Ethics

The study of what constitutes moral excellence and immoral depravity, as well as what constitutes moral propriety and immoral transgression, is referred to as ethics or moral philosophy. The concept can also be applied to any set of moral standards or ideals that are based on a theory.

How should we conduct our lives? Shall we strive for happiness, or should our priorities be knowledge, virtue, or the creation of lovely things? If we decide to pursue happiness, will it be for our own sake or for the sake of everyone? And what about the more specific dilemmas that we encounter, such as whether or not it is OK to lie for the sake of a noble cause? Is it possible for us to justify living in luxury while there are people hungry in other parts of the world? Is it ever acceptable to go to war when there is a high probability that it would result in the death of innocent people? Is it unethical to do medical research that involves the destruction of human embryos or the cloning of human beings? What, if any, responsibilities do we have towards the human generations who will follow after us as well as the non-human species that we share the earth with?

These kinds of concerns are addressed in ethical theory on every level. Its primary concerns include the nature of ultimate value as well as the criteria by which human activities can be categorised as either appropriate or inappropriate. Its primary focus is on the fundamental challenges that arise in the process of making practical decisions.

There is a strong connection between the concepts of ethics and morality. It is currently normal practise to speak about ethical judgements and ethical principles, when in the past, moral judgements and moral principles would have been more accurate terms to use. The meaning of ethics has been expanded to accommodate these new applications. Earlier usage of the phrase meant to refer not to morality in and of itself, but rather to the academic discipline or line of inquiry that takes morality as its primary subject matter. When viewed in this light, ethics is the same thing as moral philosophy.

Even while ethics has been considered a subfield of philosophy from its inception, the all-encompassing and practical nature of the subject connects it to a wide variety of other fields of research, including anthropology, biology, economics, history, politics, sociology, and theology. However, ethics is not a topic of factual knowledge in the same way that the sciences and other domains of inquiry are, hence it can never be considered a subfield of these other fields of study. Rather than that, it has more to do with figuring out the nature of normative theories and applying these sets of rules to actual moral dilemmas in the real world.