Morality and Ethics

good philosophy and ethical motive lessonity and morality be terms often used as if they have the same meaning. At an early(a)(prenominal) times, they atomic number 18 used as if they have no relationship to one a nonher(prenominal). I think near throng realize ethics and morality have something to do with the concepts of good and bad. However, English is not ilk French, which has the Academic Fantasies acting as its linguistic jury establishing what proper French is. English changes at the inclination of the crowded. One can bomb, and thats bad, but if one is the bomb, and thats good.The word morality has been co-opted by groups, such as the Moral Majority, making us think morality only selects with acts these religious groups think arent proper, or are therefore immoral. The meanings of the terms ethics and morality can be differentiated based on their origins in antique Greek and Latin, respectively. As a result, words that come into the English language from the Greeks often have meanings that are primarily philosophical study, while the Latin-derived words imply doing the thing. Ethics comes from the Greek word ethos moral grammatical case or custom. Morality comes from the Latin word moralist custom or manner. The words both deal with the customs or the manner in which people do things. Their modern meanings relate to the way people act either good or bad. Morality, strictly speaking, is used to refer to what we would c any moral read or standards. Morality is looking at how good or bad our conduct is, and our standards about conduct. Ethics is used to refer to the formal study of those standards or conduct.Sometimes, one refers to the study of conduct as moral philosophy, but that is less common than just saying ethics. One might say that morality is ethics in action, but in the end, the two terms can be used interchangeably. The study of ethics or moral philosophy can be divided into three broad areas descriptive, normative and an alytical or met ethics. Ethics deals with such questions at all levels. Its subject consists of the fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its study concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or misemploy.The terms ethics and morality are closely related. We now often refer to ethical judgments or ethical principles where it once would have been more common to speak of moral judgments or moral principles. These applications are an extension of the meaning of ethics. Strictly speaking, however, the term refers not to morality itself but to the field of study, or kickoff of inquiry, that has morality as its subject matter. In this sense, ethics is equivalent to moral philosophy.Although ethics has always been viewed as a branch of philosophy, its all-embracing practical nature links it with many other areas of study, including anthropology, biology, economics, history, politics, sociology, and theology. Y et, ethics system distinct from such disciplines because it is not a matter of factual knowledge in the way that the sciences and other branches of inquiry are. Rather, it has to do with determining the nature of normative theories and applying these sets of principles to practical moral problems.Virtually every human confederation has some form of myth to explain the origin of morality. In the Louvre in Paris there is a black Babylonian column with a relief showing the sun god Shamash presenting the principle of laws to Hammurabi. The Old Testament account of God giving the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai might be considered another example. In Platos Protagoras there is an avowedly mythical account of how Zeus took pity on the wretched humans, who, financial backing in small groups and with insufficient teeth, weak claws, and lack of speed, were no match for the other beasts.To make up for these deficiencies, Zeus gave humans a moral sense and the capacity for law and j ustice, so that they could live in larger communities and cooperate with one another. There is some difficulty, already known to Plato, with the view that morality was created by a divine federal agency. In his dialogue Euthyphro, Plato considered the suggestion that it is divine approval that makes an action good. Plato pointed out that if this were the case, we could not say that the gods approve of the actions because the actions are good. Why then do the gods approve of these actions rather than others?Is their approval just capricious? Plato considered this impossible and so held that there must be some standards of right or wrong that are independent of the likes and dislikes of the gods. Modern philosophers have generally accepted Platos argument because the alternative implies that if the gods had happened to approve of agonizing children and to disapprove of helping ones neighbors, then torture would have been good and neighborliness bad. That morality should be invested with all the mystery and power of divine origin s not surprising. Nothing else could provide such industrial-strength reasons for accepting the moral law. By attributing a divine origin to morality, the priesthood became its interpreter and guardian, and thereby secured for itself a power that it would not readily abandon. This link between morality and religion has been so firmly forged that it is quieten sometimes asserted that there can be no morality without religion. According to this view, ethics ceases to be an independent field of study. It becomes, instead, moral theology.