2005 Handbooks

Ethics or moral philosophy is the systematic endeavour to understand moral concepts and to justify moral principles and theories.

One central area of moral philosophy, often called 'normative ethics', is very practical in orientation. It seeks to come up with systematic answers to questions such as these: What is the right thing to do? How should we live? What is the ultimate good in life? Normative ethical theories strive to provide us with a comprehensive guide to ethical conduct. In the second part of this unit, we will explore and evaluate the major contemporary normative ethical theories.

As well as offering theories about how we should live and act, moral philosophers have also been concerned to understand the nature and status of morality itself. What is morality? What are we really doing when we make moral claims and when we engage in moral debate? Can an objective foundation for morality be found; and, if so, where? Or are morals just a matter of what individuals or societies think or feel? Might the whole business of morality and moralising be nothing more than a sham or illusion? What is the nature of the connection, if any, between moral beliefs and motivation and action? In the first part of the unit we consider and evaluate the major schools of thought on these, and related, meta-ethical questions.