The Fundamentals of Ethics

This theory posits that people’s well-being can be improved through satisfaction of their actual or informed desires. It is an unpopular theory among contemporary philosophers because of how easy it is for people’s desires to be based on prejudices or false beliefs.

Ethical egoism is a normative moral theory that values the fulfillment of self-interests as morally good. Actions that are morally wrong are those that do not bring personal benefits. Thomas Hobbes’s work Leviathan is the source of Shafer-Landau’s “Best Argument for Ethical Egoism.”

Ethical pluralism is the belief that there are multiple fundamental moral rules rather than just one. Several moral theories are, by nature, pluralistic. These include ethical relativism, subjectivism, particularism, virtue ethics, and feminist ethics.