OCR A-Level Religious Studies Component 02 Religion and Ethics: a complete overview

OCR A-Level Religious Studies Component 02 is Religion and Ethics. It asks how we should decide what is right: by following nature and reason, by love, by duty, or by consequences; how those theories apply to hard real-world issues; what moral words mean; and whether we are free and responsible at all. This overview ties together the topic pages and explains how the paper is examined.

How Component 02 works

Component 02 is a two-hour written exam worth 120 marks. It sets four essay questions and you answer three, each worth 40 marks. It covers normative ethical theories, applied ethics, meta-ethics, conscience, and free will and moral responsibility. The two assessment objectives, AO1 (knowledge) and AO2 (evaluation), are weighted 40 per cent and 60 per cent overall, and each essay carries a separate AO1 mark out of 25 and AO2 mark out of 15.

The four normative theories

Natural law (Aquinas) grounds morality in human nature read by reason, through the primary and secondary precepts and the doctrine of double effect. Situation ethics (Fletcher) makes agape the one absolute and judges each situation by love. Kantian ethics locates morality in duty and the categorical imperative, treating people as ends in themselves. Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) judges acts by the happiness they produce, through the hedonic calculus, higher and lower pleasures, and act and rule versions.

Applied ethics

OCR applies the theories to three issues. Euthanasia turns on the sanctity of life against the quality of life, and on voluntary and non-voluntary, active and passive forms. Business ethics covers corporate social responsibility, globalisation and whistleblowing, with Friedman's shareholder view against the stakeholder alternative. Sexual ethics covers premarital and extramarital sex and homosexuality, treated neutrally and tested against all four theories and changing religious belief.

Meta-ethics, conscience and free will

Meta-ethics asks what "good" means: naturalism, Moore's intuitionism (and the naturalistic fallacy) and the emotivism of Ayer and Stevenson, across the cognitive and non-cognitive divide. Conscience sets Aquinas (reason: synderesis and conscientia) against Freud (the super-ego and guilt). Free will and moral responsibility weighs hard determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism, with consequences for praise, blame and punishment.

How Component 02 is examined

• Four essays, choose three. Each is a sustained AO1-plus-AO2 argument, not a description.
• The extended essay (AO2-heavy). Build a case that sets approach against approach and reaches a justified conclusion, because AO2 is the larger mark band.