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Ethics

Is the purpose of ethics to seek out a universal code of right and wrong? or is it's purpose merely to justify or criticize actions based on subjective beliefs about right and wrong? or perhaps some third purpose?
Accepted:
January 26, 2012

Comments

Gordon Marino
February 6, 2012 (changed February 6, 2012) Permalink

Ethics is concerned with relations, our relations to others, ourselves, and the enviornment. I don't believe there is any purpose to ethics per se. Those who study ethics do it with different ends in mind. For Aristotle, the study of ethics was intended to improve your moral life -- make you a better and for him "happier" individual. Others are more concerned with how to decide right from wrong in particular cases- and so to be able to give some justification for their choices and actions.

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