Ethics, Philosophy and Language

Abstract

In one of its traditional usages, the word ‘ethics’ refers to a branch of philosophy in the same sense as the word ‘logic’ refers to another. Calling ethics a branch of philosophy is traditionally meant to do something more specific than simply describe ethics as philosophical thinking about moral issues and about the phenomena of human life which we call ethical. A branch of philosophy is usually defined by stating its tasks and its main questions, and it is perhaps symptomatic of the nature of the philosophical problems about ethics that many writers have felt a need to redefine its subject matter and to offer their own statements of its tasks and main questions. Ethics seems to be a branch of philosophy which more than other branches tends to call itself into question.

a man may be just and virtuous without having precise ideas of justice and virtue. The opinion that those and the like words stand for general notions, abstracted from all particular persons and actions, seems to have rendered Morality very difficult, and the study thereof of small use to mankind. (George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge, § 100)