Western moral thinkers: Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Rawls
Aristotle's virtue ethics, Kant's deontology, Mill's utilitarianism and Rawls's justice as fairness—mapped to GS-4 quotation and case-study application.
The four pillars of Western ethics
Western moral philosophy gives GS-4 candidates four self-contained frameworks, each answering the question what makes an act right? differently. Mastering the contrast between them is the single most reusable asset in the paper.
Aristotle (384–322 BCE): virtue ethics
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle locates morality not in rules or consequences but in character. The goal of life is eudaimonia—human flourishing, often mistranslated as 'happiness' but closer to 'living well'. Virtue (arete) is a settled disposition to act rightly, acquired by habituation, not by instruction. His central tool is the Doctrine of the Mean: every virtue is a midpoint between two vices of excess and deficiency. Courage lies between cowardice and recklessness; generosity between miserliness and prodigality. Crucially, the mean is determined by phronesis (practical wisdom)—context-sensitive judgement, not a mathematical average. For a civil servant, this translates into integrity as a cultivated habit rather than a one-time choice.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): deontology
In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Kant grounds morality in duty and reason, independent of consequences. An act has moral worth only if done from duty, guided by the Categorical Imperative. Its first formulation: act only on that maxim you can will to become a universal law. The second (the Formula of Humanity): treat humanity, whether in your own person or another, always as an end and never merely as a means. Kant rejects lying, coercion, and bribery absolutely—because universalising them is self-contradictory. For administration, Kant supplies the language of non-negotiable duty: a rule cannot bend for convenience.
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873): utilitarianism
Building on Bentham, Mill's Utilitarianism (1863) defines the right act as the one producing the greatest happiness of the greatest number. He refines Bentham's crude hedonic calculus by distinguishing higher (intellectual/moral) pleasures from lower (bodily) ones—'better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied'. Utilitarianism is the working logic of public policy: cost-benefit analysis, welfare economics, and resource allocation all assume it. Its weakness, heavily tested, is that it can justify sacrificing a minority for aggregate gain.
John Rawls (1921–2002): justice as fairness
In A Theory of Justice (1971), Rawls answers utilitarianism's blind spot. Behind a veil of ignorance in the 'original position'—not knowing your class, talents, or gender—rational agents would choose two principles: (1) equal basic liberties for all; (2) the Difference Principle: social and economic inequalities are just only if they benefit the least advantaged. Rawls thus fuses liberty with redistributive justice and underwrites affirmative action and welfare-state design.
