Our personal values, morals and ethical code serve as a basis for distinguishing between right and wrong, and thereby have a direct effect upon our thoughts, behavior and emotions. Of course our family, upbringing, peers, and education play a critical role in the development of our core values and ethics as well, but as you learned in this course, there are many other variables that shape our character and values.
The objective of this assignment is for you to relate the material from the textbook readings and course discussions to the experiences in your life so that you can assess its meaning. As we reflect on acknowledging our mortality, can we start to bring a greater meaning to our lives while still living? I believe we can if we are honest with ourselves and take the time to do so.
So, how do we go about determining what our values and ethics are? Perhaps the best approach is to start with developing a statement that encompasses an overall picture of your values and ethics. This opening part of your paper needs to be general in nature and should reflect your beliefs, and not necessarily a statement of fact. Are your values based on family, health, achievements, wealth, job success, happiness, faith, love, or anything else that you hold in great esteem, that perhaps you would be willing to even die for? Think of your value statement as what defines you as a person.
Once you determine what you value, then you can transition to formulating a personal ethics statement. How have your values informed your decisions and shaped the way you live? This part of the paper would include your personal view of ethics. In addition, consider how this code was instilled in you from the time you were born until now. What personality traits do you consider to be closely related to ethical and unethical behavior? Why? How do you see your development according to Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development?
The next step in the process is to think about your values and ethics from the different ethical perspectives covered in the course. This will require you to think critically, synthesize and apply theory to your life. You might try to address as many ethical theories as possible, but you can also focus on just applying one or two if that is what you prefer to do.For example, you could use a deontological perspective to represent how a duty/rule-based approach was used by your parents, family, faith or religion (how were the principles of respect of others, honesty, hard- work, success, altruism, morality, excellence or the opposites, etc. taught as morally wrong or right regardless of the outcomes achieve?). Or maybe you would like to apply a utilitarian approach in which an assessment of the overall outcomes of consequences (greatest benefit and overall happiness vs. greatest harm and unhappiness) was used mainly to determine right and wrong? You could also take consider the influence of egoism, personhood and rights or virtue-based ethics on other aspects or issues in your life.
In your concluding paragraph describe the person you are today and maybe address the person you want to become. Are they the same person or different? As a result of this reflection, do you have areas in your life that you want to change or work on? What would you most like to change about yourself? Can you do it? If you were dying right now, what is the most important thing you might say to your best friend about life and how to live it? You may want to consider the chapters on virtue theory. Which of these virtues is most important to you? Why? How might you work on developing it?
Again, the overriding theme of this paper is to critically think about the meaning of your life relative to your self-interests, personal values and code of ethics. This is an about you and for you, but it will be heavily informed by the readings and discussions from this course.
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 as they relate to the goals of this assignment. 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 should be cited.