Understanding Ethics and Morality: Principles and Theories
Human actions, both individual and social, are regulated by legal rules, social norms, religious doctrines, and also by principles, values, and moral standards, whether rudimentary or sophisticated.
Ethics and Morality are terms that, by their etymology, refer to customs in terms of regulating human actions and the construction of the moral character of individuals and societies to dignify the human person and life. While morality studies and proposes specific codes and values, ethics, as a branch of philosophy, reflects on how human actions should be.
Elements of Moral Fact
We briefly recall the moral consideration regarding Human Action, understood as learned, rational, conscious, affective, intentional, and free activity performed by humans, considering their resources, circumstances, etc. Freedom is the backbone for discussing morality. The social aspect is crucial because human actions are learned and have moral implications. Standards and moral values are universal features. Moral obligation is the individual’s bond or attachment to something for a reason. Moral responsibility derives from moral obligation and signifies a need to respond. Autonomy and Heteronomy relate to all these aspects. Moral conscience, sometimes reviled, sometimes used in anger, refers to the individual’s ability to learn various factors and aspects.
Morality
Morality is a quality that applies to all elements constituting the moral fact: the actions taken, the duty and responsibility, and the commitment to the responsible use of freedom, to training, and all forms of expression. Morality is not always valid equally.
Key Ethical Theories
Ethics is considered a branch of philosophy with a practical dimension. It is a theoretical reflection on the components of the moral fact and on the features and elements of actions that give rise to multiple moral perspectives. These are some ethical theories:
Cognitivist Theories
These theories posit that humans can know morality.
- Material Ethics: Through human reason, universal moral values expressed in rules are discovered.
- Naturalist Ethics: The moral good or value is inherent in nature.
- Sociological Ethics: Morality is a social product that influences members of society. (Includes”Sociological Relativism””Cultural Relativism” and”Moral Skepticism”)
- Ethical Values: Values are objective and independent of the reality of things.
Ethics of Happiness
The moral action is one that seeks happiness as the supreme moral good or value.
- Eudaimonism: States that happiness is the supreme good, achieved through self-sufficiency.
- Autarky: Defends the radical freedom of the individual against rules and institutions. Its motto is”Living according to nature”
- Hedonistic Ethics: Morality is justified by pleasure. This includes Epicureanism (individual hedonism) and Utilitarianism (social hedonism).
Ethics of Justice
This group includes, among others, Formal Ethics, which criticize Material Ethics.
- Deontological Ethics (Ethics of Duty): For this ethics, moral standards are found in everyday life, and their formal features are rationality and universality.
Ethical Non-Cognitivism
These theories suggest morality is an irrational phenomenon that cannot be argued about, as it reports emotional states.
- Emotivism: The moral goodness or badness of an action is perceived from the feeling experienced, not because reason demonstrates it.
Concluding Thoughts
The diversity of theories can lead to confusion. Which path should one choose? Moralizing concretely is not difficult, but justifying it with definitive answers is challenging. Belief in human society is paramount.