Ethics helps. Ethics, its subject and structure. A Brief History of Ethics

Man is a social being, therefore, willy-nilly, he has to constantly communicate with other people. And given the fact that all people are different, certain rules were formed to regulate our relationships. These rules are nothing more than centuries-old concepts of good and evil, right and wrong actions, justice and injustice of actions. And every person spontaneously or consciously tries to adhere to them. Depending on what concepts are included in moral norms and ethical rules, and whether they are taken into account at all, each of us can make it difficult or easier to communicate with our own kind. And, therefore, the speed of achieving your goals, the quality of communication and life will depend on this. Therefore, every citizen needs to know at least the basics of ethics. The rules of good manners have never harmed anyone.

What is ethics

The word “ethics” was first used by Aristotle. Translated from Greek, it means “concerning morality” or “expressing certain moral beliefs.” Ethics is the doctrine of the rules of communication between people, the norms of human behavior, as well as the responsibilities of everyone towards other people. And most of us, even those who have not specifically studied the code of etiquette, are aware on a subconscious level of the main rule of interpersonal relationships: “Treat others the way you would like to be treated.” One of the main aspects of ethics is morality. What is morality? This is nothing more than a system of values recognized by man. This is the most important way to regulate relationships in different areas of our lives: in everyday life, family, work, science, etc. In addition to moral foundations, ethics also studies the rules of ethics - etiquette.

Etiquette - a system of signs

Our actions carry some information: when we meet, we can pat a friend on the shoulder, nod our head, kiss, hug someone by the shoulders, or throw ourselves into a hug. A pat on the shoulder indicates familiarity; when a man stands up, if a woman enters the room, this indicates his respect for her. The postures taken by a person, the movement of the head - all this also has etiquette significance. In phraseological units one can also observe forms of etiquette: hitting with the forehead, bowing one’s head, kneeling, turning one’s back, throwing down a glove, putting one’s hand on one’s heart, stroking the head, bowing, a beautiful gesture, etc.

Etiquette is not only a historical, but also a geographical phenomenon: not all signs of etiquette that are perceived positively in the West will be approved in the East. And some gestures that are acceptable today were categorically condemned in the old days.

Rules of good manners

Every person should know what ethics is and what rules it includes. Below we will present the basic concepts of good manners.

The communication that we allow ourselves at home with loved ones is not always acceptable in society. And remembering the statement that you will not have a second chance to make a first impression, we try to adhere to generally accepted rules of behavior in society when meeting strangers. Here are some of them:

in a company or at an official meeting, it is necessary to introduce strangers to each other;
try to remember the names of the people introduced to you;
when a man and a woman meet, a representative of the fairer sex is never introduced first, the exception being the situation if the man is the president or the meeting is of a purely business nature;
the younger ones are presented as the older ones;
when presenting, you must stand up if you are sitting;
after an acquaintance, the conversation starts with someone older in position or age, with the exception of the case when an awkward pause occurs;
finding yourself with strangers at the same table, before you start eating, you need to get to know your neighbors;
When shaking hands, look into the face of the person you are greeting;
the palm should be extended strictly vertically, edge down - this means “communication as equals”;
remember that any non-verbal gesture means no less than the spoken word;
when shaking hands on the street, be sure to take off your gloves, with the exception of women;
When meeting, the first question after greeting should be “How are you?” or “How are you?”;
during a conversation, do not raise questions that may be unpleasant to the interlocutor;
do not discuss anything that concerns opinions and tastes;
don't praise yourself;
watch the tone of the conversation, remember that neither work, nor family relationships, nor your mood give you the right to be impolite with others;
It is not customary to whisper in a company;
if, when saying goodbye, you know that you will meet soon, you should say: “Goodbye!”, “See you!”;
when saying goodbye forever or for a long time, say: “Goodbye!”;
at an official event you must say: “Allow me to say goodbye!”, “Let me say goodbye!”.

Teaching children secular ethics

In order for a child to grow into a worthy member of society, he must know what ethics is. The child must not only be told about the rules of behavior in society, at the table, at school, but also demonstrate and confirm these rules by his own example. No matter how much you tell your child that it is necessary to give up your seat to older people in public transport, without setting an example for him, you will never teach him to do this. Not every child is taught the basics of secular ethics at home. Therefore, the school is trying to fill this gap. Recently, the school curriculum has included the subject “Fundamentals of Secular Ethics.” During the lessons, children are taught about the rules and norms of behavior in various places, taught culinary etiquette, proper table setting and much more. Teachers also talk about moral principles and discuss what is good and bad. This item is extremely necessary for the child. After all, knowing how to behave correctly in society will make life easier and more interesting for him.

What's happened

There is such a thing as a code of professional ethics. These are the rules governing professional activities. Each profession has its own code. So, doctors have a rule of non-disclosure of medical confidentiality, lawyers, businessmen - everyone adheres to a code of ethics. Every self-respecting company has its own corporate code. Such enterprises value their reputation more than their finances.

Conclusion

A man without etiquette is a savage, a barbarian. It is the rules of morality that give a person the right to consider himself the crown of creation. By teaching your child what ethics is from an early age, you increase his chances of growing up to be a full-fledged member of society.

Many people are interested what is ethics and how it can help modern man, since not many follow the laws and rules of ethics learned in school. Many do not even remember all the rules of ethics, since it was taught in school theoretically, without practical examples. Ethics should be learned by every person from a child to an elderly person in a practical way. Children should not be forced to learn terms that have no meaning or application.

In the article you will learn what it is ethics and how it can help modern man, since ethics is the way to teach people how to behave and communicate with each other correctly. Our selfishness has reached its peak, since today people often communicate for profit.

Ethicsis a science and subject that studies the correct behavior of a person, manner of communication and useful habits. Without learning ethics in a practical way, people become uneducated, even if they had good grades in these subjects. Everyone needs ethics, but not as a scientific manual, but as real instructions on how to behave and communicate correctly.

Ethics of business communication - ethics of business relations

There is also ethics of business communication, business ethics, which talks about how to properly communicate with other people. The most important thing is to learn to listen carefully to your interlocutor and maintain a conversation. When you maintain communication, you will be respected and trusted. If you interrupt and start talking a lot and listening little, you get nothing and don’t develop. The fastest and best source of information is communication.

Ethics and aesthetics – ethics of communication

The most important thing is to study ethics and immediately apply its knowledge in practice. This way you will learn the material faster and learn to live correctly and gain self-confidence. Because it is those people who live correctly, know how to communicate and behave, who become confident, sociable and successful people.

psycho- olog. ru

“ORKSE “Secular Ethics”” - Virtue and Vice. What is etiquette? Values. Features of morality. Friendship. The golden rule of morality. Moral duty. Russia is our Motherland. Models of morality. Justice. Altruism and egoism. Freedom and moral choice. Conscience. Shame, guilt and apologies. Rod and family. Family holidays. Culture and morality.

“Ethical morality” - Topic 2 Ethics of merchandising activities. The concept of ethics. Highest moral values. Ethical culture. The concept of morality. The task of ethics. The purpose of ethics. Moral standards. Translated from Greek, “ethics” means custom, morality. Features of morality. Ethical culture of service.

“Ethics Course” - Subject. History of morality. Ethics of political activity. Key concepts. Knowledge requirements. Structure. Political ethics. Humanistic ethics. Ethics. Educational material. Presentation materials for the course “Ethics”. The doctrine of the moral standards of society. Self-test tasks. Fundamentals of humanistic ethics.

“Ethics at school” - Morality. Expected results. Moral education. Pedagogical directions of educational influence. The teacher's appeal to knowledge. Pedagogical principles of ethical education. Educational potential. A course in secular ethics. Ethical lesson. Partnership interaction. Age characteristics of younger adolescents.

“Ethics” - Expectations for a specific role. Organizational ethics. EXPECTATIONSExpectations. Socio-cultural factors. What should an employee or manager be like? Improve yourself. Subject. Formation of moral competence. Ethical infrastructure. Three meanings of the concept “ethics”: As an individual, as a person, subjectively. Ethics of care.

“Secular Ethics” - What values underlie your family’s traditions? Consult with your parents and name a few traditions accepted in your family. Most people are honest, hardworking, caring, capable of love and friendship. Preparing to talk with family members. B) How does a person develop? Culture is the level of development of society, creative powers and abilities of a person.

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Ancient philosophers studied the behavior of people and their relationships with each other. Even then, such a concept as ethos ("ethos" in ancient Greek) appeared, meaning living together in a house. Later they began to designate a stable phenomenon or sign, for example, character, custom.

The subject of ethics as a philosophical category was first used by Aristotle, giving it the meaning of human virtues.

History of ethics

Already 2500 years ago, great philosophers identified the main character traits of a person, his temperament and spiritual qualities, which they called ethical virtues. Cicero, having become acquainted with the works of Aristotle, introduced a new term “morality”, to which he attached the same meaning.

The subsequent development of philosophy led to the emergence of a separate discipline - ethics. The subject (definition) studied by this science is morality and ethics. For quite a long time, these categories were given the same meanings, but some philosophers distinguished them. For example, Hegel believed that morality is the subjective perception of actions, and morality is the actions themselves and their objective nature.

Depending on the historical processes taking place in the world and changes in the social development of society, the subject of ethics constantly changed its meaning and content. What was characteristic of primitive people became unusual for the inhabitants of the ancient period, and their ethical standards were criticized by medieval philosophers.

Pre-antique ethics

Long before the subject of ethics as a science was formed, there was a long period that is commonly called “pre-ethics.”

One of the most prominent representatives of that time can be called Homer, whose heroes had a set of positive and negative qualities. But he has not yet formed a general concept of which actions are considered virtue and which are not. Neither the Odyssey nor the Iliad are instructive in nature, but are simply a narrative about events, people, heroes and gods who lived at that time.

For the first time, basic human values as a measure of ethical virtue were voiced in the works of Hesiod, who lived at the beginning of the class division of society. He considered the main qualities of a person to be honest work, justice and legality of actions as the basis of what leads to the preservation and increase of property.

The first postulates of morality and morality were the statements of the five sages of antiquity:

respect your elders (Chilo);
avoid falsehood (Cleobulus);
Glory to the gods, and honor to parents (Solon);
observe moderation (Thales);
pacify anger (Chilo);
promiscuity is a flaw (Thales).

These criteria required certain behavior from people, and therefore became the first for people of that time. Ethics, as well as the task of which is the study of man and his qualities, was just emerging during this period.

Sophists and ancient sages

Since the 5th century BC, the rapid development of sciences, arts and architecture began in many countries. Never before had such a large number of philosophers been born; various schools and movements were formed that paid great attention to the problems of man, his spiritual and moral qualities.

The most significant at that time was the philosophy of Ancient Greece, represented by two directions:

Amoralists and sophists who denied the creation of moral requirements obligatory for all. For example, the sophist Protagoras believed that the subject and object of ethics is morality, a fickle category that changes under the influence of time. It belongs to the category of relative, since each nation at a certain period of time has its own moral principles.
They were opposed by such great minds as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, who created the subject of ethics as a moral science, and Epicurus. They believed that the basis of virtue was harmony between reason and emotions. In their opinion, it was not given by the gods, and therefore is a tool that allows one to separate good deeds from evil ones.

It was Aristotle, in his work “Ethics”, who divided the moral qualities of a person into 2 types:

ethical, that is, associated with character and temperament;
dianoetic - relating to the mental development of a person and the ability to influence passions with the help of reason.

According to Aristotle, the subject of ethics is 3 doctrines - about the highest good, about virtues in general and in particular, and the object of study is man. It was he who introduced the idea that morality (ethics) are acquired properties of the soul. He developed the concept of a virtuous person.

Epicurus and the Stoics

In contrast to Aristotle, Epicurus put forward his hypothesis of morality, according to which only the life that leads to the satisfaction of basic needs and desires is happy and virtuous, because they are easily achieved, which means they make a person serene and satisfied with everything.

The Stoics left the deepest mark on the development of ethics after Aristotle. They believed that all virtues (good and evil) are inherent in a person just as in the world around them. The goal of people is to develop in themselves qualities that correlate with goodness and eliminate the evil inclination. The most prominent representatives of the Stoics were Zeno in Greece, Seneca and Rome.

Medieval ethics

During this period, the subject of ethics is the promotion of Christian dogmas, since religious morality began to rule the world. The highest goal of man in the medieval era was service to God, which was interpreted through Christ’s teaching about love for him.

If ancient philosophers believed that virtues are a property of any person and his task is to increase them on the side of good in order to be in harmony with himself and the world, then with the development of Christianity they became a divine grace, which the Creator endows people with or not.

The most famous philosophers of that time are Augustine the Blessed and Thomas Aquinas. According to the first, the commandments were originally perfect, since they came from God. The one who lives according to them and glorifies the Creator will go to heaven with him, and the rest are destined for hell. Also, St. Augustine argued that such a category as evil does not exist in nature. It is committed by people and angels who have turned away from the Creator for the sake of their own existence.

Thomas Aquinas went even further, declaring that bliss during life is impossible - it is the basis of the afterlife. Thus, the subject of ethics in the Middle Ages lost contact with man and his qualities, giving way to church ideas about the world and the place of people in it.

New ethics

A new round of development of philosophy and ethics begins with the denial of morality as the divine will given to man in the Ten Commandments. For example, Spinoza argued that the Creator is nature, the cause of all things, acting according to its own laws. He believed that there is no absolute good and evil in the world around us, there are only situations in which a person acts in one way or another. It is the understanding of what is useful and what is harmful for the preservation of life that determines the nature of people and their moral qualities.

According to Spinoza, the subject and tasks of ethics are the study of human shortcomings and virtues in the process of seeking happiness, and they are based on the desire for self-preservation.

On the contrary, he believed that the core of everything is free will, which is part of moral duty. His first law of morality says: “Act in such a way as to always recognize in yourself and others the rational will not as a means to an achievement, but as an end.”

The evil (selfishness) initially inherent in a person is the center of all actions and goals. To rise above it, people must show full respect for both their own and others' personality. It was Kant who revealed the subject of ethics briefly and clearly as a philosophical science that stood apart from its other types, creating formulas for ethical views on the world, state and politics.

Modern ethics

In the 20th century, the subject of ethics as a science is morality based on non-violence and reverence for life. The manifestation of good began to be viewed from the perspective of the non-increase of evil. Leo Tolstoy revealed this side of the ethical perception of the world through the prism of good especially well.

Violence begets violence and increases suffering and pain - this is the main motive of this ethics. It was also adhered to by M. Gandhi, who sought to make India free without the use of violence. In his opinion, love is the most powerful weapon, acting with the same force and precision as the basic laws of nature, such as gravity.

Nowadays, many countries have come to understand that the ethics of nonviolence gives more effective results in resolving conflicts, although it cannot be called passive. It has two forms of protest: non-cooperation and civil disobedience.

Ethical values

One of the foundations of modern moral values is the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer, the founder of the ethics of reverence for life. His concept was respect for all life without dividing it into useful, higher or lower, valuable or worthless.

At the same time, he recognized that, due to circumstances, people can save their own lives by taking someone else’s. His philosophy is based on a person’s conscious choice to protect life, if the situation allows it, and not thoughtlessly taking it away. Schweitzer considered self-denial, forgiveness and service to people to be the main criteria for preventing evil.

In the modern world, ethics as a science does not dictate rules of behavior, but studies and systematizes common ideals and norms, a general understanding of morality and its significance in the life of both an individual and society as a whole.

Morality concept

Morality is a sociocultural phenomenon that forms the fundamental essence of humanity. All human activities are based on ethical standards recognized in the society in which they live.

Knowledge of moral rules and ethical behavior helps individuals adapt among others. Morality is also an indicator of the degree to which a person is responsible for his actions.

Ethical and spiritual qualities are cultivated from childhood. From theory, through right actions towards others, they become a practical and everyday aspect of human existence, and their violation is condemned by the public.

Objectives of ethics

Since ethics studies its place in the life of society, it solves the following problems:

describes morality from the history of formation in ancient times to the principles and norms characteristic of modern society;
gives a description of morality from the position of its “ought” and “real” version;
teaches people basic knowledge about good and evil, helps to improve themselves when choosing their own understanding of the “correct life”.

Thanks to this science, the ethical assessment of people's actions and their relationships is built with a focus on understanding whether good or evil is achieved.

Types of ethics

In modern society, the activities of people in numerous spheres of life are very closely connected, therefore the subject of ethics considers and studies its various types:

family ethics deals with the relationships between people in marriage;
business ethics - norms and rules of doing business;
corporate studies relationships in a team;
trains and studies the behavior of people in their workplace.

Today, many countries are implementing ethical laws regarding the death penalty, euthanasia and organ transplantation. As human society continues to evolve, so do ethics.

Most domestic and foreign universities teach such an interesting discipline as ethics. Well, very few students find it interesting. But in vain!

Let's figure out why ethics is so important, in what areas of life you can't do without it, and also what will happen if it doesn't exist.

Global hysteria

There are frequent statements in political circles that today there is a severe decline in values. Increasingly, you can hear that people need to create a new morality in order to avoid violence and acts of vandalism.

Let's look at the suburbs of Paris, where it has become the order of things to show one's protest by bursting out with rage, adrenaline, and destroying everything around.

People in power complain about the loss of morality, while they themselves are often the reasons for the destruction of structures of social solidarity. What led to this?

Democratization of education,
devaluation of employment conditions, labor protection,
condemning "anti-social" behavior of young people without any further action,
lack of support for patriotic feelings and much more.

All this leads to a hectic pace of life, because people are left to themselves and are independently responsible for their own destiny. So they try to achieve everything and more in the short period of time allotted to them by fate.

Bottom line: there are more and more hysterical people in the world, suffering from their own limitations. Their distinctive feature is short-term planning, chaotic actions without any connection to the future.

And ethics is precisely the science that tries to instill in people the desire for leisure: for a slow lifestyle, art, and the thought process. After all, it is in slow thinking that plans for the future, forecasting, and modeling of situations are born.

In the modern world, market competition reigns as a model of behavior and social interaction. People begin to fear becoming replaceable, which is why the pace of life accelerates. And as a result, all this leads to the above-mentioned decline in values.

The task of ethics is to strengthen resistance to this process, to help a person get out of the networks of such fear and learn to live in peace with himself and the environment.

Now let's talk about everything in order.

The concept and subject of ethics

The concept of ethics came to us from ancient Greek (Greek ἠθικόν, from ancient Greek ἦθος - ethos, “character, custom”).

Ethics is a philosophical discipline. The subject of research and study of ethics is morality and ethics.

This doctrine was created with slightly different goals. The meaning of the word "ethos" has been interpreted as rules for cohabitation, norms for social unity, the fight against aggressiveness and individualism . But with the development of society, the study was added here:

good and evil,
friendship,
sympathy,
self-sacrifice,
the meaning of life.

Today, synonyms for the concept of ethics are mercy, friendship, justice, solidarity - any concepts that guide the moral development of relationships and social institutions.

An interesting fact is that ethics is characteristic only of human society and its analogues are completely absent in the animal world

As for ethics as a discipline, there is the following definition:

Ethics is a field of knowledge, and the subject of ethics as a science (that is, what it studies) is morality and ethics.

Sometimes ethics is understood as a system of moral and ethical values within a particular society .

In the work program of the discipline “ethics” you can also find the main problems:

The problem of the concepts of good and evil, vices and virtues;
The problem of the purpose of people on earth and the meaning of life;
The problem of free will;
The problem of the concept of “should” and the combination of this concept with the natural desire for happiness.

As you already understand, smart and cunning people skillfully use the errors between these concepts to push people off the right path. However, everyone has their own right path. Ethics refers to disciplines that only help a person find it, in no case indicating the only correct option.

By the way! For our readers there is now a 10% discount on any type of work

Classification of ethical values

According to Hartmann, all moral values can be divided into:

basic - are the basis of all other values, include goodness and the neighboring values of nobility, purity and completeness;
private – values-virtues.

Private values are divided in turn into three large groups:

The values of ancient morality: wisdom, justice, self-control, courage. Here are Aristotelian values based on the principle of the mean.
The values of the “cultural circle of Christianity”: sincerity and truthfulness, love for one’s neighbor, fidelity, hope, faith and trust, humility, modesty, distance, the value of external behavior.
Other values: giving virtue, love of the distant, personal love.

A Brief History of Ethics

We have already found out what ethics studies as a science and academic discipline, what its object, subjects, tasks and goals are. But when and why did this science arise? Why was it necessary to single her out? At what point did the need for ethics as an academic discipline arise?

Back in the 5th century. BC. the sophists discovered that the laws of nature do not coincide with the manifestations of culture. Natural necessity is the same everywhere, but human morals, customs and laws are different everywhere.

In this regard, the problem of comparing different morals and laws arose in order to find out which of them is the best.

An interesting fact is that as soon as people began the process of comparison, it immediately became clear: numerous morals and laws, changing not only from people to people, but also from generation to generation, are also interpreted differently depending on the justification. Reason is the only source of their justification.

This idea was quickly picked up by Socrates and Plato and began to be developed further.

Even at the stage of its emergence, it immediately became clear that ethics cannot be considered in isolation from philosophy.

Aristotle designated ethics as a special branch of practical philosophy, since it tries to answer the question: what should we do? The thinker himself considered happiness to be the main goal of moral behavior. Then this word was understood as the activity of the soul in the fullness of virtue or self-realization - reasonable actions, far from extremes and adhering to the golden mean. And the main virtues of Aristotle's teachings were prudence and moderation.

Plato's student was also confident that the subject and main tasks of ethics lay not in knowledge itself, but in the actions of people. And here, as a transparent thread, there was an inextricable connection between what the good was and how to achieve it.

The starting point of this science is not principles, but the experience of social life. That is why there cannot be the same precision that is inherent in mathematics, for example. The truth here can be established only in general terms, approximately.

Aristotle taught that there are different goals, forming a hierarchy. There must be a higher, final end that is to be desired in itself and not seen as a means to some other end. It is this that is the highest good and can determine the measure of perfection of the individual and social institutions. The highest good is happiness, which requires external goods, as well as Madame luck. But to a large extent it will depend on spiritual work - on activity correlated with virtue. And the subject of study and the purpose of ethics as a science according to Aristotle is the property of the soul to act in the image of virtues.

In a broad sense, ethics is a science that sets the basis for economics and politics.

It is from ethics that the golden rule came to us: do not do to others what you do not want for yourself! Many people think that it is biblical, but in fact it has existed in different cultures since ancient times, found in the Mishnah and Confucius.

Ethical theories continued to evolve, and philosophers began to experience some difficulty in using unified terms. The fact is that in different teachings completely different concepts were declared basic.

The subject of religious ethics in cultures with a personified God is God himself - this is the subject of morality. Then the basis is the norms that religion has declared divine by order. And the ethics of social relations as a system of moral obligations to society is replaced by divine ethics - a system of moral obligations to God. And sometimes this fact can be the cause of a conflict (social or even mass) with the morality of society.

Modern ethics

In modernity there is a place for both nihilism and the expansion of ethical concepts. The concept of goodness moves to relationships with nature and the scientific sphere (biocentric ethics and bioethics).

As feminism developed, ethics began to be interpreted from a gender perspective. Now abstract humanity and humanity as virtues are grouped along the lines of masculinity and femininity.

The ethics of nonviolence, founded by Tolstoy and Gandhi, is continued in the ideas of Albert Schweitzer, who described in his book the history of this science and its state in the 20th century, and also suggested ways for its further development.

But Teilhard de Chardin took a different path. He draws clear parallels between traditional ethics and the theory of evolution.

Other sciences also made their own changes to ethics. Developing medicine and biotechnology have caused the rapid development of bioethics, which analyzes the complex ethical difficulties that arise when making judicial, legal, medical and other decisions.

It’s rare today that people haven’t heard of the “prisoner’s dilemma.” She is a prime example of the logical-mathematical aspects of moral choice that are studied in game theory.

Sections of ethics

Despite the fact that ethics is often viewed as a moral philosophy that indicates the path of worthy behavior, it is at the same time a system of knowledge about the nature and origin of morality. That is why there are two subjects and specifics of the task of ethics - moral-educational and cognitive-educational. As a consequence, two areas were identified in the second half of the 20th century, which took shape into two completely independent (but interrelated) disciplines:

Normative ethics – focuses on life science and theoretical ethics.
Theoretical ethics is aimed at understanding morality.
Practical ethics is the place of morality in the real lives of people.

Theoretical ethics

Theoretical ethics considers morality as a special social phenomenon, finds out what it is, how morality differs from other social phenomena.

The subject and object of the science is theoretical ethics - origin, historical development, patterns of functioning, social role and other aspects of morality. It is based on knowledge, ideas and concepts from the scientific knowledge of morality.

Ethics is not the only science whose subject area is morality:

Sociology and social psychology are busy studying the social function of morality and the rules it propagates in relation to other social phenomena.
Personality psychology studies the physiological basis of morality.
Linguistics and logic study the language of morality, forms and rules of normative and ethical logic.

These sciences also made a significant contribution to the development of ethics. The results of these studies form the basis of theoretical ethics, generalized and used by it.

Within theoretical ethics we should highlight metaethics .

Metaethics is a direction of analytical ethics within which ethics itself is analyzed as a scientific discipline.

The first sensible study in metaethics is considered to be the work “Principles of Ethics” by George E. Moore. The subject and tasks of metaethics as a science are the study of questions about the subject, structure, and purpose of ethics in dictionaries, textbooks and reference books.

Within the framework of metaethics, one can distinguish such a direction as noncognitivism - a doctrine that questions the cognitive status of ethics, the knowability of ethical concepts due to their uncertainty and the very fact of the admissibility of its existence as a science. Through this discipline, metaethics seeks to objectively study various ethical concepts.

Normative ethics

The subject of normative ethics is the search for a principle that regulates human behavior, guides his actions, establishes criteria for assessing moral goodness and a rule that could act as a general principle, a model for all subsequent cases.

The purpose of normative ethics is to maintain fundamental moral values in society, to create norms of behavior in everyday life situations by appealing to reason; this section of ethics uses reasons, arguments, and evidence. This is what makes it attractive to any critically thinking person, in contrast to moralizing.

Moral principles take the form of rational reasoning, which turns into internal feelings that motivate behavior.

And for moral concepts and assessments to acquire the status of inflexible, there are two main ways:

give them a mystical, divine meaning;
give a natural objective meaning.

From a noncognitivist perspective, normative ethics is an element of moral consciousness, not morality in general.

Normative ethics was preceded by such directions as stoicism, hedonism, epicureanism, and among modern ones - consequentialism, utilitarianism, deontology.

Applied ethics

Applied (or practical) ethics is concerned with the study of particular problems and the application of moral ideas and principles formulated in normative ethics in particular situations of moral choice.

This section of ethics is quite closely related to modern socio-political sciences and includes the following sections:

Bioethics.
Medical ethics.
Computer ethics.
Professional ethics.
Political ethics.
Social ethics.
Business ethics.
Environmental ethics.
Legal ethics.

Bioethics is the doctrine of the moral side of human activity in biology and medicine. The narrow side of this science considers all ethical problems between doctor and patient, ambiguous situations that constantly arise in practical medicine. And these problems need to be considered not only within the narrow medical community, but also among the general public. The broad side of the term is associated with the study of social, environmental, medical and socio-legal issues not only in relation to humans, but also to any living organisms. Here, bioethics is distinguished by its philosophical character, evaluating the fruits of labor and the development of new ideas and technologies in biology and medicine.

In general, we have studied the concept, subject, foundations and functions of ethics. And although students in universities do not attach due importance to this subject (the main blame for this lies on the shoulders of teachers who are unable to instill love and understanding of the discipline), we see how vitally important it is for all humanity.

However, this science is quite complex, and not everyone will like writing tests, term papers or diplomas in ethics. However, don’t worry, because there is always a proven student service nearby, ready to help in difficult times! Not for material benefit, but purely for ethical reasons ;-)