Right and Wrong: A Brief Look At Ethics
How Do We Ought to Live?
INTRODUCTION
Ethics is concerned about what we must do to live a good life. It asks What is right? and How should we act?Ethics has multiple branches, but rather than outline its complete history, I focused on fundamental concepts and their implications. Ethics is divided into four branches. Descriptive, Normative, Applied, and Meta-Ethics.
Descriptive ethics discusses what people believe to be right or wrong. Which actions are acceptable? And which things are punishable under the law?
Normative Ethics deals with sets of imperatives about how we should act. It is concerned with determining if an action is right or wrong.
Applied ethics refers to practical applications of moral theories. It tackles how our actions relate to the real world concerning moral considerations.
Lastly, Meta-Ethics deals with the origin of ethical concepts. It studies where our notion of right and wrong began. It does not tackle which actions are ethical or not, but it questions our very assumptions of what goodness is.
I found Normative Ethics the most interesting because it is where we learn moral theories. We also see how they are formed and understand how philosophers judge their soundness.
