What Is Ethics?

The general meaning of ethics is as follows:

“rational, optimal and appropriate decision brought on the basis of common sense”. This does not exclude the possibility of destruction if it is necessary and if it does not take place as the result of intentional malice. If, for example, there is the threat of physical conflict and one has no other solution, it is acceptable to cause the necessary extent of injury, out of self-defense.

There are confusing views on ethics.

Being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical.

Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical.

Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts." In any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Was Nazi Germany right and ethical?

What, then, is ethics?

Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty.
And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy.

Most importantly, they must be always supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.

Briefly, it is a set of principles of right conduct.

It is moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior; it is the moral correctness of specified conduct.