We explain what ethics and morals are, what their similarities and differences are. Also, its importance, the opinions of different philosophers and more.
What are ethics and morals?
Ethics and morals are what allows us to differentiate between good and bad actions in people's behavior. In addition, they help to understand behavior in general, its rules and principles.
Morality is the set of norms that regulate the behavior of a person in society. Ethics is the discipline that reflects, from theory, on morality, how it works, its problems and dilemmas.
For example, respect for older people is a moral norm that responds to customs and habits of all societies. Ethics explains what is behind this respect, what its meaning is and, furthermore, what it means to respect.
Many times the words “ethics” and “morals” are used synonymously. Although there is common ground between one and the other, ethics and morality They are two different aspects of the same topic: human behavior and life in common between people.. For philosophical discourse, ethics is a philosophical discipline, while morality is one of the problems that ethics works on.
Key points
- Ethics and morality are two philosophical concepts that refer to the behavior of people.
- Morality is a set of norms, beliefs and customs that regulate the behavior of people in a certain context or society, while ethics studies, through the use of reason, the foundations of morality.
- Morality varies according to each society, while ethics is a theory of reflection that claims universality.
The ethics
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that studies human behavior and moral actions from a theoretical point of view.
Ethics helps people think about how they perceive right and wrong in different areas of their lives. It is a fundamental discipline in the formation of the different codes of conduct and also in the way in which justice is administered (or not).
Many philosophers wrote on ethical issues. For example, Plato worked on the virtues and their meaning, while Aristotle wrote Nicomachean ethicswhich is the first ethical treatise and reflects on a happy life.
Immanuel Kant, an 18th century German philosopher, investigated what moral formulas are and how they function as ethical maxims, which he called “categorical imperatives.” The most famous categorical imperative says that You have to act so that the behavior is an example for others.
Types of ethics
There are different types of ethics according to their branches and objects of study.. The best known are metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics.
- The metaethics. It is the study of the meaning of moral terms and ethics from a metaphysical point of view. It studies, for example, the problem of good and evil, the search for happiness and the question of intersubjectivity (which investigates what it means for others, other than oneself, to exist).
- normative ethics. It is the study of the way in which moral terms are applied, such as the theory of virtue, duty or consequence. It studies, for example, what actions are right or wrong to perform from a moral point of view, how values are applied and how behavior is regulated in society.
- Applied ethics. It is the study of ethics applied to different practical fields. Study, for example, ethics in the professional, environmental, sports, sexual, bioethics and research fields.
Furthermore, ethics can be classified into types according to the philosophical current to which it belongs, such as, for example, Socratic ethics or Aristotelian ethics.
Examples of ethics
An example that serves to think about ethics is applied ethics, which studies how ethical theories are applied to specific moral situations and different practical fields.
- Professional ethics. It is one that works with the set of norms and values involved in the work.
- Environmental ethics. It is one that works to take care of the environment and its preservation. In addition, it teaches to respect nature.
- Sports ethics. It is one that works to promote a fair, honest and friendly sporting spirit.
- Medical ethics. It is one that works to ensure that the basic rights of people in medical situations are respected, whether they are patients undergoing treatment or subjects of medical research and experimentation.
- Military ethics. It is one that works to ensure that the armed forces and their members respect fundamental human rights when they are exercising their profession.
In all professional ethics, responsibility and freedom are taken as the most important values. In professional ethics applied to health, for example, people must act responsibly, putting their professional ethics above their personal preferences and in accordance with the common good and, furthermore, the individual good of each patient.
The morality
Morality is the set of norms and values necessary for the coexistence of different communities.. Although the most moralistic societies are not necessarily the most prosperous, all communities are governed by a moral code made up of different behaviors, habits and customs.
Morality is thought of as the rules hidden in behavior. People act according to unspoken moral habits and behaviors, learned during their lives. However, unlike ethics, which is a philosophical discipline, morality does not study these rules, but rather is the set of values and norms that govern people.
In ancient times, when people talked about morality, it was in reference to the set of customs that formed the ethical character of people. However, in the medieval world this distinction stopped working and people began to speak of theoretical morality to refer to ethics and practical morality to refer to morality.
Types of morality
There are different ways to classify morality. One of them is the distinction between objective morality, dictated by cultural tradition and which does not depend on people, and subjective morality, which has to do with individual decisions.
However, the most common classification for types of morality is between fundamental, individual, social and socioeconomic morality.
- Fundamental morality. It is morality that works with the idea of what is right and what is wrong for an action. For example, when a person decides to make a complaint, fundamental morality asks who it affects, why, and in what sense.
- Individual morality. It is morality that works with the personal choices of individuals. For example, when a person has to decide between taking care of a family member or taking care of themselves, they turn to their individual morality.
- social morality. It is the morality that works with the idea of the collective (the group) imposed by institutions or traditions. For example, when people group together based on their political ideas, social morality asks how those people are linked collectively and how that affects the rest of the citizens.
- Socioeconomic morality. It is the morality that evaluates people's decisions in relation to their social and economic condition. For example, when a seller places some products at a higher price than the rest, socioeconomic morality asks why he does it and what effect it has on buyers.
Examples of morality
Morality is easy to identify, since it is related to different everyday situations. For example, when traveling by bus and giving up the seat to an elderly person, or when helping someone who needs it to cross the street.
In most cases, moral examples show how dominant values in society, such as respect or empathy, are put into practice. In addition to giving up your seat on public transportation or helping someone cross the street, it can also be seen in volunteering, soup kitchens or peaceful coexistence in emergency situations.
Differences between ethics and morals
The differences between ethics and morality occur according to some characteristics of their object of study.
- Ethics is the discipline that studies the norms of behavior, and these norms form morality.
- Ethics studies the rules and theoretical codes that underpin morality, while morality studies the customs, norms and values that govern society.
- Ethics works with maxims that do not vary over time and that philosophers call “categorical imperatives.” Morality, on the other hand, varies depending on the geographical, historical and political context.
- Each term seeks to highlight a sphere of life: private life, related to the individual's own autonomy (ethics), and common life, related to customs and contact with others (morality).
The differences between ethics and morality can be summarized in the following comparative table:
| Ethics | Moral |
|---|---|
| It is a philosophical discipline that studies morality. | It is a set of norms, customs and values. |
| Works with theoretical rules and codes of a metaphysical type. | Work with customs, norms and values. |
| Look for invariable maxims. | It varies depending on the context. |
| It refers to private life. | It refers to social life. |
The 4 similarities between ethics and morals
The similarities between ethics and morality arise from behavior.
- Both investigate human behavior.
- They pose the dilemma of good and evil.
- They think about otherness, which is the theory that there are others other than one, and the way people relate to each other in society.
- They share Greek ethos as etymological origin (the origin of each word). Both “ethics” and “moral” can mean “character” or “custom.”
Importance of ethics and morals
Both ethics and morals are important not only for philosophy but for human life in general.
All people are different. Morality helps these differences coexist. Built according to habits, norms and customs worked on over time, it builds forms of behavior necessary for a peaceful life, open to respect and understanding of others.
Ethics, on the other hand, provides the tools to investigate the codes, norms and behaviors of morality. Thus, it is essential to distinguish between a good action and a bad one, cases where the rules become confusing, and also helps determine how justice is administered and thought about.
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References
- Bonilla, A. (2007) “Ethics: contemporary issues and problems”, Vertex. Argentine Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. XVIII, No. 75, 2007, pp. 362-369.
- Cullen, C. (1998) “The contemporary ethical debate”, Enoikos, year VI, No. 13, pp. 26-32.
- Griffin, J. (2001) “METAETHICS. Metaethics and normative ethics”; in Canto-Sperber, M. (ed.) (2001) Dictionary of Ethics and Moral Philosophy, Mexico, FCE, Vol. 1, pp. 1052-1058.
- Maliandi, R. (1993) Ethics, concepts and problems, chap. I and III.
- Roig, A. (2002) “Hermeneutical problems for a foundation of Ethics”, in Ethics of power and morality of protest. Responses to the moral crisis of our time, Mendoza, EDIUNC, pp. 131-136.
- Boff, L. (2003). Ethics and morals. The search for the fundamentals (5th ed.). Bilbao: Sal Terrae Editorial.
- Guariglia, O. (1996). Morality. Universalist ethics and moral subject. Criticism, 28(84).
- Curtain, A. (2000). Minimum ethics. Madrid: Tecnos.
