What is Ethics?

Good afternoon everyone,

I hope that you’re all having a lovely day!

Philosophy is an area of study that I have loved delving into over the last year or so, and as I mentioned in my “Let’s talk about Ethical Perspectives” post, is something that I would love to start talking about here on Sweeney’s Blogs. We have already covered what we mean by the term ‘Ethical Perspectives”, so I think that the perfect place to go next would be to take a look at what we mean by ‘ethics’ 🙂

Hello & Welcome to Sweeney’s Blogs!

Ethics, sometimes referred to as moral philosophy, is a brand of philosophy that is associated with what we as people deem as good & bad in life. In other words, ethics is closely tied to what we see as the ‘morally right’ or ‘morally wrong’ actions that we can take in life.

Ethics plays a key role in human life, and can often help provide us with explanations & reasonings for the actions taken by people & society as a whole. Lots of people ground their decisions based off of what the ‘ethically right’ thing to do is, but when it comes down to questions of what’s right or wrong, it’s not always an easy thing to answer – sometimes we have several different ethical viewpoints on a matter, that will need to be discussed and debated to find a consensus on what action to take.

The field of moral philosophy has helped pave the way for an evergrowing list of philosophers, who each bring in their own theories, frameworks, models & beliefs over what the best ethical approach to life truly is. There are a vast number of moral theories, ranging from Utilitarianism to Deontology (we’ll take a look at both respectively in future blogs) that help provide us with a foundation on which to base our decisions.

Ethics helps us gain a deeper understanding of what we want as people, or sometimes what we think we want. It provides us with an opportunity to reflect on our values, to understand the way that we operate, as both people & society, and to help us determine the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong.

So there we have it, there is our brief introduction to what is meant by the term ‘Ethics’ in philosophy. I am really excited to start exploring the world of philosophy on the page, it can really open the doorway to loads of really interesting & thought-provoking discussions 🙂