People generally tend to have 2 ethical systems they follow either explicitly or implicitly without even knowing:
- Small scale like personal, immediate family and small community ethics.
- Large scale like direction of government or large community ethics.
There are many ethical schools of though and here's a quick brief (very simplified):
Small scale ethics:
- Virtue ethics - cultivate good character, be just, honest, wise etc.
- Care ethics - all about close community and relationship building, your people first
- Deontological ethics - focus on rules and duties, never lie etc
- Egoism - me me me, I only have one life and that's the most important thing.
- Existencialism - take full responsibility of your choices and persona, create your own meaning as it's fit now.
And for large scale:
- Utilitarianism - the most common position. Greatest good for greatest amount of people. Save as many as you can by pulling the trolley switch
- Contractualism - society must be organized around rules we all agree on without knowing our place in it. i.e. poor and king have to agree without knowing who they are yet.
- Deontological Priority - free speech, bodily autonomy etc. All fundamental rights must be protected even when inconvenient.
- Communitarianism - focus on community, tradition over individual rights and freedoms
- Libertarianism - maximize individual liberty
- Marxist - prioritize equality and collective ownership
- Environmental - prioritize protecting our surroundings and all life even non human. Challenge human-centered ethics.
Most commonly people fall virtue or deontological at small scale and utilitarian or deontological at large scale without even knowing much about ethics. What about you?
I would primarily describe my view as Virtue ethics, but...
On the larger scale, I seek to promote the development of individual virtues and equality within society but, acknowledging that this is always likely to be an aspiration rather than a achieved state then, again, I would look to a deontological approach as a fallback.
I am deeply suspicious of utilitarian arguments in most circumstances, simply through experience of those who tend to promote them. Both egoism and libertarianism seem short-sighted to me.
I very much agree with your view and to defend utilitarianism a bit here - contemporary utilitarianiasm is more nuanced than people think. The way I see it, utilitarianism encapsulates the virtue of justice in the sense of "what is the most just way to steer this big ship we're all on"?
While traditional utilitarians would measure only clearly apparent outcomes like "we're all mostly white so it would be inefficient to protect minorities" contemporary utilitarians include invisible outcomes like emotions and need for statistical diversity i.e. "living in single race world would be unjust and lack of statistical diversity hedging" and "psychological pain of few oppressed minorities would outweigh net value of more simple single race society".
The reason why I like it because it's highly plastic, the utilitarian calculation entirely depends on the medium it's performed in and can quickly self correct given change like new technology or scientific discovery.