Kim C. Abian HUB 42 1.

) History of Ethics

Decmber 03, 2012 Bioethics

A number of ancient religions and ethical thinkers also put forward some version of the golden rule, at least in its negative version: do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself. Aristotle's ethics is based on the ideal of happiness. A "great-souled" citizen who lives a life with virtue can expect to achieve eudaimonia, which according to Aristotle is the highest good for man. Aristotle provides an important role in moral life the virtues, fixed habits of behavior that lead to good outcomes, and according to him the main virtues are courage, prudence, justice, and temperance. In the bible, it describes God as an intensely concerned about human acts. He orders obedience to moral rules, like the Ten Commandments and punishes whoever opposes to it. According to Psalms it emphasizes both God's separation from the world, as the creator, and his concern for humans, especially for those who in need and of low social status. Thomas Aquinas in the middle ages developed a synthesis of Biblical and Aristotelian ethics which is termed natural law theory, in which the nature of humans establishes what is right and wrong. Moreover, education is needed for humans, and is their right, because their intellectual nature needed a development. Natural law theory is still intact at the heart of Catholic moral teaching. On 18th century, Immanuel Kant, argued that right and wrong can be created on duty, Kant suggests the principle of universalizability: correct moral rules are those we could will everyone to adopt. During 19th century, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill campaigns utilitarianism, in which right actions are those that are likely to result for the greatest happiness of the greatest number and still popular on 21st century. On the early 20th century there are many debates on metaethics, which is, philosophical theory on the nature of ethics.

2.) History of Bioethics During early 1960s, bioethics is a distinct field of academic stud its history can be traced back to a cluster of scientific and cultural developments in the United States during that decade. During this period, there were debates about moral dilemmas in medical care and research. Today there are now interactive sites on the Internet provide immediate instruction and counsel for vexing ethical dilemmas. Bioethics as it evolved in the last decades of the 20th century is historically reliant, it reflects, responds to a series of specific modern critiques of biomedical practice and was essentially shaped by the social and political standards of the time in which it started. Bioethics in this form rarely considered the broader social and institutional contexts in which this ethical transaction occurred. The word bioethics was termed in 1970 by Van Rensselaer Potter a biological scientist. He has vision of a new conjunction of a scientific knowledge and moral appreciation for the converging evolutionary understanding of the humans in nature. In 1971, Kennedy Institute of ethics was founded at Georgetown University to start the development of a new field of research into the medical ethics that its founder Andre Hellegers chose to call it as bioethics. References: (1) Finnis, J. (1983). Fundamentals of Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press (2) E.g. P. Singer. (1993). Practical Ethics 2nd Ed. Cambridge University Press. (3) Jonsen AR.(1998) The Birth of Bioethics. New York: Oxford University Press (4) History of Bioethics Retrieved December 3, 2012 from

http://www.bucklin.org/bioethics-history.htm