people on and off campus

• Jerry confronts Kate and demands she remove photo; she complies, and they remain friends

• Kate’s blog and Jerry both become more popular

Required:

Use all the workable ethical theories, i.e. Kantianism, Utilitarianism (Act and Rule), Social Contract, and Virtue, for discussion and judge “ Was it wrong for Kate to post the picture of Jerry on her blog without first getting his permission? ”

Answer 1

Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia(now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term Kantianism or Kantian is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics.

Utilitarianism is a moral theory that advocates actions that promote overall happiness or pleasure and rejects actions that cause unhappiness or harm. A utilitarian philosophy, when directed to making social, economic, or political decisions, aims for the betterment of society. "The greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people" is a maxim of utilitarianism. The philosophy is associated with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, two towering British philosophers, and political thinkers.

Social contract theory, nearly as old as philosophy itself, is the view that persons’ moral and/or political obligations are dependent upon a contract or agreement among them to form the society in which they live. Socrates uses something quite like a social contract argument to explain to Crito why he must remain in prison and accept the death penalty. However, social contract theory is rightly associated with modern moral and political theory and is given its first full exposition and defense by Thomas Hobbes. After Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are the best known proponents of this enormously influential theory, which has been one of the most dominant theories within moral and political theory throughout the history of the modern West. In the twentieth century, moral and political theory regained philosophical momentum as a result of John Rawls’ Kantian version of social contract theory, and was followed by new analyses of the subject by David Gauthier and others. More recently, philosophers from different perspectives have offered new criticisms of social contract theory. In particular, feminists and race-conscious philosophers have argued that social contract theory is at least an incomplete picture of our moral and political lives, and may in fact camouflage some of the ways in which the contract is itself parasitical upon the subjugations of classes of persons.

Virtue and Psychology: Pursuing Excellence in Ordinary Practices issues a clarion call for psychologists and other mental health professionals to recognize the reality of virtue in social interaction. Virtues are character strengths—such as generosity, loyalty, and honesty—that make it possible for people to pursue worthwhile goals.

The author explores the current terrain of psychology, a field that actively avoids discussion of virtue while it implicitly endorses values such as independence and mastery. Some of these implied values derive from and feed into the individualism and instrumentalism of modern cultures, often to the detriment of individual and communal well-being. Virtue and Psychologydescribes an alternative framework that not only acknowledges virtue, but also shows how values that we already hold in common may be incorporated into psychological practice, and into our lives as a whole. Indeed, according to the virtue ethics framework proposed in this book, professional and personal lives cannot be separated—at least if one is to lead the best possible existence.