Ethics and Morals - Going Side by Side



Ethics and Morals - Going Side by Side

In everyday language, we commonly use the terms 'ethics' and 'morals' and sometimes interchange their meanings. Although, the distinction between these two is not clear enough till now. Hence, in order to find the difference between these two, we first have to go through the basic definitions of ethics as well as morals to gain a positive overview and differentiate them accordingly.

Ethics

Ethics is a Greek word (ethos) which indicates the habits, customs along with the norms of people. Ethics is the rules or standards according to which behavior of personnel is evaluated on the basis of morality. Consider a person having strong value and have attained sound achievement, as well as goals in his/her career. By knowing the values, we can get a general picture of the person's behavioral traits. However, we cannot assess whether one has cheated to achieve that goal or not. The latter dimension conceives the idea of ethics and morality. In order to have a further clear picture of ethics consider another example of an individual who has values of research, and (say) he has quite an insight on medical research. Now, whether this person is going to experiment on animals or detest such approaches for conducting the research? This is a million dollar question and depends solely on his/her ethical stance. Johansson (Shockley Z., 1999) has separated ethics from values and define ethics as, “Concepts such as material success, individualism, efficiency, thrift, freedom, courage, hard work, prudence, competition, patriotism, compromise, and punctuality all are value standards that have varying degrees of potency in contemporary American culture. We probably would not view them primarily as ethical standards of right and wrong. Ethical judgments focus more precisely on degrees of rightness and wrongness in human behavior. “He further says that the standards of fairness, honesty, and truthfulness are the key behavioral traits used to make ethical based judgments as regard to the rightness or wrongness of the person. However, being lazy, inefficient, late or even spendthrift does not define a person as unethical.

However, religions should not be mixed with ethics. Most of the religions on this very planet advocate high ethical behavior and standards and is sometimes a source of harmony. If ethics were confined to religions, it would be applicable only for the religious people. In the real case, it is not. Ethics applies to any atheist person the same way it is applicable on the religious person. Nevertheless, religion can be helpful in providing enhanced motivational force to set the person on the right path.

Ethics does not have a link with laws. Sometimes, laws incorporate ethical standards. Like feelings, laws can deviate from the sense of being ethical or unethical. The pre-Civil Wars' slavery laws and the apartheid laws in the South Africa are the examples which cannot be considered ethical in any frame of reference.

Being ethical means to do whatever is acceptable within society, most of ...