Ethical Decision-Making Model
Ethics in communication is a set of rules of verbal behavior in the particular situations. Ethics in communication plays an important role, as it is required to skillfully support one or the other subject of conversation and stay confident. There are also ethical decision-making models, which lead to better moral resolutions. This paper will summarize Kant's categorical imperative, Aristotle's mean as well as Rawls's veil of ignorance with the special focus on the model of Aristotle as the most efficient, because it more often leads to morally sound decisions, and is the easiest for a majority of people to follow.
Kant's Categorical Imperative
The categorical imperative is a concept in the teachings of Kant about the supreme principle of morality. According to Kant, ethics is the science of the action, which will be considered as either moral or immoral (Agbude, Ogunwede, Godwyns-Agbude, Wogu, & Nchekwube, 2015). Kant came to the conclusion that there is no real directionality of the world as it is divided into the world of good and evil. The moral action is a part of that priority category, which will be taken by an individual at face value as a moral, and a concrete human action is the implication of this category (Agbude, Ogunwede, Godwyns-Agbude, Wogu, & Nchekwube, 2015). In Kant, the true view of the world is a product of the mind. For the development and thinking a person has to be autonomous and, thus, when he/she will take independent decisions, it will be a moral decision (one of the antinomies of freedom and necessity) (Agbude, Ogunwede, Godwyns-Agbude, Wogu, & Nchekwube, 2015). According to Kant, a free man can make any decision. On the one hand, it is good, but on the other, it is difficult because from all the spectrum of choices a person needs to take a proper one. At the moment of decision-making, that choice begins to have the opposite characteristic, for example, the decision to go to the cinema or the university is a necessity. After the acceptance of the decision, which is necessary, it also becomes free. This means that people should be free, and self-contained (Agbude, Ogunwede, Godwyns-Agbude, Wogu, & Nchekwube, 2015). Thus, the essence of the categorical imperative is as follows: all that is correlated with the god is moral. The moral law of Kant says that if a person relates all his/her actions to God, then all his/her actions and decisions are absolutely ethical.
Aristotle’s Mean
Aristotle, in turn, developed the doctrine of the mean, which states that the appointment of a person is in the cognitive activities. Human malformations are caused by an excess or deficiency of any quality. Lack of moderation creates a coward and the surplus – a folly. When these qualities are in moderation, people get a kind of virtue that is the courage (Koehn, 2012). This teaching of Aristotle is based on Greek belief that the most important thing in the life is the measure. The concept of the mean was interpreted as …
