The deontological view is that there are moral rules that cannot be broken and that the important aspect is not the consequence, but the action itself. To a deontologist, the result never justifies the action, for example, you should never kill because the deed of killing is wrong. To summarize, if the action is intrinsically wrong, then do not do it.
Natural Law is classified as being a normative absolutist theory because it focuses on how ethical actions are by telling people to aim the do good and avoid evil in order to follow the moral code that survives in the purpose of nature. This enforces the belief that actions are intrinsically good or bad because humans behave in accordance with their purpose to glorify God and found a better relationship with Him.
An example for a basic absolutist law is that killing is wrong. Every form of absolutism – religious, deontological, natural law – believes that it goes against universal moral principles; that it is objectively bad to kill because the actions break a moral rule.
In all these examples, the main aspects are rightness and wrongness defined intrinsically – there is a universal standard of right and wrong that we are consciously aware of - and there is an objective structure that prevents personal judgement to cloud the fact that there are qualities to right and wrong that cannot be ignored because of what one or several people believe.
Relativism is based on the belief that moral truth changes depending on the culture, place, religion and time; therefore there is no fixed objective morals. Moral truths are subjective and to each person their own opinion so there are various planes of relativism, from weak to extreme, for example, one relativist might believe that it is acceptable for underage children to be sexual active with people older than them if that is what a culture believes (extreme) while another might believe that it is not right because the children are too young to comprehend the severity of their actions (weak). From this, the diversity thesis is built. It states that because of the diversity across cultures, there cannot be one ultimate morality; what is wrong and right depends on the society, meaning one culture cannot judge another. J.L. Mackie was a cultural relativist who believed that rightness and wrongness are not part of the world because ethical values have altered over cultures and time. He supports the Plato that if moral values truly existed they would be different from other things, but he sees that proposal as highly unimpressive. Another example of cultural relativism is bigamy. Many western countries would shun the idea of multiple marriages because it supposedly isn’t intrinsically right, but eastern countries allow them as they don’t believe marriage is solely based on the concept of ‘love’. Another relativist theory is the teleological theory, or consequentialism, which looks at the consequences of an action to decide whether it is right or wrong, for example, because murder causes pain and suffering it is immoral.
Linked to teleological relativism, situation ethics express the importance of aiming to reach the most loving end. There are no laws in situation ethics, so the most essential principle is that of agape (unconditional love) which Fletcher highlights by calling Jesus a situationist because he healed the sick on the Sabbath and ate with prostitutes which was again the law. The main point here is that whether the action is ‘right’ doesn’t matter, as long as your aim is to enforce agape, making it subjective.
In all these examples, the main aspects are rightness and wrongness defined intrinsically – there is a universal standard of right and wrong that we are consciously aware of - and there is an objective structure that prevents personal judgement to cloud the fact that there are qualities to right and wrong that cannot be ignored because of what one or several people believe.
In all these examples, the main aspects are that morality is, generally, learned behaviour from society and that every circumstance must have some sort of self-judgment concerning it, whether it is to enforce the idea of absolute moral laws like rape is wrong and other actions like stealing can be questioned or not.
