Morality: Ethics

In my previous post, I emphasized some various views of morality, which is contrast to Christians view. As I have thought about ethics, it is important to know first the different areas of study, which focus on morality. The word “ethics” and “morals” are commonly used interchangeably. When we used the word “ethics” it means according to dictionary “the discipline dealing with what is good and bad or right and wrong or with moral duty and obligation.” the meaning of ethics enforces us the importance of morality that gives significant throughout our lives.

The ethical issues and chooses in life are not only present but it is part of our daily lives. The care of following our moral views in life was tested if we are surrounding with ethical issues that deals about life and death. There are many ethical decisions that every human being would be able to face. However, if that ethical decision connects to ones life, the moral view is the most important component needed for every decision we make.

Ethics has at least four different areas of study, which focus on morality. Two of them are nonnormative and the other two are normative. Nonnormative does not seek to prescribe what ought/ought not to be done. The normative do seek to offer guides for determining right/wrong actions, attitudes, and motives.

Under the two nonnormative they have descriptive morality and metaethics approached to study morality. The descriptive ethics is a factual study of moral attitudes, behavior, rules and motives, which are embodied in various individual and cultures. The metaethics involves two main areas of investigation. First, metaethics focuses on the meaning and reference of right/wrong, good/bad, ought/ought not, duty, and so on. A second view is metaethical relativism, which translates to two concepts the naturalist, and nonnaturalists view. The ethical naturalist claims that all behavior is to be followed by the laws of nature. If this is true then it follows that objective morality is non-binding which makes the nature of God irrelevant in our society. For ethical nonnaturalists would claim that all virtues in life are the objectives themselves. Virtuousness is the reference of morality. One illustration is love. Love is virtuous act; it makes love itself as the binding reference of morality instead of God for which God is love. It really shows that metaethics does not give us explicit principles that aid us in determining what is the right or wrong course of action to take in a situation. Metaethics primary focus is to give a conceptual analysis of the meaning of moral terms and moral sentences.

The other area of ethics is the normative. Normative ethics proper seeks to formulate and defend basic moral principles, rules and systems, and virtues, which serve as guide for what actions ought/ought not to be taken, what motives ought/ought not to be embraced, and what kinds of persons we ought/ought not seek to be. The normative ethics is proper and applied ethics that we would use as a tool to investigate some specific moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment. The two normative ethical theories are Utilitarianism and deontological. These two theories will guide us to learn how to make an ethical decision before sighting my friend inquiry about euthanasia.