Normative ethical theories

Utilitarianism: Bentham and the felicific calculus#

FoundationAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Normative ethical theoriesDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

The map of normative theories

Fig. 1Utilitarianism is consequentialist; Kantian ethics is deontological; virtue ethics is aretaic (character-based).

Utilitarianism is the consequentialist theory that the rightness of an action is determined solely by its consequences for well-being: an act is right if and only if it produces at least as much overall good (utility) as any available alternative. Jeremy Bentham gives its classic form in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. His theory has three components. It is consequentialist (only outcomes matter, not motives or the intrinsic nature of the act); it is hedonist (the only intrinsic good is pleasure and the only intrinsic bad is pain — 'nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure'); and it is aggregative and impartial (we sum the pleasures and pains of all affected, each counting for one and no one for more than one, and choose the act with the greatest net balance — 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number').

The principle of utility (or greatest happiness principle) is the single master rule from which all moral judgements flow: approve or disapprove of every action according to its tendency to increase or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question. Because Bentham is a hedonist, happiness just means pleasure and the absence of pain, and all pleasures are, in principle, commensurable — they differ only in quantity, not in kind. This gives utilitarianism its distinctive promise: morality is reduced to a single, empirical, quantitative question — which act maximises net pleasure? — that in principle anyone can answer by calculation, without appeal to religion, intuition or tradition.

To make the calculation tractable Bentham offers the felicific (or hedonic) calculus: a procedure for measuring the amount of pleasure or pain an act produces along seven dimensions — intensity (how strong), duration (how long), certainty (how likely), propinquity (how soon), fecundity (its tendency to produce further pleasures), puritiy (its tendency not to be followed by pains), and extent (how many people it affects). One tallies the pleasures and pains of every affected person along these dimensions, sums them, and the act with the highest net total is the right one. The calculus operationalises the theory's commitment to treating all pleasures as differing only in measurable quantity.

Bentham's utilitarianism has real strengths that explain its enduring influence. It is impartial and egalitarian — the pleasure of the pauper counts equally with the pleasure of the prince, which made Bentham a radical reformer (of prisons, of the law, of the franchise, of the treatment of animals). It is secular and empirical, grounding morality in observable welfare rather than in disputed metaphysics. It captures the powerful intuition that consequences for suffering and happiness are morally central — that an ethics indifferent to whether people flourish or suffer would be monstrous. And it offers a clear decision procedure. These strengths are the backdrop against which the objections of the fourth section (calculation, justice, integrity) must be weighed; a theory is not refuted merely by having costs if its rivals have greater ones.

Worked example

Applying the felicific calculus

A council must decide whether to build a park on the last empty lot or sell it for flats. Sketch a felicific-calculus analysis.

Identify the affected
Residents (recreation, well-being), potential flat-dwellers (housing), the council budget (services funded by the sale).
Score the pleasures/pains
Park: broad, durable, fecund pleasure (health, community) but forgone housing and revenue; flats: intense benefit to new residents and revenue, but lost green space.
Weigh the dimensions
Consider intensity, duration, extent especially: the park's extent and fecundity may outweigh the flats' intensity, or not, depending on housing need.
Sum and decide
Choose whichever yields the greater net balance of pleasure over pain across everyone affected, each counting equally.

Result: The right act is the one with the higher net utility on the calculus; the example shows both the method's clarity and its difficulty — the outcome depends on contested empirical estimates of intensity, extent and fecundity.

Typical mistakes

Confusing utilitarianism with egoism or with 'the ends justify the means' as a slogan; it is impartial (everyone's happiness counts equally) and principled (maximise overall utility), not self-interested.
Treating 'the greatest number' as overriding 'the greatest happiness'; the principle maximises total (or average) utility, and 'greatest number' is shorthand, not a separate rule.

Active revision

Outline Bentham's utilitarianism and explain the felicific calculus. (12-mark AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Mill, higher pleasures, and rule utilitarianism#

StandardAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Normative ethical theoriesDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Act versus rule utilitarianism

Fig. 2Both maximise utility, but act utilitarianism assesses individual acts, rule utilitarianism assesses rules.

John Stuart Mill, in Utilitarianism (1863), refines Bentham to answer the charge that hedonism is 'a doctrine worthy only of swine' — that reducing the good to pleasure degrades human life to the pursuit of base gratification. Mill's reply distinguishes higher and lower pleasures qualitatively, not merely quantitatively. Lower pleasures are the bodily pleasures we share with animals (food, drink, sex, rest); higher pleasures are those of the intellect, imagination, and moral sentiments (poetry, understanding, friendship). Mill holds that higher pleasures are intrinsically MORE valuable, and not just because they are more intense or lasting — a small amount of a higher pleasure can outweigh a large amount of a lower one.

Mill's test for which pleasures are higher is the verdict of the 'competent judges': those who have experienced both kinds and are capable of appreciating both. If almost all who have known both decidedly prefer one, that one is the higher pleasure, whatever the quantity. This grounds his famous claim that 'it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied'. The competent judges prefer the discontents of the higher life to the contentment of the lower, so the higher pleasures are more valuable. This preserves hedonism (the good is still pleasure) while denying that pleasures differ only in quantity — a significant departure from Bentham.

Mill also offers his controversial 'proof' of the principle of utility. The only evidence that something is visible is that people see it; likewise, the only evidence that something is desirable is that people desire it; each person desires their own happiness, so each person's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness is a good to the aggregate of persons. Critics (notably G. E. Moore) charge that this commits the naturalistic fallacy and equivocates on 'desirable' (from 'is desired' to 'ought to be desired'), and that it illicitly moves from each desiring their own happiness to all desiring the general happiness. Mill's proof is generally judged a failure, but it is examinable as an illustration of the difficulty of grounding the utility principle.

A further development, prompted by the objection that act utilitarianism licenses injustice, is the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism assesses each individual act by whether IT maximises utility. Rule utilitarianism assesses acts by whether they conform to RULES whose general adoption would maximise utility ('keep promises', 'do not punish the innocent'), even when breaking the rule would maximise utility in a particular case. Rule utilitarianism promises to secure justice and rights — the rule against punishing the innocent maximises utility if generally followed, so following it is right even in the 'sheriff' case. But it faces a dilemma (pressed by J. J. C. Smart): either the rules admit exceptions whenever breaking them maximises utility, in which case rule utilitarianism collapses into act utilitarianism; or the rules are absolute, in which case it becomes 'rule worship', irrationally following a rule even when doing so demonstrably produces worse consequences, betraying utilitarianism's own commitment to welfare. Whether rule utilitarianism can steer between these horns is a key evaluative issue.

Worked example

The sheriff case, act vs rule

A sheriff can prevent a riot (and several deaths) only by framing and hanging one innocent man. How do act and rule utilitarianism treat the case?

Act utilitarianism
If framing the innocent maximises net utility (one death prevents several), act utilitarianism appears to require it — the notorious injustice objection.
Rule utilitarianism
A rule 'never punish the innocent', generally followed, maximises utility (it secures trust in justice), so rule utilitarianism forbids the framing.
Smart's dilemma
But if the rule admits an exception whenever breaking it maximises utility, it collapses into act utilitarianism; if it is absolute, refusing to save lives looks like rule worship.
Weigh
Rule utilitarianism secures the just verdict only by risking one of the two horns; the act utilitarian may instead argue the real long-term utility of framing is negative (loss of trust).

Result: The case is the sharpest test of utilitarianism: rule utilitarianism gives the intuitive verdict but faces the collapse/rule-worship dilemma, while act utilitarianism must argue that injustice never really maximises utility once all consequences are counted.

Typical mistakes

Presenting Mill as abandoning hedonism; he keeps pleasure as the good but adds a quality dimension assessed by competent judges.
Treating rule utilitarianism as obviously superior; the collapse/rule-worship dilemma shows it is not straightforwardly better than act utilitarianism.

Active revision

'Rule utilitarianism is preferable to act utilitarianism.' Assess this claim. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Kantian deontology: the categorical imperative#

StandardAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Normative ethical theoriesDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

The universal law test

Fig. 3A maxim is tested by universalising it; a contradiction in conception or in the will shows it is impermissible.

Kant's deontological ethics, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, locates moral worth not in consequences but in acting from duty, out of respect for the moral law. His starting point is that the only thing good without qualification is a good will — a will that acts because it is right, not from inclination or for reward. An action has moral worth only if done FROM duty (not merely in accordance with it): the shopkeeper who is honest only because honesty is good for business acts in accordance with duty but not from it, so his honest dealing has no moral worth, whereas the person who tells the truth simply because it is right acts from duty and has moral worth.

Duty, for Kant, is a matter of following the moral law, which reason gives to itself as a categorical imperative. A hypothetical imperative commands conditionally, as a means to an end you happen to want ('if you want to be healthy, exercise'); a categorical imperative commands unconditionally, binding all rational agents regardless of their desires ('do not lie'). Morality consists of categorical imperatives because moral requirements apply to us whatever we want. Kant argues there is really only one categorical imperative, expressed in several formulations that he takes to be equivalent, from which all our particular duties can be derived by reason alone.

The first formulation is the Formula of Universal Law: 'act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law'. A maxim (the principle on which you act) is morally permissible only if you can consistently will it to be a universal law that everyone follows. The test has two kinds of failure. A contradiction in conception arises when the universalised maxim is self-undermining — universalise 'make a false promise to get money' and the practice of promising would collapse (no one would believe promises), so the maxim cannot even be conceived as universal; such maxims violate perfect duties (never to be broken). A contradiction in the will arises when the universalised maxim CAN be conceived but cannot be rationally willed — universalise 'never help others in need' and, though a world of no mutual aid is conceivable, a rational agent cannot will it, since they may themselves need help; such maxims violate imperfect duties (which allow latitude in how they are met).

The second formulation is the Formula of Humanity: 'act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means'. This forbids using people as mere instruments — deceiving, coercing or exploiting them in ways to which they could not rationally consent — and requires respecting their rational agency. Note the word 'merely': it is permissible to treat someone as a means (I use the shopkeeper as a means to buy bread) provided I also treat them as an end (I do not deceive or coerce them; I deal with them as a free rational agent who consents). The Formula of Humanity captures the deep Kantian idea that persons, as rational agents, have dignity — an unconditional, incomparable worth that forbids trading them off against aggregate welfare, which is precisely where Kant most sharply opposes utilitarianism.

Worked example

Applying the universal law formula to lying promises

Test the maxim 'I will make a lying promise to get money I do not intend to repay' by the Formula of Universal Law.

State the maxim
'Whenever I need money, I will borrow it on a promise I know I will not keep.'
Universalise
Imagine everyone in need of money makes lying promises whenever it suits them.
Test for contradiction
If everyone made lying promises, no one would believe promises, so the institution of promising would collapse — and then a 'lying promise' would be impossible: a contradiction in conception.
Draw the verdict
The maxim cannot even be conceived as universal law, so it violates a perfect duty; lying promises are strictly forbidden.

Result: The maxim fails at the level of conception, so keeping promises is a perfect duty; the case shows how Kant derives an exceptionless duty from a purely formal test of universalisability, independent of consequences.

Typical mistakes

Saying Kant ignores consequences entirely; he holds consequences do not determine moral worth, but the universal-law test does consider what would happen if a maxim were universalised.
Reading the Formula of Humanity as forbidding using people as means at all; it forbids using them MERELY as means, without also respecting their rational agency.

Active revision

Explain Kant's first formulation of the categorical imperative and how it distinguishes perfect from imperfect duties. (12-mark AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Objections to utilitarianism and to Kant#

AdvancedAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Normative ethical theoriesDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

Each theory's defining objection

Fig. 4Aggregation exposes utilitarianism to the injustice objection; rule-absolutism exposes Kant to conflicting duties.

Utilitarianism faces four standard objections. First, the calculation problem: we cannot reliably measure and compare everyone's future pleasures and pains, so the theory is unworkable as a decision procedure (the calculus assumes a precision welfare does not have). Utilitarians reply that we use rules of thumb from experience and need only rough comparisons, and that other theories are no more precise. Second, the problem of justice and rights: by aggregating welfare, utilitarianism can license grave injustice to individuals when it maximises the total — punishing the innocent, enslaving a minority, the 'utility monster' whose vast pleasures swamp everyone's — because it recognises no side-constraints protecting persons. This is widely regarded as the most serious objection, and it is what rule utilitarianism tries, imperfectly, to answer.

Third, the demandingness and partiality objections: utilitarianism seems to demand that I always maximise total welfare, leaving no room for personal projects, and to forbid the special concern we rightly have for our own family and friends, since a stranger's greater need outweighs my child's lesser one. Bernard Williams presses the integrity objection: because utilitarianism makes me equally responsible for what I fail to prevent as for what I do, it can require me to abandon the deepest commitments that constitute my identity (his 'George and the chemical weapons' and 'Jim and the Indians' cases), alienating me from my own agency. Fourth, and more foundational, is the objection to hedonism itself: Robert Nozick's experience machine — a machine that could give you any pleasurable experiences you liked while you floated in a tank — suggests we value more than pleasure (real achievement, real relationships, contact with reality), since most would refuse to plug in; if so, the good is not simply pleasure, and even preference or welfare versions must reckon with this.

Kantian ethics faces its own battery of objections. First, the problem of conflicting duties: since perfect duties are exceptionless, cases where two collide (the classic 'inquiring murderer' who asks where your friend is hiding — must you not lie, yet must you not betray your friend to death?) seem to leave the theory either silent or committed to the monstrous conclusion that you must tell the murderer the truth. Kant notoriously bit this bullet in his essay on a supposed right to lie, which most find a reductio of the absolutism. Defenders reply that Kant can rank or refine duties, or that a properly formulated maxim ('lie to a would-be murderer to save an innocent') might universalise, though this risks re-importing consequences.

Second, Kant is charged with ignoring consequences and thereby giving counterintuitive verdicts — telling the truth to the murderer, refusing a small lie that would prevent a catastrophe — because moral worth attaches to the maxim, not the outcome. Third, Philippa Foot argues that moral requirements are really hypothetical, not categorical: they bind us only given that we care about the ends morality serves, so Kant's claim that they command unconditionally, on pain of irrationality, is mistaken. Fourth, the universalisability test is charged with being either empty or over-permissive: by describing a maxim narrowly enough ('lie when my name is X and it is Tuesday'), almost anything can be universalised without contradiction, so the test does not by itself pick out the intuitively wrong actions. A balanced evaluation notes that each theory's central objection targets its defining feature — aggregation for utilitarianism (hence injustice), and rule-absolutism for Kant (hence conflicts and counterintuitive verdicts) — and that virtue ethics presents itself precisely as the theory that avoids both by locating morality in character rather than in a single principle.

Worked example

The experience machine against hedonism

Explain how Nozick's experience machine challenges hedonistic utilitarianism, and assess the challenge.

The thought-experiment
A machine can give you any pleasurable experiences you wish while you float in a tank; hedonism implies plugging in is as good as the real life it simulates.
The intuition
Most people would refuse to plug in — they want to DO things and BE a certain way, and to be in contact with reality, not merely to have the experiences.
The inference
If we value more than pleasurable experience, then pleasure is not the only intrinsic good, and hedonism is false.
A hedonist reply
Refusal may reflect status-quo bias or distrust of the machine; and preference utilitarianism can accommodate the preference for reality — but then it is no longer pure hedonism.

Result: The experience machine gives a strong prima facie refutation of hedonism about the good; it pushes utilitarians towards preference or objective-list theories of welfare, showing the injustice objection is not the only pressure point.

Typical mistakes

Listing objections without replies; AO2 marks come from the dialectic — objection, reply, assessment — not a catalogue of criticisms.
Misusing the inquiring murderer as a knock-down; note Kant's own (much-criticised) response and the defender's attempts to refine the maxim, then judge.

Active revision

'The injustice objection is fatal to utilitarianism.' Is this claim true? Defend your answer. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Aristotelian virtue ethics: eudaimonia and the mean#

StandardAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Normative ethical theoriesDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

The doctrine of the mean: courage

Fig. 5A moral virtue lies between a vice of deficiency and a vice of excess; courage sits between cowardice and rashness.

Aristotle's virtue ethics, in the Nicomachean Ethics, asks not 'what act is right?' but 'what is the good life, and what kind of person should I be?'. Its central concept is eudaimonia — usually translated 'happiness' but better rendered 'flourishing' or 'living and doing well'. Eudaimonia is the final end (telos) of human life: the one thing we seek for its own sake and for the sake of which we seek everything else. It is not a feeling or a state of mind but an ACTIVITY — living well over a complete life — and Aristotle argues it is not identical with pleasure, honour or wealth, all of which are sought for the sake of something further or are too unstable to be the highest good.

Aristotle identifies eudaimonia by the function argument. Everything with a characteristic function (ergon) has its good in performing that function well: the good of a knife is to cut well, of a flautist to play well. The distinctive function of a human being is the activity of the rational part of the soul — reasoning, and acting in accordance with reason. So the human good is the excellent exercise of reason: to live in accordance with virtue (arete, excellence), and if there are several virtues, in accordance with the best and most complete, over a complete life. Eudaimonia is therefore 'activity of the soul in accordance with virtue'.

Virtues are stable dispositions (hexeis) of character to feel, desire and act well, acquired not by nature but by habituation — we become just by doing just acts, brave by doing brave acts, as we become builders by building. Aristotle's doctrine of the mean holds that each moral virtue lies between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency: courage is the mean between rashness (excess of confidence) and cowardice (deficiency); generosity between prodigality and meanness; proper pride between vanity and pusillanimity. The mean is not an arithmetic midpoint but the appropriate response 'at the right times, about the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way' — 'relative to us' and to the situation, which is why the virtuous person needs judgement, not a formula.

That judgement is practical wisdom (phronesis): the intellectual virtue of perceiving what the situation requires and how to achieve it, without which the moral virtues cannot be exercised well. Virtue also requires the right MOTIVATION and voluntary action: a genuinely virtuous act is chosen for its own sake, done knowingly, and issues from a settled state of character — merely doing the right thing by luck or under compulsion does not display virtue, and Aristotle's careful analysis of voluntary, involuntary and non-voluntary action (and of the conditions of ignorance and compulsion that excuse) underwrites moral responsibility. Finally, virtue is cultivated through moral education and habituation from childhood, and the fully virtuous person takes pleasure in acting well — for Aristotle, unlike the Kantian, feeling the right emotions is part of virtue, not a distraction from duty. The strengths of the theory are that it fits moral development and the role of upbringing, honours the emotions and moral perception, and gives a rich account of the good life; its difficulties (guidance, circularity, cultural variation, clashing virtues) are addressed in the comparison that follows.

Worked example

Locating a virtue as a mean

Using the doctrine of the mean, analyse generosity with money and explain why phronesis is needed.

Identify the sphere
Generosity concerns the giving and receiving of money and goods.
Find the extremes
Deficiency = meanness (giving too little); excess = prodigality (giving too much, to the wrong people, at the wrong time).
Specify the mean
Generosity gives the right amount, to the right people, at the right time, for the right reason — no formula fixes this in advance.
The role of phronesis
Practical wisdom perceives what this situation requires (this person's need, one's own means), so the mean is judged, not calculated.

Result: Generosity is the mean between meanness and prodigality, but locating it requires phronesis to read the particulars — which shows both the theory's realism about moral judgement and the guidance objection it must answer.

Typical mistakes

Treating the mean as a fixed arithmetic average; it is 'relative to us' and to the situation, and some acts (murder, spite) have no virtuous mean at all.
Reducing virtue to merely doing the right acts; Aristotle requires the right motive, knowledge, and a settled disposition — acting well from character, for its own sake.

Active revision

'Virtue ethics gives no useful guidance on how to act.' Assess this claim. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Comparing the three theories#

AdvancedAQA 7172 3.2 Moral philosophy — Normative ethical theoriesDfE GCE Philosophy subject content

What each theory evaluates

Fig. 6The three theories differ over the primary bearer of moral evaluation: consequences, the maxim, or character.

The three theories differ most fundamentally in what they take to be the primary bearer of moral evaluation: consequences (utilitarianism), the will or maxim of the act (Kant), or the character of the agent (Aristotle). This yields different questions — 'what will do the most good?', 'could I will my maxim as a universal law?', 'what would a virtuous person do?' — and different strengths. Utilitarianism honours welfare and impartiality and gives a decision procedure; Kant honours the dignity and rights of persons and the authority of duty; virtue ethics honours moral character, development, emotion and practical wisdom. A comparative essay should organise the evaluation around a criterion — action-guidance, justice, moral psychology, or fit with considered intuitions — rather than merely narrating each theory.

On action-guidance the theories trade blows. Utilitarianism gives the clearest procedure but is dogged by the calculation problem; Kant gives a formal test but faces the empty/over-permissive charge and conflicting duties; virtue ethics gives no algorithm at all, directing us to emulate the phronimos, which critics call unhelpfully circular ('a right act is what a virtuous person would do; a virtuous person is one who does right acts'). Virtue ethicists reply that the demand for an algorithm is itself mistaken — moral life requires perception and judgement, not a formula, and 'do what the honest person would do' is in fact usable guidance, as we teach children by example. Which side is right depends on whether one thinks ethics can or should be codified.

On justice and the moral status of persons, Kant and virtue ethics have an advantage over classical utilitarianism, which its aggregative structure makes vulnerable to sacrificing individuals for the greater good. Kant's Formula of Humanity and the notion of dignity build in exactly the side-constraints utilitarianism lacks. But utilitarianism replies that its impartiality is itself a form of justice (everyone counts equally), that rule utilitarianism can secure rights, and that Kant's absolutism produces its own injustices (truth to the murderer). On moral psychology, virtue ethics is often thought the most realistic: it takes seriously moral development, habituation, emotion and the unity of a life, where Kant can seem to denigrate the emotions (moral worth requires acting from duty, not inclination) and utilitarianism can seem to alienate agents from their own projects (Williams' integrity objection).

A defensible overall judgement is likely to be pluralistic or hybrid rather than a clean victory for one theory. One influential position is that the theories are best seen as capturing different, genuine aspects of morality — consequences, duties/rights, and character all matter — so that a mature ethical outlook draws on all three (as W. D. Ross's prima facie duties, or a virtue ethics enriched with rules, attempt to do). Another is that one theory is fundamental and the others derivative (a rule utilitarian might argue that the best rules and the best character traits are those that maximise welfare; a Kantian might argue that respect for persons underlies both good consequences and the virtues). The essay's task is to reach and defend a placement: which theory, or which combination, best accounts for the full range of our considered moral judgements, and why the residual costs of that choice are worth paying.

The topic underpins the rest of the moral philosophy unit and beyond. 'Applied ethics' is precisely the application of these three theories (plus meta-ethical considerations) to stealing, simulated killing, eating animals and lying, so mastery of the theories here is presupposed there. 'Meta-ethics' then steps back to ask whether any of the moral judgements the theories issue are true or false at all — whether 'maximise utility' or 'respect persons' states a fact or expresses an attitude — connecting normative ethics to the debate between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. And the utilitarian appeal to welfare and the Kantian appeal to reason echo the empiricism and rationalism of the epistemology unit, showing how a philosopher's theory of knowledge often shapes their theory of value.

Worked example

Model 25-mark plan: which theory best guides action?

Plan an essay defending a judgement on which normative theory best accounts for how we ought to act.

Thesis
No single theory is wholly adequate, but a virtue ethics enriched with duty-like constraints best captures moral judgement, action-guidance and character.
AO1
Set out utilitarianism, Kant and virtue ethics with their principles and key concepts.
Criterion
Choose the criterion — fit with considered judgements plus workable guidance — and apply it to each theory.
Weigh
Utilitarianism: guidance but injustice; Kant: rights but conflicts/counterintuition; virtue ethics: psychology but the circularity/guidance worry (answerable).
Judgement
Defend a hybrid: virtue ethics as primary, with rules/rights to secure justice and codify the phronimos's verdicts — and acknowledge the strongest rival (rule utilitarianism).

Result: A defensible judgement reaches a defended placement (here, a rule-enriched virtue ethics) against a stated criterion, showing why its residual costs are lower than those of pure utilitarianism or pure Kantianism.

Typical mistakes

Describing all three theories with no comparative verdict; the highest AO2 marks require weighing them against a criterion and defending a conclusion.
Assuming the theories are wholly incompatible; note that hybrid and reductive positions (e.g. rule utilitarianism grounding rights) are available and examinable.

Active revision

Critically compare utilitarianism, Kantian ethics and virtue ethics as accounts of how we ought to live. (25-mark essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: GCE AS and A level subject content for philosophy (Department for Education)

Key points

Applying the felicific calculus

Key points

The sheriff case, act vs rule

Key points

Applying the universal law formula to lying promises

Key points

The experience machine against hedonism

Key points

Locating a virtue as a mean

Key points

Model 25-mark plan: which theory best guides action?

Sources

Normative ethical theories

Key points

Applying the felicific calculus

Key points

The sheriff case, act vs rule

Key points

Applying the universal law formula to lying promises

Key points

The experience machine against hedonism

Key points

Locating a virtue as a mean

Key points

Model 25-mark plan: which theory best guides action?

Sources