A Study On Ross’s Normative Ethics Theory

Sir William David Ross(1877-1971)was a famous moralist in contemporary western society, being a leading scholar of Intuitionism in meta-ethics. His moral theory originated from the moral theory of Moore’s and Prichard’s, who both were the famous scholars in Intuitionism and Prichard’s, who both were the famous scholars in Intuitionism.However, differing from Moore’s moral theory of axiology intuitionism and Prichard’s moral theory of extreme deontology intuitionism, Ross’s moral theory was called "a soft deontology intuitionism ethics", mainly because he tried to solve the differences between Moore’s moral theory and Prichard’s. As Moore was a professor in Oxford University, so Ross’s moral theory was called "Ox-bridge" theory.Ross rejected the utilitarian notion that an action is made right by its consequences alone, but he was also troubled by Kant’s absolute rule. He saw not only that such rules fail to show sensitivity to the complexities of actual situations, but also that they sometimes conflict with one another. For Ross there is an unbridgeable distinction between moral and nonmoral properties. There are only two moral properties——brightness and goodness——nd these cannot be replaced by, or explained in terms of, other properties. Thus, to say that an action is’right’is not at all the same as saying that it’cause pleasure’or ’increase happiness’, as utilitarianism claims.Ross explains that there are six categories of prima facie duties. These duties are either promises we make to ourselves or others that we have a personal relationship with, or contracts, which can be formal or informal, that we make with others. He explains that if a person breaks or doesn’t fulfill one of these duties, then that person has performed a bad action and is morally wrong, despite the results that occur following that action(or maybe inaction). Ross only gives six categories of duties but he says that these are the common sense duties, so there very well could be more duties.Generally, Ross’s moral theory was classified into Deontology, which differed from traditional Deontology, one of which Kant was a famous moralist. The traditional Deontology emphasized finding out the final criterion of criterion of determining whether a moral action was right or not, that is, the criterion is unique. However, such attempt was in vain..In such circumstance, Ross put forward a new moral theory of Normative Ethics in order to solve problems, which couldn’t be solve by Kant’s moral theory of deontology and Utilitarianism. It was his famous moral theory of "prima facie duty".My thesis consists of following parts:The first chapter introduce Ross’s Biography, scholarship, influential and the research status of Domestic and foreign scholars.The second chapter begins with Ross’s criticism of the consequentiality, and then is Ross’s criticism of the ego, acts of utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. This part includes an overview of the various doctrines and the evaluation of Ross’s criticism.The third chapter introduces the obvious obligations. This part includes obvious obligations and derived obvious obligations, the meaning of the obvious obligations, obvious obligation critique of ontological and epistemological critique.The fourth chapter introduces the actual obligations. This part includes the difficulties of the actual obligation to implement, general good and its priority and so on.