Application of ethical theories to life and death issues

From theory to case: the applied method#

FoundationAQA 7062/1 Section B: Application of ethical theoriesDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

The applied method

Fig. 1Applying a theory means moving from its controlling principle, through the relevant features of the case, to a reasoned verdict.

Applied ethics is not a separate body of knowledge but the disciplined use of the normative theories on concrete problems, and examiners reward a clear method. The method has three steps: first, state the theory's controlling principle and decision-procedure precisely (natural law's precepts and double effect; situation ethics' agape and its calculation; virtue ethics' relevant virtues and phronesis); second, identify the morally relevant features of the case (who is affected, what goods and harms are at stake, what intention and what alternatives exist); third, apply the procedure to reach a reasoned verdict, showing the working rather than asserting a conclusion. A candidate who applies a theory mechanically, or who states a verdict without deriving it, forfeits the analytical marks that applied questions are designed to test.

The human life-and-death issues on the AQA specification include the beginning of life (embryo research, cloning, so-called designer babies, and — where relevant — abortion) and the end of life (euthanasia and assisted dying). Each turns on contested prior questions: the moral status of the embryo (is it a person from conception, or does personhood develop?), the sanctity versus the quality of life, and the significance of intention. The non-human issues include the use of animals as food, animal experimentation, cloning and other uses of animals, and the value of the environment and other species. These turn on the moral status of non-human animals (do they have rights, interests, or only instrumental value?) and on humanity's relationship to the natural world (dominion, stewardship, or biocentric equality).

Two conceptual pairs recur across all the issues and should be defined in advance. The sanctity of life is the (typically religious) view that human life is intrinsically and equally valuable, a gift of God, and inviolable — so that innocent life may never be intentionally taken, whatever its quality. The quality of life is the (typically secular or utilitarian) view that life's value depends on its character — its capacity for consciousness, relationship, and freedom from suffering — so that a life of unrelievable agony or permanent unconsciousness may not be worth preserving. Where sanctity dominates, euthanasia and embryo destruction are forbidden; where quality dominates, they may be permitted. Similarly, the concept of personhood — the set of capacities (rationality, self-awareness, the capacity for relationship) that confer full moral status — determines how embryos and animals are treated.

A final methodological point is that the theories can agree or diverge, and a good answer notes which. On some cases the theories converge (all three condemn gratuitous cruelty to animals); on others they sharply diverge (natural law forbids voluntary euthanasia absolutely, situation ethics may permit it as the loving course, virtue ethics asks what compassion and justice together require). Mapping where a case makes the theories agree and where it makes them part company is itself an analytical achievement and sets up the comparative evaluation the topic demands. The recurring evaluative question is which theory's method yields the most defensible verdicts across the range of cases.

Worked example

Mapping agreement and divergence

For voluntary euthanasia of a terminally ill, suffering patient who requests it, show where the three theories agree and diverge.

Natural law
Absolutely forbids intentional killing of the innocent (preserve life); permits only withholding disproportionate treatment or double-effect pain relief. Verdict: euthanasia wrong.
Situation ethics
Asks what agape requires here; ending unbearable suffering at the patient's request may be the most loving act. Verdict: potentially permissible.
Virtue ethics
Asks what compassion, justice and courage require; virtues can pull both ways (compassion for suffering vs respect for life), so no automatic verdict — phronesis decides.
Map the result
Natural law and situation ethics diverge sharply; virtue ethics is indeterminate but attends to the agent's character and the particular case.

Result: The case makes natural law (forbid) and situation ethics (possibly permit) diverge sharply while virtue ethics leaves the verdict to practical wisdom — an analysis that sets up a comparative evaluation of the theories' guidance.

Typical mistakes

Describing a theory in the abstract without actually applying it to the case in the question.
Assuming a religious 'sanctity of life' answer is the only one; the specification requires all three theories, which often diverge.

Active revision

Explain how a normative ethical theory is applied to a life and death issue, using one example. (Structured AO1 response)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

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

Natural moral law applied (human life and death)#

StandardAQA 7062/1 Section B: Application of ethical theoriesDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Natural law on end-of-life acts

Fig. 2Intending death is forbidden; allowing to die and double-effect pain relief are permitted — the line is drawn at intention.

Natural moral law approaches life-and-death issues through the primary precept of preserving life, understood as the sanctity of innocent human life, together with the doctrine of double effect and the real/apparent goods distinction. On euthanasia, the theory is clear and absolutist: the intentional killing of an innocent person is always wrong, because it directly violates the precept to preserve life, whatever the quality of that life or the compassion behind it. Voluntary active euthanasia (deliberately ending life at the patient's request) and assisted suicide are therefore forbidden. Crucially, natural law distinguishes this from two permissible things: withholding or withdrawing burdensome, disproportionate treatment that merely prolongs dying (allowing to die is not killing), and administering pain relief that foreseeably but unintentionally shortens life (double effect). The line is drawn at intention: the theory forbids intending death, not accepting death as a side-effect or refusing futile treatment.

On embryo research and the beginning of life, natural law's verdict follows from the moral status it accords the embryo. Because human life is a continuous process from conception and the embryo has the telos of a full human being, the Roman Catholic natural-law tradition holds that the embryo has the moral status of a person from fertilisation, so that destroying embryos for research, discarding 'spare' IVF embryos, or abortion, all count as the killing of innocent human life and are forbidden. Reproductive technologies that separate procreation from the marital act (IVF, cloning, 'designer babies' selected for traits) are additionally criticised as contrary to the precept of reproduction rightly ordered. The theory thus gives consistent, protective verdicts, grounded in the equal dignity of every human life from its beginning.

The strength of the natural-law approach in these cases is its clarity, consistency and its firm protection of the vulnerable: it does not permit the weak, the disabled, the dying or the unborn to be sacrificed to others' convenience or to a calculation of their 'quality of life', and its double-effect device shows sophistication in distinguishing intending from foreseeing. Many find in it a principled bulwark against a 'slippery slope' from voluntary to non-voluntary euthanasia, and against the instrumental use of human beings. Its absolutism is, for its defenders, exactly its virtue: rights that admit exceptions for hard cases are, they argue, no protection at all.

The weaknesses are equally clear. The absolutism can produce verdicts that strike many as cruel — requiring a competent, suffering, terminally ill patient who sincerely wishes to die to continue, or forbidding research on early embryos that could relieve immense suffering. The claim that a single-celled zygote has the full moral status of a person is contested (many hold personhood develops with the capacity for consciousness), and the reliance on a God-given telos and on 'nature' as normative is philosophically disputed (the naturalistic fallacy: does what is 'natural' determine what is good?). Double effect is also criticised as drawing an artificial line, since the doctor who gives a lethal dose of morphine and the one who performs euthanasia may produce the same death, differing only in a hard-to-verify intention. Whether natural law's protective clarity outweighs its rigidity is the central evaluative question for the human issues.

Worked example

Killing versus letting die

Assess the natural-law distinction between euthanasia and withdrawing life support.

State the distinction
Euthanasia intends death as the means to end suffering; withdrawing disproportionate treatment accepts death as a side-effect of ceasing a futile burden.
The natural-law verdict
The first violates the precept to preserve innocent life; the second does not intend death and so is permitted.
The critic's challenge
Consequentialists argue the outcome (death) and even the timing may be identical, so the distinction is a morally irrelevant fiction resting on hard-to-read intentions.
The defender's reply
Intention is morally central everywhere in law and ethics (murder vs manslaughter); the acts differ in aim, not just in feeling, and the distinction guards against a slide to killing the vulnerable.
Judgement
The distinction is defensible if intention is morally significant, but strained where withdrawing treatment is chosen precisely in order to bring about death.

Result: The killing/letting-die distinction is coherent because intention is morally significant, but it is vulnerable where the withdrawal of treatment is itself intended to cause death, which is the sharpest pressure point on natural law's verdict.

Typical mistakes

Claiming natural law forbids all withdrawal of treatment; it permits withholding disproportionate/futile treatment — that is allowing to die, not killing.
Forgetting double effect, which is what lets natural law permit life-shortening pain relief while forbidding euthanasia.

Active revision

'Natural moral law gives the most convincing account of the ethics of euthanasia.' Assess this view. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

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

Situation ethics applied#

StandardAQA 7062/1 Section B: Application of ethical theoriesDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Sanctity versus quality of life

Fig. 3Natural law's sanctity principle and the quality-of-life view (which situation ethics can adopt) yield opposed verdicts on euthanasia.

Situation ethics approaches life-and-death issues with its single question: what does agape — selfless love for the persons involved — require here? Because no act is intrinsically wrong and persons come before rules (personalism), situation ethics can reach very different verdicts from natural law. On euthanasia, Fletcher himself argued that ending the life of a suffering, terminally ill patient at their request could be the most loving action — indeed he regarded a compassionate, dignified death as more loving than the prolongation of pointless agony, and famously suggested that keeping a suffering person alive against their will could be the less loving, even cruel, course. The verdict is not automatic (it depends on the situation), but the theory is open to permitting euthanasia where love clearly favours it, in sharp contrast to natural law's absolute prohibition.

On the beginning of life, situation ethics again asks what love requires rather than consulting the embryo's fixed moral status. It can therefore permit embryo research that promises to relieve great suffering, permit abortion where continuing the pregnancy would be gravely harmful to the woman or the prospective child (Fletcher discussed the case of a woman made pregnant by rape, arguing that compassion might favour abortion), and accept reproductive technologies that help loving couples to have children. Personalism puts the welfare of actual persons — the suffering patient, the woman, the future child, those who might be cured — above adherence to rules about the sanctity of biological life. The theory's calculations are always case-specific, so it resists blanket verdicts.

The strengths of situation ethics in application are its compassion, flexibility and person-centredness: it takes seriously the concrete suffering that absolutist rules can override, it can respond to the genuine complexity of hard cases (where several rules conflict), and it reflects the priority Jesus gave to love over law. In medical ethics especially, where circumstances vary enormously and rigid rules can seem inhumane, its readiness to ask 'what is most loving for this patient?' captures something many find morally compelling, and it aligns with the patient-autonomy and welfare considerations that dominate modern bioethics.

The weaknesses are those of the theory generally, sharpened by the gravity of life-and-death stakes. The calculation of the 'most loving' outcome is uncertain and open to self-serving or biased judgement — precisely where certainty matters most, situation ethics offers least. Its rejection of absolute protections for innocent life alarms those who fear a slide towards devaluing the vulnerable: if no life is inviolable and everything turns on a case-by-case calculation of love, the disabled, the demented and the unborn may be judged 'better off dead' by others deciding what love requires for them. Critics also note that 'love justifies the means' can license grave acts, and that the theory's flexibility, a virtue in easy cases, becomes a liability where firm protection is most needed. Whether love is a sufficient guide, or whether it needs the discipline of rules, is the central evaluative issue.

Worked example

Applying agape to embryo research

How would situation ethics assess research on early human embryos to develop treatments for disease?

State the principle
The right act is the most loving; no act (including using an embryo) is intrinsically forbidden; persons come before rules.
Identify the persons
Weigh the interests of those who could be cured, of the couple who donated embryos, and the status of the early embryo (not yet a person with interests, on this view).
Apply pragmatism
The research must genuinely promise to relieve suffering to be justified — love must actually 'work'.
Reach the verdict
If the research is likely to relieve great suffering and the early embryo lacks the features that ground personhood, agape favours permitting it.
Note the objection
Natural law objects that this treats human life instrumentally and rests on a contested denial of the embryo's personhood.

Result: Situation ethics can permit embryo research where it promises to relieve great suffering, because love and personalism outweigh the biological status of the early embryo — a verdict opposite to natural law's and dependent on a contested view of when personhood begins.

Typical mistakes

Treating situation ethics as automatically pro-euthanasia or pro-abortion; its verdicts are situational, not fixed — love might favour preserving life in another case.
Ignoring the protection-of-the-vulnerable objection, which is the sharpest criticism when the stakes are life and death.

Active revision

'Situation ethics is the most humane approach to end-of-life decisions.' Discuss. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

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

Virtue ethics applied#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section B: Application of ethical theoriesDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Virtues in life-and-death decisions

Fig. 4Virtue ethics frames the decision through virtues perceived and balanced by practical wisdom (phronesis).

Virtue ethics approaches life-and-death issues not by asking which act is right but by asking what the virtuous person — the person of practical wisdom (phronesis) — would do, and what choices express and cultivate good character. The relevant virtues in medical and life contexts include compassion, justice, courage, honesty, temperance and prudence. Rather than delivering a rule, virtue ethics directs the agent to perceive the particular situation well and to respond as a compassionate-yet-just person would, attending to all the morally relevant features. This makes it flexible and context-sensitive without collapsing into 'anything goes', because the virtues have determinate content and the vices (cruelty, cowardice, injustice, dishonesty) are ruled out.

On euthanasia, virtue ethics does not issue a single verdict but frames the decision in terms of character. A compassionate person is moved by the patient's suffering; a just person respects the patient's dignity and autonomy and weighs the effect on others and on society; a courageous person is willing neither to kill lightly nor to abandon the suffering to protect their own conscience. Because these virtues can pull in different directions, phronesis must judge the particular case — the patient's settled wishes, the availability of palliative care, the relationships involved. Some virtue ethicists conclude that compassion can justify assisted dying in extreme cases; others that the virtues of respect for life and care point against it; the theory's contribution is to focus attention on doing what a good person of practical wisdom would do, and on what our choices make us become.

On the beginning of life and on reproductive technology, virtue ethics similarly asks what choices express virtues such as responsible parenthood, justice to the future child, temperance (avoiding the consumerist selection of 'designer' traits), and compassion. It can support IVF for a loving couple as an expression of the virtues of a good parent, while cautioning against uses of technology that express vices — the treating of children as products, or the instrumental creation and destruction of embryos without due gravity. Its guidance is less about drawing bright lines than about the dispositions and motives that should govern these profound decisions, and about cultivating a medical and social culture of care rather than commodification.

The strengths of virtue ethics in application are that it captures the importance of the character and motivation of moral agents (a compassionate doctor, a responsible parent) that rule- and consequence-based theories neglect, that it is realistic about the role of practical wisdom in hard cases, and that it avoids both natural law's rigidity and situation ethics' single-value narrowness by drawing on a plurality of virtues. Its weaknesses are that it can seem indecisive precisely where a clear answer is wanted (it may not tell a legislator whether to legalise euthanasia), that virtues can conflict without a rule to adjudicate, and that agreement on which traits are virtues, and on what they require here, may be lacking. Whether its attention to character compensates for its weaker action-guidance is the evaluative crux for the applied cases.

Worked example

Virtue ethics on a 'designer baby'

How would a virtue ethicist assess selecting an embryo for non-medical traits (e.g. intelligence, appearance)?

Ask about character
What virtues or vices does the choice express in the parents and in the medical culture?
Responsible parenthood
A good parent seeks the child's flourishing, not a product to their own specification; selecting for status may express vanity, not love.
Temperance and justice
Temperance cautions against consumerist selection; justice worries about fairness and the message sent about disability and human worth.
Distinguish cases
Selecting to avoid a serious hereditary disease may express compassion and responsibility; selecting for cosmetic 'enhancement' tends to express vice.
Verdict via phronesis
Practical wisdom distinguishes therapeutic selection (defensible) from enhancement-for-status (expressing vice), without a single bright-line rule.

Result: Virtue ethics judges 'designer babies' by the character the choice expresses: therapeutic selection can express compassion and responsibility, while selection for status expresses vanity and injustice — a nuanced verdict that turns on motive rather than a fixed rule.

Typical mistakes

Turning virtue ethics into a rule ('the virtuous person always preserves life') — it works through phronesis on the particular case, not a fixed precept.
Failing to name specific virtues and show how they bear on the case, giving a vague 'be a good person' answer.

Active revision

'Virtue ethics gives too little guidance on life and death issues.' Assess this claim. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

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

Non-human life and death; which theory guides best?#

AdvancedAQA 7062/1 Section B: Application of ethical theoriesDfE GCE Religious Studies subject content

Applied life-and-death issues

Fig. 5The specification covers issues in both human and non-human life and death, each approached by all three theories.

The non-human issues — the use of animals for food, animal experimentation, cloning and other uses of animals, and the treatment of the environment — turn on the moral status of non-human life, and the three theories differ sharply. Natural law is anthropocentric: it holds that human beings, as rational creatures, are the pinnacle of creation and that animals and the natural world exist for human use (dominion), though wanton cruelty is condemned as damaging to human character and to God's ordered creation. It therefore permits eating animals and using them in research for serious human benefit, within limits of proportionality, but forbids gratuitous cruelty. Situation ethics asks what agape requires: since love is primarily for persons, animal interests count chiefly through their effects on human welfare, so it can permit animal experimentation that relieves human suffering while condemning cruelty that serves no loving purpose.

Virtue ethics assesses our treatment of animals and the environment through the virtues and vices it expresses: cruelty to animals is condemned not primarily because animals have rights but because cruelty is a vice that corrupts the agent and a compassionate person does not inflict needless suffering, while temperance and a sense of responsibility shape a moderate, non-exploitative relationship to nature. Beyond the three set theories, the debate is informed by Peter Singer's utilitarian argument that the capacity to suffer (sentience), not species membership, is what confers moral status, so that ignoring animal suffering is 'speciesism', a prejudice analogous to racism; and by rights-based views (Tom Regan) that animals are 'subjects of a life' with inherent value. These sharpen the evaluation by pressing whether the anthropocentrism of natural law and situation ethics can be justified.

Bringing the human and non-human issues together, the comparative evaluation can be structured around what each theory does best and worst. Natural law offers clear, consistent protection of human life and a principled objection to instrumentalising the vulnerable, but its absolutism can be cruel in hard human cases and its anthropocentrism is challenged on the treatment of animals. Situation ethics offers compassion and flexibility that fit the complexity of medical and environmental decisions, but its uncertainty and its withdrawal of firm protections are dangerous where the stakes are highest. Virtue ethics offers a rich attention to character and motive and avoids both rigidity and single-value narrowness, but gives less decisive guidance for law and policy. The recurring evaluative question is whether life-and-death ethics most needs firm protective rules, compassionate flexibility, or the cultivation of good character.

The most defensible judgement is likely to be that no single theory suffices and that they are best combined, or that one is chosen for stated reasons while acknowledging the others' insights. A strong case can be made that a virtue-ethical framework, informed by natural law's protection of basic goods and situation ethics' compassion, gives the most humane and realistic guidance across the range of cases: it forbids cruelty and gross instrumentalisation (with natural law), attends to the suffering of the particular patient or animal (with situation ethics), and grounds this in the character and practical wisdom of the agent. Alternatively one might argue that where lives are at stake the clarity and protective force of natural law is indispensable, or that patient autonomy and welfare (better captured by situation ethics and utilitarian considerations) should have priority. What matters at A-Level is a sustained argument to a justified conclusion, tested against concrete cases (a specific euthanasia scenario, a specific use of animals), rather than an abstract preference. This applied evaluation feeds directly into the later dialogue between religion and ethics, where the distinctiveness of a religious ethic is assessed.

Worked example

Model evaluation plan: which theory guides best?

Plan an essay judging which theory best guides life-and-death decisions.

Thesis
A virtue-ethical framework informed by natural law's protections and situation ethics' compassion gives the most humane guidance across cases.
Criterion
Judge by humaneness and defensibility across the full range of human and non-human cases.
Natural law
Best protects the vulnerable but can be cruel (absolutism) and anthropocentric (animals).
Situation ethics
Best on compassion/flexibility but dangerously uncertain where protection matters most.
Judgement
Argue for a virtue-led synthesis (forbidding cruelty and instrumentalisation, attending to the particular sufferer, grounded in character), tested on a concrete euthanasia and a concrete animal case.

Result: Tested against concrete cases, a virtue-ethical approach that incorporates natural law's protection of basic goods and situation ethics' compassion offers the most humane and realistic guidance, though at some cost in decisive rule-like clarity for law and policy.

Typical mistakes

Ignoring the non-human strand, which is an explicit part of the specification and often the focus of a question.
Concluding with 'each theory has merits' rather than a sustained, case-tested judgement.

Active revision

'Natural moral law offers the most convincing guidance on both human and non-human life and death.' Evaluate this claim. (Extended essay)

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

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

Key points

Mapping agreement and divergence

Key points

Killing versus letting die

Key points

Applying agape to embryo research

Key points

Virtue ethics on a 'designer baby'

Key points

Model evaluation plan: which theory guides best?

Sources

Application of ethical theories to life and death issues

Key points

Mapping agreement and divergence

Key points

Killing versus letting die

Key points

Applying agape to embryo research

Key points

Virtue ethics on a 'designer baby'

Key points

Model evaluation plan: which theory guides best?

Sources