nions, and to better appreciate their contributions. My parents had very little money when I was young, but, through hard work, they have changed that. My father worked seventy plus hours a week and went to school full time, while my mother took care of my sister and me. Eventually, my mother attended, and graduated, college at night, and together my parents would now be considered upper middle class. Yet, even when we had no money, there was always love in the house. My friends are equally hard working and caring. Together, their inspiration gives me a desire to help my friends and family, but my rationale makes me wish to extend help beyond that. Friends are chosen, but only in a limited geographic environment, and parents are not chosen at all. Assisting only friends and family would be based on an arbitrary view that is irrational at the least.As I look at my classmates, I begin to recognize the many similarities between people in general, and their societal connection to me. So, while my friends and family show me the goodness of the world, they also inspire to contribute to society as a whole.When I come to define my core ethical beliefs and motivations, I find that I now rely on a mixture of duty and virtue. Duty is not meant in the militaristic or authoritarian sense. It is not something someone is told to do. Rather, it is an ideal, based on a self-evident and rational view, of what should be done in a given situation. Imannual Kant once defined duty ethics in his Universal Law Formulation: “act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law of nature.” This is not a complete definition, but it gives a good example of what duty ethics entails. It is also based more on intent than on action.Virtue ethics are, on the other hand, more concerned with the intent behind the action. It is difficult to completely define virtue, but one of the handouts I re...
