What is Ethics? And different dimensions of Ethics

What is Ethics?

‘Ethics’ is derived from the Greek word ‘ethos’, which means ‘character’
It is concerned with human character or conduct.
It evaluates moral life and human conduct i.e. whether the conduct is good or bad, just or unjust.
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour.
Simply, Ethics is a set of standards that help guide behaviour, choices and actions.

What is not Ethics?

To clearly understand what ethics is, you must understand what it is not. Ethics is not morality, law, religion and socially accepted norms. Ethics is wider and exhaustive in perspective.

Ethics is not Morality

Ethics	Morality
A set of standards that help guide behaviour, choices and actions.	Individual’s own beliefs regarding right and wrong
Standards set by society or organisation	Standards set by the individual
Ethics attempts to find grounds for reasonable moral belief. It is a logical way to choose between competing moral principles or beliefs or when there is no clear right or wrong answer.	Morality is accepted beliefs or code of conduct governing one's behaviour
Some examples for Ethics: code of conduct at the workplace, Integrity, objectivity etc.	Some examples of Morality: One may not believe in war; Keeping promises, Giving or taking bribe etc. Religious teachings like: Buddhism teaches Right conduct, Right understanding etc.; Jainism teaches Right faith;

Ethics is not Religion

Every Religion professes ethical values. But religion cannot address all problems. What is just in religion may not be just in ethics.
Ethics is based on reason and logic, religion is based on belief and customs.
Ethics is a universal tool that may be used by any person including atheist.

Ethics is not Law

In Law, a man is guilty when he commits a mistake or violates the rights of another.
But in ethics, According to Emmanuel Kant, a man is guilty even if he thinks of doing so.
Hence what is legal may not be ethical.

Ethics is not socially accepted norms

Some accepted social norms or practices are quite ethical. But some norms are not ethical.
For example, the caste system in India, racial discrimination in the US, etc.

Why a man should be moral?

In society, people live in groups. For a satisfactory human life and successful functioning of any society, rules and regulations are imperative. Institutions (marriage, family, cultural aspects etc.) that are designed to make life easier cannot function without certain moral principles. Hence morality helps us to live better and keeps society together.

Dimensions of Ethics

There are Three major branches:

Meta-Ethics
Normative Ethics
Applied Ethics

Meta-Ethics

Meta-ethics is the study of the nature, scope, and meaning of moral judgment. It is the study of what ethical terms and ethical theories actually refer to.

It deals with the three general questions such as:

What is the meaning of moral or judgements?
- Asks about the meanings of such words like 'good', 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong.
What is the nature of moral judgements?
- Asks questions of whether moral judgments are universal or relative, of one kind or many kinds, etc.
How may moral judgements be supported or defended?
- Asks such questions as to how we can know if something is right or wrong, if at all.

Normative Ethics

It is also called prescriptive ethics.
It prescribes how people ought to act.
It set norms or standards to judge the conduct.
It examines standards for rightness and wrongness of actions.
It is opposite to descriptive ethics.
It has three broad categories—Virtue Ethics, Deontological and Teleological ethics
It suggests punishment when a person deviates from the path of ideals.
It justifies punishing a person who disturbs the social and moral order.
For example, one of the classic examples of normative ethics is the “Golden Rule”-
- “We should do to others what we would want other to do to us”. Nobody wants others to hurt him/her mentally or physically or lie to him/her.
- We judge or evaluate human actions is right or wrong based on this rule.

Applied Ethics

It is one of the branches of ethics.
It deals with the analysis of specific moral issues like euthanasia, abortion, triple talaq and animal rights etc.
It uses moral reasoning to address present-day ethical dilemmas.
It deals with questions such as:
- Is Triple talaq immoral?
- Do animals have rights?
- Is surrogacy immoral? etc.
For an issue to be applied ethical issue, it should meet two conditions:
- It should be controversial with significant people for and against it.
- It must be a distinctly moral issue, not just a social controversy.