In NBC’s  “The Good Place” the main protagonist of the story, Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) decides to study ethics in order to become better at making decisions after mistakenly being place into the the good place in the after life. Human ethics is constantly being presented where characters utilizes it through situations as the series progress. Audiences members slowly observes and analyzes these situations from their perspective while the series answering their questions about moral philosophy itself.

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Human ethics is branch of philosophy that studies how people deal with the concepts of right and wrong. According to BBC, ethics covers how to be a better person, our sense of right and responsibilities, and the moral decisions that people make which can be either good or bad. There are main sections of ethics three areas which are metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.

“All ethical theories have some kind of starting assumptions, which should not be surprising because really all of our beliefs rest on some basic, assumed beliefs” educator Hank Green said in a Crash Course video.

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Normative ethics focuses on ethical action and applied ethics is the study of an analysis of moral issues. However, metaethics is utilized in the show as well as real life situations. Metaethics is the study that explores and seek the nature of statements, judgements, and attitudes. This further focuses on defining of morality itself. Metaethics branches out into two section which are moral realism and antirealism. The difference between these two is that moral realism belief that there are moral facts while moral anti realism is the opposite.

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“For a lot of us, our gut intuition tell us that there are moral facts - some things are just wrong, and others are indisputably right” Hank Green also said.

This topic further connects to the show where Eleanor utilizes moral facts to speak her sense of intuition when coming to a decision towards the end of season 2. This exaggerates moral intuitionism, the study of our intuitive awareness of value that forms the foundation of ethical knowledge.

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According to BBC, intuition enables moral decision and its truth as well. In fact, intuition plays a big role in ethics where it can change due to the different kinds of experiences that person would go through from time to time. This fact connects to situations on how students will change their intuition when answering a multiple choice question on a test.  However, some of these decision can have an impact on others depending on the situation.

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This can be known as utilitarianism. Utilitarianism relies on the starting assumption that all human share a common desire to perform the best actions which can lead to maximizing utility. “The Good Place” is best known for demonstrating this situation from an audience perspective where they showcase the trolley problem.

 

This showcases the trolley problem inn a layout format. Credit to the Scripturient.

The trolley problem was established by moral philosopher, Philippa Foot, and is an experiment that tests people’s moral decisions. According to Ted-ed, the trolley problem has a person, which is you in this case, be place in trolley where the vehicle is approaching to 5 construction workers in the track and have no way of stopping it due to its momentum. However, they do in fact have a second option where you are able to switch to a new track that contains only one construction workers. The results of this experiment only comes down their decision making where they can either kill the five workers or one in a matter of time. There is not a right or wrong answer for this experiment at all.

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“The mind is furnished with ideas by experience alone” english philosopher John Locke once said.

 

All of these moral decisions that is presented in ethics can lead to forming a person’s sense of freedom over time in a painful way. This can be known as existentialism. Existentialism emphasizes individual existence and freedom that is based on choice where it further determines their own development through multiple acts of will. People seeks a  purpose or meaning in life based on their sense of essence. According to Crash Course, existence perceives essences. There is not a exact pathway to follow in life in order to obtain that purpose. In fact, existentialism includes the idea of absurdity, attempting to search for answers to a certain a situation in an answerless world. This study can be demonstrated  in french philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, novel called no exit or first season of “The Good Place”.

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“What all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence” Jean-Paul Sartre said.

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Moral philosopher is constantly being added with multiple theories that philosopher themselves determine to answer while being presented in pop culture.

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