Ethics principles and philosophical foundations

Ethics

In the study of philosophy, it is perhaps the study of ethics that is considered most interesting among all its branches, primarily because of the great variance and randomness in interpretation that it gives, whether one is thinking consciously of ethics as a form of philosophy or not.

As a branch of philosophy, ethics is considered interesting because it does not have a set of rules, and if there are rules, these are loosely interpreted and subject to the individual's interpretation and highly dependent on his/her eventual behavior after interpreting an event to be ethical or unethical, based on his/her beliefs and values. As defined formally, ethics is the "study of...standards as we use or propose to judge such things." It is different from morality, which is defined as the determination of the rightness or wrongness of an action or behavior (Newall, 2005). Ethics is more complex than morality because it is not a concept that can be easily defined and polarized, as it is an idea that is fluid in its meaning.

It is this 'fluidity' in meaning and interpretation that makes ethics not only interesting as a branch of philosophy. Ethics is interesting because it is value-laden and time-dependent: changes in these factors highly influence the ethical interpretation of an event, action, or human behavior. A set of values considered to be deviant ten years ago might no longer be applicable today, and 'progressive thinking' paved the way for these perceived deviant beliefs and actions to become part of the norm that society deems acceptable and normative today. This dynamic quality of ethics as a field of philosophical study keeps it from developing further, making it complicated, yet, timely and responsive to the evolving human nature and the social environment it creates everyday.