Virtue Theory

Complete readings  “The Nature of Virtue”  (Links to an external site.) , by Aristotle, and “How Can I be a Better Person? On Virtue Ethics,”  (Links to an external site.)  by Douglas Giles.  You have now read something about three different ethical theories (utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Virtue theory). Imagine that you are the doctor in charge of emergency services in a small, local hospital. Your hospital has three ventilators, which help people who are struggling to breather to stay alive. Today five people are admitted to the hospital with coronavirus symptoms, and all five need help breathing. Without knowing anything (yet) about the patients, your hospital has to formulate a policy about how to decide who gets to use a ventilator and who will not (keeping in mind that it may be that someone who does not get to use a ventilator may die, and someone who gets to use a ventilator may not live). Use EACH ethical theory to describe a policy (so: THREE total policy options) that your hospital might implement. HINT: how will a utilitarian say this policy should be decided? How will a virtue theorist decide this? And how will a Kantian/deontologist design the policy? This will take at least three paragraphs. You may want to look at one of the many articles about this that appeared during 2020, such as https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/us/coronavirus-medical-rationing.html  (Links to an external site.)  and https://theconversation.com/doctors-are-making-life-and-death-choices-over-coronavirus-patients-it-could-have-long-term-consequences-for-them-134728