ethics

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that investigates what constitutes right and wrong conduct, good and bad character, and the justification of moral claims. It seeks to provide systematic methods for evaluating how people ought to act and why certain outcomes are considered acceptable or admirable. Ethics is distinct from law and from mere personal opinion, though it interacts with legal principles and social norms.

Normative ethics studies theoretical questions about what moral duties or rules should guide conduct, such as whether one should always tell the truth or help others in need. Meta-ethics investigates the nature of moral judgments, properties, and language, asking whether moral truths are objective, subjective, or constructed. Applied ethics uses these theories to address practical issues in fields like medicine, business, technology, and public policy.

Three dominant strands are deontology, which emphasizes duties and rules; consequentialism, which evaluates actions by their outcomes; and virtue ethics, which concentrates on the character and virtues of the actor. Other approaches include contractarianism and care ethics.

Many ethical discussions appeal to core principles such as autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, alongside respect for rights, fairness, and integrity. Ethical reasoning combines critical argument, consideration of consequences, and sensitivity to context, culture, and empirical evidence.

Ethics guides professional codes and institutional review processes; in medicine, it informs patient rights and consent; in business, it shapes corporate responsibility; in technology, it frames questions about privacy, bias, and safety. The history of ethics spans ancient philosophical traditions to modern secular and religious thought, with pivotal contributions from thinkers such as Kant, Mill, Aristotle, and contemporary debates across cross-disciplinary fields. Ethics is an ongoing, dynamic field as societies confront new challenges, requiring clear reasoning, dialogue, and justification.