During the formulation of your speech, assessing the ethics you are employing as a speaker in both content and delivery is essential. However, the idea of what is ethical varies significantly from person to person and can be hard to assess without an established benchmark to compare the speech to. This section will consider the three (3) most common ethical theories and their roles in assessing ethical oral rhetoric. The three ethical theories discussed in this chapter are:

• Utilitarianism
• Deontology
• Virtue Ethics

This chapter will also review how to use these ethical theories to assess your speech and the speeches of others.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the view that right actions result in the most beneficial balance of good over harmful consequences for everyone involved. The theory states that we should maximize the nonmoral good (i.e., the utility) of everyone in a given situation, regardless of moral rules. The correct action to take becomes the action which results in the most pleasure and happiness for the most people.

Classic utilitarianism was initially formulated by Philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and further detailed by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)^[1]. Traditionally, utilitarianism is hedonistic, meaning it defines utility strictly as pleasure and happiness, and the goal of a utilitarian is to maximize the net happiness (happiness minus unhappiness) caused by any action.

Quantifying Morality

When we look at implementing utilitarianism as a way to assess the good which can be done by suggesting an action, it is crucial also to understand happiness, and not all classic utilitarian philosophers had the same idea of what happiness meant. Bentham believed that happiness was one-dimensional: it is simply pleasure, and we measure happiness by how much pleasure an action creates.

However, Mill believed happiness could vary not just in quantity like Bentham but also in quality, that some pleasures were greater or nobler than others. Mill famously summed up this contrast of pleasures by saying: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”^[2].

When we look at the context of our speeches from a utilitarian lens, it is crucial to quantify and qualify the happiness our proposed action encourages and how this may affect everyone involved.

Deontology

Deontological ethics differ from utilitarian or consequentialism by holding that rightness or wrongness is a function of the intrinsic quality of the act itself instead of the consequences of that act. Deontology, or deontological ethics, is a duty-orientated approach to ethics. There are two classic views of deontology; Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) categorical imperative and William Ross’s (1877-1971) intuitionism^[3].

Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Kant’s categorical imperative states that we can test whether an action is moral by asking whether or not we could will that action to be a universal law. If an action cannot be willed to be a universal law for people, it is not morally good, regardless of the circumstances, because it is fundamentally misaligned with the duty people have for the universal^[4].

For example, Kant would argue that lying is always morally wrong because we would never will it to be a universal law. When we use Kant’s moral imperative to assess the morality of an argument, it is essential to ask ourselves what duty is at the center of our activities and if that action is universally good.

Ross’s Intuitionism

Alternatively, William Ross believed that actions and duty were not universal to all circumstances and that we can recognize obvious moral principles by consulting our conscience. Intuitional deontology argues that moral rules are not absolute and that morality has conditional bindingness^[5].

Although lying is not moral, Ross would argue there are times when lying is morally permissible if it allows us to uphold other duties or virtues. For example, Ross would argue that lying to save someone’s life is the morally right thing to do, given circumstances which may result in this outcome.

Virtue Ethics

Whereas many ethical theories are action-orientated (utilitarian) or duty-orientated (deontological), virtue ethics suggests that the goodness of an action is directly correlated to the heart or personality of the agent or their character^[6]. Virtue ethics emphasizes being – a certain kind of person which will, in turn, lead to moral actions. A moral assessment using virtue ethics closely resembles an assessment of a speaker’s ethos. For the virtue ethicist, the question is, “what sort of person should I become?”

Virtue ethics is most famously formulated by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)^[7]. Aristotle believed ethics were a practical approach which allowed people to live a good life. More specifically, Aristotle saw moral virtue as relating to traits which help us live well in communities. While Aristotle recognizes virtues as an individual choice, he also acknowledges the universality of specific virtues and connects what good virtues are to the communities we are a part of.

Application

Within oral communication, we are constantly assessing the morality of the arguments we hear and present. We often provide these assessments unconsciously and without an articulated moral framework. When we assume something is morally good, we use one of the above moral frameworks to provide this assessment, even if we are unaware of it. However, how might someone view an argument or action using a different moral framework?

It is crucial to recognize that not everyone defaults to the same moral assessment criteria. When we can understand the ethical theories we use to assess a proposed action or argument, we can better understand how someone else may come to a different conclusion about the same action or argument. As a speaker, we can then balance an approach to these moral assessments in how we formulate our actions and arguments. Applying ethical theories in oral rhetoric is not easy, and as speakers, we have a responsibility to our audience to assess the morality of the actions we encourage and the arguments and strategies we employ in our communication.

References

Mill, John S. 1863. Utilitarianism, 7th Ed. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

Pojman, L., & Vaughn, L. 2017. The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature, 6th Ed. New York: Oxford University Press.