Ethics – [Gr. tá ēthiká ‘treatise on customs’ < ḗthos ‘custom’, ‘character’], a term first used in the 4th century BCE by Aristotle in the title of his work Nicomachean Ethics to denote a descriptive-critical study of what pertains to ethos as human character or custom, i.e., the established way of behaving in one’s environment or place of residence.
In a general sense, ethics refers to the entirety of moral norms recognized at a certain time by a social group as a reference point for assessing and regulating conduct, aimed at integrating the group around certain values—a synonym for morality.
In a philosophical sense, ethics is the study of morality, considered separately in the following aspects:
- Normative: as the science of morality (normative ethics or proper ethics), and
- Descriptive-explanatory: as the science about morality (descriptive ethics or ethology).
Source: PWN Encyclopedia