Western Moral Thinkers

Prerequisites: Moral Thinkers — overview · Ethics: essence, determinants and consequences

The Hook: Who Should a Self-Driving Car Save?

Connect: In the News → Concept

In 2018, researchers published in the journal Nature the results of the “Moral Machine” experiment, an online platform built at MIT that had collected millions of decisions from people in more than 200 countries and territories. Participants decided how a self-driving car with failed brakes should act: swerve and kill one group, or stay on course and kill another. Across cultures, people tended to spare humans over animals, more lives over fewer, and the young over the old — but the strength of these preferences varied between regions.

Engineers now need a rule for the car. Should it simply minimise deaths? Is it ever acceptable to steer into someone? Should age count at all? These are the debates between consequentialists, deontologists and virtue ethicists that philosophers have conducted for centuries — and that a civil servant faces whenever a policy must decide who bears a cost.

The Core Concept

Three families of normative ethics

Approach	Question it asks	Key thinkers	Strength	Weakness
Virtue ethics	What would a person of good character do?	Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius	Focuses on the whole person and habits	Gives little precise guidance in dilemmas
Deontology	What is my duty? Is the act right in itself?	Kant	Protects rights and dignity; rules out using people	Rigid; duties can conflict
Consequentialism	Which act produces the best outcome?	Bentham, Mill	Practical; suits public policy	Can justify sacrificing minorities

Later thinkers added social contract theories (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and in modern form Rawls) and the ethics of care (Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice, 1982).

The Greeks

Socrates (469–399 BCE). Left no writings; known through Plato. Held that virtue is knowledge — people do wrong out of ignorance — and that “the unexamined life is not worth living” (Plato’s Apology). Method: relentless questioning (the Socratic method). Chose death over escape after his trial, out of respect for the laws of Athens. Use: self-reflection by officers; questioning assumptions in policy.

Plato (c. 428–348 BCE). In the Republic, justice in the soul is harmony among its three parts — reason, spirit and appetite — with reason ruling. Four cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Proposed rule by philosopher-kings trained for the common good, who would hold no private property. The Ring of Gyges story asks whether a person who could act invisibly would remain just. Use: integrity (“what would you do with the ring?”); the idea of a trained, disinterested guardian class behind the civil service.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE). In the Nicomachean Ethics, the goal of life is eudaimonia (flourishing). Virtue is a mean between extremes — courage between cowardice and rashness, generosity between meanness and extravagance. Virtues are formed by habit: we become just by doing just acts. Practical wisdom (phronesis) is the ability to see what a situation requires. Use: character-building through practice; balanced decisions; the golden mean in policy (neither too lax nor too harsh).

Confucius (551–479 BCE)

Chinese thinker whose sayings were collected in the Analects. Key ideas: ren (humaneness, benevolence), li (ritual propriety, proper conduct), the junzi (the exemplary person) and the rectification of names — things should be what they are called; a ruler must act as a ruler should. A negative form of the golden rule: do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire. Government should rule by moral example rather than by punishment alone. Use: leadership by example; role-based duties; a merit-based, ethical bureaucracy.

Thinker	Work	Key idea	Use in answers
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)	The Prince	A ruler must be prepared to act against conventional morality to preserve the State; if one cannot be both feared and loved, it is safer to be feared	Realism in politics; the danger of ends justifying means
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)	Leviathan (1651)	Without government, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”; people surrender rights to a sovereign for security	Rule of law; why a strong State is needed
John Locke (1632–1704)	Two Treatises of Government (1689)	Natural rights to life, liberty and property; government by consent; right to resist tyranny	Limited government; fundamental rights
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)	The Social Contract (1762)	“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”; the general will aims at the common good	Popular sovereignty; participation

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) — duty

In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Kant argued that morality rests on reason, not on consequences or feelings. The only thing good without qualification is a good will — acting from duty.

Hypothetical imperatives are conditional (“if you want X, do Y”).
The categorical imperative binds unconditionally. Two key formulations:
1. Universal law: act only on a maxim that you could will to become a universal law. (Could everyone take a bribe? Then trust in government would collapse — so the maxim fails.)
2. Humanity as an end: treat humanity, in yourself or another, always as an end and never merely as a means.
Autonomy: moral agents give the moral law to themselves through reason.

Use: dignity of every citizen; why lying or using people for a “good cause” is wrong; universalisability test in case studies.

Utilitarianism — consequences

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.” The right act produces “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”. Proposed a felicific (hedonic) calculus to measure pleasure by intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity and extent. Every person counts as one.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). In Utilitarianism, distinguished higher pleasures (intellect, morality) from lower ones: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” In On Liberty (1859), set out the harm principle: power may be exercised over an individual against their will only to prevent harm to others. Also championed women’s rights (The Subjection of Women, 1869).

Use: cost-benefit analysis in policy; maximising welfare with limited funds — but always checked by rights (Kant) and justice (Rawls) so minorities are not sacrificed.

John Rawls (1921–2002) — justice as fairness

A Theory of Justice (1971) opens: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.” Rawls asks us to choose principles of justice from an original position behind a veil of ignorance — not knowing our own class, caste, gender or talents. He argued we would choose:

Equal basic liberties for all.
Social and economic inequalities are acceptable only if (a) attached to offices open to all under fair equality of opportunity, and (b) they benefit the least advantaged (the difference principle).

Use: affirmative action; designing welfare policy; the case for focusing on the last person in the queue.

Ethics of care

Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice, 1982) argued that moral reasoning based only on abstract rules and rights overlooks an ethic grounded in relationships, responsibility and care for particular others. Use: compassionate administration, care for the vulnerable, child and elder protection.

graph TD
    Q[Ethical question in administration] --> V[Virtue: what would a person of integrity do?]
    Q --> D[Duty: does it respect rights and dignity?]
    Q --> C[Consequence: does it produce the most good?]
    Q --> J[Justice: does it help the least advantaged?]
    V --> A[Balanced, defensible decision]
    D --> A
    C --> A
    J --> A

Memory Anchors

Three questions, three schools: Who should I be? (virtue) · What must I do? (duty) · What will happen? (consequence).

Greek chain: Socrates taught Plato who taught Aristotle — “SPA”.

Bentham’s calculus — 7 dimensions: “In Delhi Cars Park Far Past Exits” → Intensity, Duration, Certainty, Propinquity, Fecundity, Purity, Extent.

Contract thinkers by mood: Hobbes fears (security), Locke protects (rights), Rousseau participates (general will).

Definitions to Know

Crisp definitions examiners reward

Virtue ethics: judges actions by the character they express and build (Aristotle).
Golden mean: virtue as the midpoint between two vices of excess and deficiency.
Categorical imperative: Kant’s unconditional moral law — act only on maxims you could will as universal law; treat persons always as ends.
Utilitarianism: the right act is the one that produces the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Harm principle: the only legitimate ground for coercing an individual is to prevent harm to others (Mill).
Veil of ignorance: Rawls’s device for choosing fair principles without knowing one’s own position in society.
Social contract: the idea that political authority rests on the agreement of the governed.

For Mains

Dimensions: character (virtue), rights and dignity (duty), welfare (consequences), fairness (justice), relationships (care).
Keywords: eudaimonia, golden mean, practical wisdom, categorical imperative, universalisability, good will, greatest happiness, harm principle, veil of ignorance, difference principle, general will.
Value-addition:
- In a case study, run all three tests: is the act right in itself (Kant), does it produce the best outcome (Mill), what would a person of integrity do (Aristotle)?
- Use Rawls when the question involves the poor or marginalised.
- Use Mill’s harm principle for questions on freedom of expression, lifestyle regulation or public health restrictions.

Common Traps

Trap #1: Misattributed quotations

Many popular “quotes” are misattributed — for example, “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence is not an act but a habit” is a later paraphrase of Aristotle, not his own words. Use paraphrases when unsure of exact wording.

Trap #2: Treating utilitarianism as 'majority rules'

Utilitarianism counts everyone’s happiness equally, including minorities. Its weakness is that aggregate welfare can override individual rights — which is why it is checked by Kantian and Rawlsian ideas.

Trap #3: Name-dropping without application

“As Kant said…” earns nothing unless the idea is applied to the question. One thinker, correctly used, beats five names.

Practice

Mains

UPSC Practice · Mains GS IV 10 marks · 150 words Qwmt-m1

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Explain this principle of Kant and assess its relevance for a civil servant.

Solution

Introduction: This is the first formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative — an unconditional moral law derived from reason, which tests whether a rule of action could consistently be followed by everyone.

Body:

Meaning: before acting, ask what rule (maxim) you are following and whether you could will everyone to follow it. If universalising it would defeat itself or produce a world you could not accept, the act is wrong.
Examples: “I will take a small gift for a favour” — if all officials did so, impartial administration would collapse. “I will make a false promise to a citizen to calm them” — universal false promising destroys trust.
Relevance for civil servants:
- Consistency and impartiality — same rule for all.
- Resisting “just this once” rationalisations.
- Respect for citizens’ dignity (the companion formulation: treat persons as ends).
Limits: rigid in conflicts of duty (truth vs protecting a victim); must be balanced with consequences and compassion.

Conclusion: Kant’s test is a powerful guard against self-serving exceptions. Combined with practical wisdom, it gives a civil servant a reliable compass.

UPSC-pattern practice question

UPSC Practice · Mains GS IV 10 marks · 150 words Qwmt-m2

How can Rawls’s idea of the “veil of ignorance” guide the design of public policy in India? Illustrate with examples.