Ethics

By Crisp, Roger

What is ethics? First, the systems of value and custom instantiated in the lives of particular groups of human beings are described as the ethics of these groups. ...

Metaethics

By Finlay, Stephen

A tripartite distinction is often drawn in moral philosophy between (i) applied ethics, (ii) normative ethical theory, and (iii) metaethics. Applied ethics seeks answers to moral questions about ...

Emotion

By Richardson, Louise

As befits the variety of roles that emotion plays in our lives, emotion is a topic of consideration in a variety of areas of philosophy and this is ...

Aesthetics and ethics

By Tanner, Michael

The contrast between ethical and aesthetic judgments, which has provided a good deal of the subject-matter of aesthetics, stems largely from Immanuel Kant’s idiosyncratic view of morality as ...

Agricultural ethics

By Comstock, Gary L.

Agricultural ethics is the study of moral issues raised by farming. These include: human interference with the course of nature; the effects of certain agricultural practices on present ...

Akrasia

By Steward, Helen

The Greek word ‘akrasia’ is usually said to translate literally as ‘lack of self-control’, but it has come to be used as a general term for the phenomenon ...

Alterity and identity, postmodern theories of

By Fenves, Peter

Theories of alterity and identity can be said to be ‘postmodern’ if they challenge at least two key features of modern philosophy: (1) the Cartesian attempt to secure ...

Analytic ethics

By Railton, Peter

Moral philosophy has traditionally been divided into normative ethics and meta-ethics. Normative ethics concerns judgments about what is good and how we should act. Meta-ethics, with which ’analytic ...

Applied ethics

By Almond, Brenda

Applied ethics is marked out from ethics in general by its special focus on issues of practical concern. It therefore includes medical ethics, environmental ethics, and evaluation of ...

Applied ethics

Applied ethics is marked out from ethics in general by its special focus on issues of practical concern. It is concerned with ethical issues in various fields of ...

Aretē

By Sedley, David

A pivotal term of ancient Greek ethics, aretē is conventionally translated ‘virtue’, but is more properly ‘goodness’ – the quality of being a good human being. Philosophy ...

Asceticism

By Quinn, Philip L.

The term ‘asceticism’ is derived from the Greek word, askēsis, which referred originally to the sort of exercise, practice or training in which athletes engage. Asceticism may ...

Autonomy, ethical

By Reath, Andrews

The core idea of autonomy is that of sovereignty over oneself, self-governance or self-determination: an agent or political entity is autonomous if it is self-governing or self-determining. The ...

Axiology

By Smith, Barry; Thomas, Alan

Axiology is the branch of practical philosophy which studies the nature of value. Axiologists study value in general rather than moral values in particular and frequently emphasize the ...

Bioethics

By Frey, R.G.

While bioethics, a part of applied ethics, is usually identified with medical ethics, in its broadest sense it is the study of the moral, social and political problems ...

Bioethics, Jewish

By Zohar, Noam J.

Jewish bioethics seeks to apply Jewish modes of normative discourse in bioethics. For some moral issues in medicine, explicit guidance may be found in the traditional sources of ...

Business ethics

By Sorell, Tom

Business ethics is the application of theories of right and wrong to activity within and between commercial enterprises, and between commercial enterprises and their broader environment. It is ...

Business ethics

Business ethics is the application of ethical theories to activity within and between commercial enterprises, and between commercial enterprises and their broader environment. It is a wide range ...

Charity

By Hoose, Bernard

Within at least some branches of Christianity, the term ‘charity’ has been used to mean the love mandated by Jesus. In recent theological writings, however, there has been ...

Cheng

By Ivanhoe, Philip J.

In early Confucian writings, cheng describes the quality of authentically realizing or ‘completing’ a given thing’s true nature. It appears together with xin (trustworthiness), a character ...

Common-sense ethics

By Brown, Charlotte R.

‘Common-sense ethics’ refers to the pre-theoretical moral judgments of ordinary people. Moral philosophers have taken different attitudes towards the pre-theoretical judgments of ordinary people. For some they are ...

Community and communitarianism

By Buchanan, Allen

Reflections on the nature and significance of community have figured prominently in the history of Western ethics and political philosophy, both secular and religious. In ethics and political ...

Confucian philosophy, Chinese

By Cua, A.S.

Chinese Confucian philosophy is primarily a set of ethical ideas oriented toward practice. Characteristically, it stresses the traditional boundaries of ethical responsibility and dao, or the ideal ...

Conscience

By Dent, Nicholas

To have a conscience involves being conscious of the moral quality of what one has done, or intends to do. There are several elements under the idea of ...

Consequentialism

By McNaughton, David; Rawling, Piers

Consequentialism assesses the rightness or wrongness of actions in terms of the value of their consequences. The most popular version is act-consequentialism, which states that, of all the ...