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Beneficence: The Greatest Ethical Ideal

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Beneficence: The Greatest Ethical Ideal
Beneficence
By xiayimaru, december 2012 | 5 Pages (1020 Words) | 114 Views |
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There are so many ethical ideal that I have learned from this subject, got honesty, forgiveness, justice, etc. However, I think that the greatest ethical ideal that I have learned is beneficence. In normal word, beneficence is meaning the action to do benefit and promote the good to other people. While in the language of a principle or rule of beneficence refers to a normative statement of a moral obligation to act for the benefit of other, helping them to further their important and legitimate interests, often by preventing or removing possible harms. I will choose beneficence is because there are many people in this world they need the help from other, although it is only a small thing but when we help them this is also can count as beneficence. If we help the people that need help, I believe that if one day when we need the help they will help us back. The example beneficence that we can act that is generous gift-giving, uncompensated public service, forgiving another’s costly error, and etc.
In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill argues that “moral philosophers have left a train of unconvincing and incompatible theories that can be coherently unified by a single standard of beneficence that allows us to decide objectively what is right and wrong.” The principle of utility, or the ‘greatest happiness’ principle, he declares “the basic foundation of morals: Actions are right in the proportion to their promotion of happiness, and wrong as they produce the reverse.” This truth can be very simple, but the potential demand is very harsh, which this is the principle of beneficence. That principle of beneficence: The greatest possible balance of beneficial can lead to the action of right or bad. However Kant notoriously rejects the utilitarian

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