1) Is it more important to be a good person or to perform good acts (virtue ethics vs. action ethics)?

In order to answer this question, the use of the word “important” needs to be defined. In general, being a good person is more important, because the good acts should come from a naturally good person based on their desire to want to be good. Thus being a good person covers both aspects. However, a bad person may choose to perform good acts based on societal values, while still not being a good person at heart. In this case it may be seen that performing good acts is more important in order to maintain social normativity, or advance the society in general. This bad person may not enjoy doing good acts, and may in fact do them for selfish reasons, such as to give off the appearance of being a good person. Regardless of the reason, the act of bad people performing good deeds, alongside all of the good people who inherently perform good deeds eventually helps maintain and advance society. There are obviously many counter arguments that could be applied here, but in general this is a universal idea that would hold true regardless of time period or place.

2) Do the ends justify the means (ends ethics vs. means ethics)?

For this question I would like to respond with another question. Would going back in time to kill Hitler as a innocent child be okay? You already know that he will start a genocide in the future, but at the time he hasn’t committed any crime. Would killing an innocent child for his future actions, just because you have a time machine (the means) be worth preventing the holocaust (the ends?). What if you were sent back with no knowledge of who he was, and were told that killing this child would help mankind? This question epitomizes the question of “does the ends justify the means.” There are many options to consider with it. Maybe someone else would rise up, and be worse than Hitler, and the ends you aimed for were actually worse than expected. There is no way to definitely know, but you just have to hope that the moral idea of preventing the holocaust is enough of an end to justify killing an innocent child. I personally believe that one must act ethically at all times, including in the means. There are always other options, and most would agree that killing a child is a very unethical action, which means a different way of achieving the end would need to be considered. Throughout history, there have been many arguments where people have made an unethical decision in order to provide an ethical outcome, but I truly believe there is always a right way to handle something, without compromising morals. This of course would differ from culture and time period, because humans develop different morals in different places and times, but for the most part I believe that the ends do not justify unethical means.

6) Is my own life worth more than the lives of others, the same, or less (selfishness vs. altruism)?

Life is completely about the meaning you bestow upon it. Logically that would mean my life is more important than others, because I work hard to give my life meaning to myself. The same goes for the meaning that my friends have to me. Thus based on this tiny scale, yes, my life means more than the life of others to me. On a larger scale, my life probably won’t have a significant affect the advancement of humanity, the same as most of the other 7 billion people currently living, as well as the majority of people who came before or will come after us. At this scale we are comparatively all the same. Thus, life’s individual worth falls to a matter of scale, and does not change relative to time period or place. Due to these aspects, I believe that all lives are actually equal, and to an extent one should be altruistic in order to improve the lives of everyone, but not at any great expense to themselves.