Ethics as a Science

Ethics is the philosophical science that studies morality as a form of social consciousness-as a major aspect of human activity and a specific sociohistorical phenomenon. Ethics illuminates the role of morality in the context of other types of social relations; it analyzes the nature and internal structure of morality, studies its origin and historical development, and provides theoretical justification for one or another moral system. It is concerned with the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong. The term is also applied to any system or theory of moral values or principles. Ethics is traditionally subdivided into normative ethics, metaethics, and applied ethics.

Normative ethics seeks to establish norms or standards of conduct; a crucial question in this field is whether actions are to be judged right or wrong based on their consequences or based on their conformity to some moral rule, such as Ў§Do not tell a lie.ЎЁ

Metaethics is concerned with the nature of ethical judgments and theories. Since the beginning of the 20th century much work in metaethics has focused on the logical and semantic aspects of moral language. Some major metaethical theories are naturalism, intuitionism, emotivism, and prescriptivism.

Applied ethics, as the name implies, consists of the application of normative ethical theories to practical moral problems. Among the major fields of applied ethics are bioethics, business ethics, legal ethics, and medical ethics.

In Eastern and classical thought, ethics was initially combined with philosophy and law; it had the primarily practical function of moral instruction directed toward physical and mental health. In the form of aphorisms, such moral instruction can be traced back to oral tradition, through which late clan society had already firmly laid down how individual conduct in practice was to benefit the social whole (that is, the community or tribe).

Ethics was made into a separate discipline by Aristotle; it was Aristotle, in fact, who introduced the term by using it in the titles of his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and the work generally known as Magna Moralia. He placed ethics between the doctrine of the soul, or psychology, and the doctrine of the state, or politics; ethics, based on the former, serves the latter, inasmuch as its goal is to mold virtuous citizens of the state. Although the central issue in AristotleЎ¦s ethics was the doctrine of virtues, which he viewed as moral faculties of the individual, his system already incorporated many of the Ў§eternal questionsЎЁ of ethics-for example, the nature and source of morality, freedom of the will, the foundations of the moral act, justice, and the meaning of life and of the highest good.

The traditional division of philosophy into three branches- logic, physics (including metaphysics), and ethics-is derived from the Stoics. This division, continuing through the Middle Ages, was adopted by Renaissance and 17th-century philosophy. It was also adopted by I. Kant, who used it merely as a basis to differentiate between the studies of method, of nature, and of freedom (or morality). Until modern times, however, ethics was frequently understood as the science of manЎ¦s nature and of the causes and goals of his actions in general; that is, it coincided with philosophical anthropology or even merged with natural philosophy. This kind of expansion of the subject matter of ethics resulted from the interpretation of its goals; ethics was called on to instruct man in right living on the basis of his own nature (natural or divine). As a consequence, ethics combined the theory of manЎ¦s being, the study of the passions and affects of the psyche (or soul), and, at the same time, the doctrine of the ways to attain the good life (that is, the general welfare, happiness, or salvation).

The principal problem in ethics has always been the question of the nature and origin of morality; in the history of ethical doctrines, however, this was usually posed as a question of the basic notions on which moral awareness of duty is founded-a question of the criteria of moral judgments. Depending on what a given doctrine regards as the basis of morality, every ethical doctrine in history may be assigned to one of two categories. The first includes the theories which moral injunctions are derived from the immediate reality of human existence, or Ў§manЎ¦s natureЎЁЎXthe natural needs or strivings of people, their inborn feelings, or the facts of their lives, considered as the self-evident and extrahistorical basis of morality. Such theories usually tend toward biologic-anthropological determinism; they contain elements of materialism but frequently their predominant tendency is toward subjective idealism.

The second category consists of theories in which the basis of morality is a certain unconditional and extrahistorical principle that exists outside of man. This principle may be interpreted either naturalistically or idealistically. A special category in the history of ethics must be reserved for the authoritarian conceptions of morality, according to which moral injunctions are solely based on some type of authority-either personal or divine.

The question of the nature of morality has often been formulated in the history of ethics in terms of the very nature of moral activity and its relationship to all other types of everyday human activity. The problem that arises here is that of the relationship between freedom and necessity. The correct definition of the general foundation of morality still does not signify that from such a foundation one can simply derive specific moral norms and principles or that the individual will spontaneously follow the Ў§historical tendency.ЎЁ Moral activity includes not only the implementation of norms and principles but also the creation of new ones and the search for ideals that are best suited to the times as well as ways in which such ideals can be realized.

The choice between carrying out an external obligation and fulfilling an internal demand must always depend on the solution of a different problem-namely, the problem of finding the most appropriate ways, in each particular instance, to combine social and personal interests so that the historical prospect of achieving their ultimate union may be made apparent.

The category of moral activity includes the following elements: the structure of an individual act and its component factors (motive, inducement, intent, choice, decision, action, ends, means, and consequences), the general course of the individualЎ¦s conduct (including moral customs, habits, inclinations, convictions, and feelings), and the norms of behaviour and social norms that in their aggregate constitute the moral way of life of society as a whole.

By analyzing the structure of moral relationships and moral consciousness, one can establish the connections between such categories as moral requirement, obligation, duty, responsibility, dignity, and conscience-which reflect the various forms of the relationship between the individual and society-as well as the interrelationship of such categories as norm, moral quality, evaluation, moral principle, social and moral ideals, good and evil, justice, the meaning of life, manЎ¦s purpose, and human happiness-which make up the logical framework of any system of morality and whose content is constantly changing.

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