Methodological Considerations

Abstract

The traditional meaning of ethics is the study of the good for man, the ideal of individual conduct; and the traditional meaning of morality is the study of the use by a society of a given theory of ethics. These definitions have been somewhat degraded in the popular account, so that ethics has managed to combine a lofty level of high and rather abstract consideration with a kind of smug moralism, neither having much to do with the actual lives and practices of individuals and societies. Morality has come to mean chiefly a reference to sexual ethics, more specifically a certain puritanical attitude toward indulgence. In professional circles these days ethics refers chiefly to the making of moral judgments on preferential grounds, emotive theories confined to the corrections of errors in the use of moral language.