Ethics

Ethics is a major branch of Philosophy dating back at least to the ancient Greek Philosophers cogitations on "virtue", and almost certainly predates them significantly. It appears that since essentially the dawn of time, humans of every culture have evaluated their own qualities, behaviors and standards of "right and wrong" and have sought to define them in a logical and philosophical sense. Some of the notable classical western thinkers on the subject have been Socrates/Plato, Aristotle, Epictitus, Augustine of Hippo, Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Bentham, Mill, Hume,and Nietzsche.

Secular thinkers have included Moses, Jesus Christ, and Muhammad on this list of thinkers, however they are often excluded. The exclusion is supportable only to the extent that although conventional thought is that they "brought" certain moral and ethical teachings, they were not the actual source of the teachings themselves (see Religion and Ethics below). In eastern philosophy, Laozi and Buddha are among the major sources of teachings on the subject, but in general when the word ethics is used it is done so in the western philosophical context (which is natural since it is indeed a linguistic descendant of the Greek word ethos).

Ethical behavioral standards and beliefs have in many contexts been loosely termed "the good life". It can be said that some general sense of agreement on ethical standards and values are one of the things that hold societies together. To this end societies have typically produced laws that specify required or forbidden behaviors and practices, although it has been argued that laws are actually more of a method of societal self-preservation than a set of fundamental societal ethical precepts. This is seen in the argument of legal positivism

Morality vs. Ethics

Philosophers have drawn various contrasts between "morality" and "ethics". In common usage the terms are more or less interchangable, although of the two "ethics" is the more nuanced and also more broadly defined.

Applied Ethics

Religion and Ethics

It has been suggested that the birth of ethics was in some sense coincident with the birth of religion. This is in the sense that once people began worshipping "God(s)", they began to attempt to bind themselves to a standard of conduct that would be considered "good" by the divinity.

Cultural Relativism

When developing ethical philosophies, not all cultures have arrived at the same conclusions! Various cultures have differing ethical viewpoints on for instance; killing other human beings, stealing from other individuals/cultures, rape, and war. But what is common between all cultures (in the sense of a set of ethical standards) is that there is invariably some standard of conduct considered "right" (vs. wrong) for every culture one would care to examine. This disparity between what is considered "right and wrong" in different cultures has been termed cultural relativism.