Narratives and Ethics

We begin our study of moral philosophy and ethics with a key idea: ethical decisions are expressed in stories. From the fairy tales told to children to modern movies and TV shows for the adult public, stories nearly always involve characters struggling to make ethical choices. Who is good? Who is evil? How do we know? Across cultures, stories have long modelled ethical and unethical behaviour for us. In this section, we will look at imaginary stories and then at the problems such stories sometimes present.