Guidelines and Format

The objective of this assignment is for you to relate the material from the textbook readings, videos, and course discussions to your life experiences.

First, develop a statement that encompasses an overall picture of your values and ethics.  Are your values based on family, health, achievements, wealth, job success, happiness, faith, love, or anything else that you hold in great esteem?  Think of your value statement as what defines you as a person. Describe your understanding of the origin of the values you hold important.  Try to describe your ethical beliefs.  If possible, offer a story to illustrate your ethical behavior.  Try to explain the roots of your ethical beliefs, where they came from, how you were influenced, whether any particular events in your life greatly impacted your beliefs.  Have your ethical beliefs undergone any major changes?  If so, describe what they were and why they changed.

Second, drawing on the various ethical frameworks we have studied this term—utilitarianism, deontology, etc—explain your ethical perspective.  You do not need to limit yourself to one ethical framework and can draw from more than one. If you draw from more than one framework, you will need to explain your reasoning in your answer.  Be sure to reconcile any contradictions between these perspectives (for example, utilitarianism vs. virtue ethics).  Use the textbook as evidence in this section of your paper as a form of support.

After you have explained your ethical perspective, consider why and how you have adopted this perspective.  This section of the paper will ask you to think about your personal life and the way you were brought up in terms of a specific ethical framework or frameworks.  Explain why and how this framework was taught to you.  For example, you could use a deontological perspective to represent how a duty/rule-based approach was used by your parents.  If you grew up in different places, if you are an immigrant or the child of immigrants, perhaps you were taught a different ethic in school than you were at home? If this was the case, how did you reconcile any ethical conflicts?  Which ethical framework do you draw on most as an adult and why? You do not need to answer all of these questions; however, you do want to present a nuanced, concrete discussion of your ethical perspective.  Be specific and explain the role of culture and the historical time period when thinking about the particular ethical framework was used in your education or upbringing.

Lastly, conclude your paper. In your concluding paragraph, describe the person you are today and address the person you want to become. Are they the same person or different?  Why?

Your paper must have an APA-formatted title page.  The paper should be at least 1500 words in length (not including the cover page and references).  It should be grammatically sound and free of spelling errors.  You must integrate the ethical theories discussed in the readings and class.  Be sure to include in-text citations and a reference page for this material.  Outside sources are not required, but any use of such material must be cited.

Book for the class is Mackinnon, B. & Fiala, A. (2018). Ethics: Theory and contemporary issues (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.