1. Facts and acts |
1. Ethics and Morals
Ethics stands for Greek word ezos=custom, and Morals stand for Latin word mos=custom. Both words have the same meaning. Ethics and Morals are custom science, related not to animal habits but to human customs.
It is not a normal description about customs, but the study about what should be, what man must do.
Ethics can be defined as the science researching norms human behavior must conform to.
Every person, even children, knows what goodness and malice are, justice and injustice, generosity and selfish, etc. But this knowledge is not the same to everybody. Sometimes it becomes devalued, changes or it is rejected because of interests, selfishness, passions, etc.
That’s why spontaneous moral knowledge has to be elevated to reflexive one, and ethics deals exactly with that kind of knowledge.
Changes made in the physical world, in the chemical one, etc., are named facts, while changes which man performs are called acts.
The man performs some acts automatically, without an exercise of his will, such as breathing and digesting; and these are called acts of the man. But we perform other ones willingly, because we want to, such as reading, studying, giving charity, etc. and these are called human acts. Ethics deals with these last ones.