Ethics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the issue of morality. It implies the concepts of what right and wrong conducts are. Ethics define how a person should act in some specific situations. It is not a new term, but it has been there since the Stone Age. Different religions and many philosophers have also made a substantial contribution to ethics.
There are different branches of ethics. First of all, comes descriptive ethics. Descriptive ethics include what people actually consider right and wrong. Accordingly, laws are made regarding that and if they are even acceptable or not. The moral principles of society keep on changing from time to time. However, the basic ethics remain the same. Descriptive ethics are also called comparative ethics. They are given the name comparative ethics as they are used to compare the ethics of past and present scenarios. Also, they are used to compare the ethics of different societies as well.
Then comes the next branch of ethics- Normative Ethics. Normative Ethics deals with some specific norms or a set of considerations. These norms indicate how people should act in some given situations. These ethics set out the rightness or wrongness of people’s actions. Normative Ethics are also known as prescriptive ethics. This name is given as there are principles involved with these ethics and those principles determine whether the actions of people are right or wrong in different situations.
Types of ethics :
1. Deontological Ethics :
* In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself
* Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to discern the moral course of action. Diffusion of responsibility. Diffusion of responsibility occurs when people fail
* Deontology morality is about following a system of rules, like ” Do Not Lie ” or ” Do Not Steal” .
* Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending Deontological ethics.
2. Utilitarianism :
* The most common example of normative ethical theories are utilitarianism, kantian duty- based ethics and divine command theory.
* utilitarianism means, act in your own self- interest. Utilitarianism is that which is moral only if the act produces the greatest.
* Utilitarianism is a moral theory that implements fair choices is an effort to ensure the least amount of harm is done to all parties involved.
* However, some contemporary utilitarians , such as peter singer, are concerned with maximizing the satisfaction of preferences, hence prefernce utilitarianism.
* utilitarianism is an ethical theory that asserts that right and wrong are best determined by focusing on outcomes.
3. Consequentialism :
* consequentialism refers to moral theories that hold the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action.
* consequentialism is a class of normative, teleological ethical theories that holds that the consequences of one’s conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment.
* consequentialism is an ethical theory that judges an action’s moral correctness by its consequenes. Corporate social Responsibility.
* on our definition of consequentialism, only the direct view is a genuinely consequentialist position, and rule consequentialism.
4. Professional Ethics :
* Rules imposed on an employee in a company, or as member of a profession. For instance, journalists, doctors, lawyers. Etc.
* professional ethics encompass the personal and corporate standards of behavior expected by professionals.
5. Applied ethics :
* Applied ethics is the branch of ethics which consists of the analysis od specific, controversial moral issues such ad abortion, animal rights, or euthanasia.
*Applied Ethics includes a philosophical examination of certain public and private life problems. The examination of those issues generally takes place from a moral standpoint. This branch of ethics is generally used by professions like doctors, teachers, etc.
* Applied ethics which deals with the actual application of ethical priniciples to a particular situation. While it is helpful to approach the field of ethics.
6. Virtue Ethics :
* virtue ethics is an approach to ethics that emphasizes an individual’s character as the key element of ethical thinking, rather than rules about the acts themselves.
* virtue ethics not only idea deals with the rightness or wrongness of individual actions, it provides guidenece as to the sort of characteristics and behaviour a good person will seek to achieve.
An abstract way of analyzing ethics is called Meta-Ethics. They do not deal with whether the actions are right or wrong, rather they question what morality is.
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