Life in society requires certain rules that guide human conduct in order to guarantee good coexistence.
It is the moral values that determine right and wrong according to the culture, religion and taboos of that group. The set of these values is called moral.
Thus, the meaning of moral will be related to the orientation of individual conduct and customs, while ethics assesses the principles on which morality is based.
Ethics is an area of knowledge of philosophy that studies and reflects on moral rules.
Moral, Immoral and Amoral
A behavior is understood as moral when it adequately follows the rules in force in the group to which it belongs. However, the individual does not always agree with the norm imposed by the society in which he lives and starts to act immorally, following his own ethics. Furthermore, if the individual does not act based on this code of conduct because he does not know it, he is amoral.
Thus, amorality is distinguished from immorality. At first, a person does not consider moral values because he ignores them, does not judge them as good or bad. While in immorality, a person does not agree with such sets of rules, he knows them, but he challenges and acts out of private interests, immorally.
There are several situations of immorality that are based on an ethical reflection on the issue.
There are societies whose values determine male dominance and female submission. In these cases, for example, offensive acts to women are common. And, some people will be immoral if they do not act in accordance with these rules, but supported by a sense of social justice, in an ethical reflection they can contest an existing moral.
Moral Philosophy
Moral philosophy seeks to guide human actions, according to reason, so that they achieve the purposes they desire, always for the sake of good.
Each individual is free to choose good or evil. However, this freedom is affected by individual influences, such as temperament, age and vocations. They also receive social influences, such as education (family and institutional) and society (public opinion, fashions, dominant ideology).
According to Epicureanism, good is based on the rational use of pleasures, whereas for Stoicism, it consists of the exercise of virtues. In one doctrine or another, morality guides to guarantee good and avoid evil and thereby achieve a good and happy life.
However, in Kant’s theory, there is a moral of duty that guides the universality of actions. That is, actions are good if they can be applied in any context and situation.
ethic
The ethics is more than a field of knowledge, is related to the application of the concepts produced to human conduct, is therefore an applied science.
Each country has its own code of ethics, and each profession has its own.
Thus, while journalists defend freedom of expression as a basic rule of their work, doctors and nurses safeguard professional secrecy as ethical.
Sometimes, there may be clashes between “contrary” ethics. While scientists justify the use of laboratory animals in scientific research, animal rights activists are defending an ethics that equally considers the importance of all living things.