Ethics

Introduction

Wherever people live and work together, they evaluate their own actions and those of others as good or bad, justified or unjustified, fair or unfair, and they ascribe to others and to themselves in particular situations the responsibility for doing what should be done and not doing what should not be done. The entirety of the rules that these evaluations follow in everyday life is characterized as morality. Anyone publicly violating them incurs the disdain of the others. Insofar as people acknowledge the existence of moral rules, they also judge themselves before their own conscience. Moral rules therefore have a high status in subjective experiencing, thinking, and acting. Morality, however, can also be misused in order to give others a bad conscience. It can likewise ...