Morality

Morality is the subcategory of philosophy that deals with good/right and bad/wrong actions. The word finds its roots in the Latin word mores, meaning habits or manners. Only human behavior can be evaluated on moral grounds; thus, tools—such as weapons—are morally neutral, and only their use by humans can be morally good or bad.

The term morality is often used interchangeably with ethics, although some philosophers differentiate the two, with morality (or descriptive ethics) referring to the general norms constraining individuals or groups of people, and ethics divided into metaethics (or anterior ethics), dealing with the process through which norms appear, and applied ethics (or posterior ethics), referring to the practical application of morality in specific situations. This distinction can be disputed, yet it offers a ...