Religion and Ethics | OCR A-Level Religious Studies (H573)

Religion and Ethics

227 questions
12 subtopics
Component 02: Religion and Ethics, compulsory
Component 02

Component 02, compulsory.

Four normative theories, what moral language is doing when it is used, the nature of conscience, and how the theories bear on euthanasia, business and sexual ethics.

Sample questions from Religion and Ethics

Answer each one closed book first, then open the answer.

Aquinas and the precepts of natural law

Where does human law fit into Aquinas' four tiers, and what is it?

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Human law is the actual legislation made by states and rulers: statutes, codes and customs. It should be a working-out of natural law for particular circumstances, filling in details that natural law leaves open, such as which side of the road to drive on. Its authority is derivative, not independent.
Aquinas and the precepts of natural law

List the five primary precepts of natural law.

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They are: protecting and preserving life; an orderly society; the worship of God; the education of children; and reproduction. Students often remember them with the mnemonic POWER. Aquinas presents them as goods that any rational person, reflecting on human nature, will recognise as worth pursuing.
Fletcher's propositions and working principles

In situation ethics, what is meant by relativism as a working principle?

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The absolute rules of Christian morality are made relative to the situation: they are relativised, not abolished. Fletcher is clear that this is not the claim that anything goes, because one thing stays absolute, namely love. Everything else becomes a variable measured against it.
Applying and evaluating situation ethics

What is the consequentialist objection to situation ethics?

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That predicting which outcome is most loving requires knowledge of the future that no one has.
Applying and evaluating situation ethics

Give one strength of situation ethics.

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It treats each situation and person individually, which avoids the harshness of applying a rule that does not fit the case.
The categorical imperative

What is a hypothetical imperative? Give an example.

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A hypothetical imperative is a command that holds only on condition that you want a particular result: if you want to pass your exams, revise. Its force depends entirely on the goal, so the moment you stop wanting the outcome the command loses all grip on you. It tells you the means to an end you happen to have chosen.
Duty, the summum bonum and evaluation

What are Kant's three postulates of practical reason?

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Freedom, immortality and God. Kant does not claim to prove any of them theoretically; he argues that they are presuppositions we must accept if morality is to make sense, so that in obeying a moral command we are already committing ourselves to all three.

The 12 subtopics

One subtopic is one session. Work down the list.

Subtopic	What it covers	Questions
Aquinas and the precepts of natural law	Recall questions on telos in Aristotle and Aquinas, eudaimonia and the human end, why natural law is both teleological and deontological, the eternal, divine, natural and human tiers of law, the key precept, the five primary and the secondary precepts, and interior and exterior acts.	17
Applying and evaluating natural law	Recall questions on natural law as a guide to real decisions, whether goodness depends on purpose, proportionalism, real and apparent goods, the doctrine of double effect and self-defence, and the criticisms from design, human nature, the is-ought gap and the diversity of human lives, alongside its strengths.	12
Fletcher's propositions and working principles	Recall questions on agape and where Fletcher took it from, legalism, antinomianism and situationism, all six of Fletcher's propositions, the four working principles of pragmatism, relativism, positivism and personalism, Fletcher's account of conscience against Aquinas', and situation ethics as a middle way.	19
Applying and evaluating situation ethics	Recall questions on whether Fletcher's agape is genuinely religious, situation ethics as a method for real decisions, the charges of subjectivity and consequentialism, the churches' reaction, whether it is a Christian theory, John Robinson's contribution, its strengths, and how it compares with natural law on moral certainty.	13
The categorical imperative	Recall questions on maxims, hypothetical and categorical imperatives, the universal law, end-in-itself and kingdom-of-ends formulations, the lying promise, contradictions in conception and in the will, the formulations as one principle, autonomy and heteronomy, and applying the end-in-itself formulation to a business deal.	13
Duty, the summum bonum and evaluation	Recall questions on duty and acting from duty, the good will, the postulates of freedom, immortality and God, the summum bonum, and the evaluation of Kantian ethics, including conflicting duties, abstraction, the place of sympathy and love, its strengths, and a lie that would save a life.	15
Utilitarianism	Recall questions on the principle of utility, psychological hedonism, the hedonic calculus and its seven criteria, act and rule utilitarianism, strong and weak rules and rule worship, punishing the innocent, higher and lower pleasures, preference utilitarianism, and whether good can be measured well enough to decide.	23
Euthanasia	Recall questions on sanctity and quality of life, voluntary, non-voluntary and involuntary euthanasia, assisted suicide, persistent vegetative state, active and passive euthanasia, acts and omissions, ordinary and extraordinary means, double effect in pain relief, the slippery slope, palliative care, and natural law, situation ethics and utilitarianism applied.	24
Business ethics	Recall questions on corporate social responsibility, stakeholders and shareholder theory, whistle-blowing, the claim that good ethics is good business, globalisation and supply chains, greenwashing, flourishing under capitalism and consumerism, Kantian and utilitarian approaches to business, and religious assessments of business practice.	20
Ethical language and meta-ethics	Recall questions on meta-ethics and cognitivism, ethical naturalism and its strengths, the naturalistic fallacy, the open question argument and the is-ought problem, intuitionism and moral knowledge, emotivism and its link to verification and relativism, and whether moral terms describe objective facts.	24
Conscience	Recall questions on Aquinas' ratio, synderesis and conscientia, vincible and invincible ignorance, the apparent good and guilt, Freud's psychosexual development, id, ego and super-ego and his account of guilt and religion, how Aquinas and Freud differ, the criticisms of each, and whether conscience exists.	23
Sexual ethics	Recall questions on religious teaching about sex before and outside marriage and same-sex relationships, Christian, Jewish and Muslim positions, secularism, legal change in Britain, the harm principle, natural law, situation ethics, Kantian ethics and utilitarianism applied to sexual ethics, and whether sexual choices are private.	24

Religion and Ethics is 227 of the 1,584 questions in the guide.Get the guide, £8

How the guide is worked

Answering a question from memory stores it far better than reading the answer again. The guide runs that as a fixed procedure on one subtopic at a time, about twenty minutes a session.

Step 1 · Closed book
Cover the answers. Work through one subtopic and write down what you can. Leave blanks where you have nothing.
Step 2 · Open book
Go back to the top. Read each printed answer and write it out in full, including the ones you had right.
Step 3 · Closed book again
Same questions, same order, from memory. The gap between pass one and pass three is the session result.

Read the full method, the return schedule and the research behind it.