Ethics

What is the difference between ethics and morality?

Comments

There are systems of conduct that individuals or their societies aspire to live by, and then there is the philosophical study of these--that is, the attempt to answer questions such as whether there is really a universal right or wrong, whether (and if so, how) moral claims are grounded in facts, and so on. 'Morality' sometimes refers to the former, and 'ethics' to the latter; but this isn't standard, as far as I know. Sometimes 'ethics' is used to refer to the former, as in "I question his ethics".

A distinction is sometimes drawn between ethics as concerning all the values or goods that might be instantiated in a person's life (well-being, friendship, virtue of character, aesthetic qualities, and so on), and morality as the narrower domain of moral obligation only (right and wrong, what's forbidden and permitted, etc.). Bernard Williams thought that one of the problems with modernity and modern philosophy is an excessive focus on morality as opposed to ethics, the former being what he called 'the peculiar institution' (see his *Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy*, ch. 10). The Greek philosophers, he thought, had a broader conception, one we should try to share.

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