
Ethics, morality, law – what’s the difference?
ArticleBig Thinkers + Explainers
BY The Ethics Centre 27 SEP 2016
Some people talk about their personal ethics, others talk about a set of morals, and everyone in a society is governed by the same set of laws. They can be easy to conflate.
Knowing the difference and relationship between them is important though, because they can conflict with one another. If the law conflicts with our personal values or a moral system, we have to act – but to do so we need to be able to tell the difference between them.
Ethics
Ethics is a branch of philosophy that aims to answer the basic question, “What should I do?” It’s a process of reflection in which people’s decisions are shaped by their values, principles, and purpose rather than unthinking habits, social conventions, or self-interest.
Our values, principles, and purpose are what give us a sense of what’s good, right, and meaningful in our lives. They serve as a reference point for all the possible courses of action we could choose. On this definition, an ethical decision is one made based on reflection about the things we think are important and that is consistent with those beliefs.
While each person is able to reflect and discover their own sense of what’s good, right, and meaningful, the course of human history has seen different groups unify around different sets of values, purposes and principles. Christians, consequentialists, Buddhists, Stoics and the rest all provide different answers to that question, “What should I do?” Each of these answers is a ‘morality’.
Morality
Many people find morality extremely useful. Not everyone has the time and training to reflect on the kind of life they want to live, considering all the different combinations of values, principles, and purposes. It’s helpful for them to have a coherent, consistent account that has been refined through history and can be applied in their day to day lives.
Many people also inherit their morality from their family, community or culture – it’s rare for somebody to ‘shop around’ for the morality that most closely fits their personal beliefs. Usually the process is unconscious. There’s a challenge here: if we inherit a ready-made answer to the question of how we should live, it’s possible to apply it to our lives without ever assessing whether the answer is satisfactory or not.
We might live our whole lives under a moral system which, if we’d had the chance to think about, we would have rejected in part or in full.
Law
The law is different. It’s not a morality in the strict sense of the word because, at least in democratic nations, it tries to create a private space where individuals can live according to their own ethical beliefs or morality. Instead, the law tries to create a basic, enforceable standard of behaviour necessary in order for a community to succeed and in which all people are treated equally.
Because of this, the law is narrower in focus than ethics or morality. There are some matters the law will be agnostic on but which ethics and morality have a lot to say. For example, the law will be useless to you if you’re trying to decide whether to tell your competitor their new client has a reputation for not paying their invoices, but our ideas about what’s good and right will still guide our judgement here.
There is a temptation to see the law and ethics as the same – so long as we’re fulfilling our legal obligations we can consider ourselves ‘ethical’. This is mistaken on two fronts. First, the law outlines a basic standard of behaviour necessary for our social institutions to keep functioning. For example, it protects basic consumer rights. However, in certain situations the right thing to in solving a dispute with a customer might require us to go beyond our legal obligations.
Secondly, there may be times when obeying the law would require us to act against our ethics or morality. A doctor might be obligated to perform a procedure they believe is unethical or a public servant might believe it’s their duty to leak classified information to the press. Some philosophers have argued that a person’s conscience is more binding on them than any law, which suggests to the letter of the law won’t be an adequate substitute for ethical reflection.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
15 Comments
I totally agree with the observations you have made , regarding differences in Ethics Morality and Law.
From my own perspective, I feel it behooving upon decisions based on Law, to acknowledge that a different outcome may occur if Moral Principles or Ethical Principles were applied to the decision process.
This acknowledgement would serve to appease those aggrieved by the legal decision.
Is morality outdated? Certainly not nor will it ever be so. One can readily observe the fluid aspects of politically correct mandates or on the other hand the degrees of tolerance for libertarians. Morality is nothing more that the customs of behavior for a particular culture, it can a does change frequently without formal consensus.
Ethics are codified behavior that is only applied to a subset of society or to an individual. The usage of this word unfortunately is also applied to behavior that is not codified on one hand or where a formal system of justice is employed. It is confusing when the term ethics is stretched to include all forms of right and wrong. Peer groups establish and modify their ethics code, in general it is not hierarchical.
Law is the written obligation on a society, it can only be changed in a manner allowed by other laws or contracts. Law is hierarchical and usually requires obeisance towards appointed administers. Holy law is hierarchical for example the Ten Commandments are obligations written by God and should not be confused with ethics or morality.
There are many divisions of law; civil, criminal, common, statute among others. One simple way to organizing the perception of law is into categories of positive and negative.
Negative law obligates people on what they are not allowed to do; everything outside of that restriction is permissible.
Positive law obligates people on what they must do, if they fail to perform specific things they have violated the law. Also in the defined restrictive areas of positive law nothing is permissible until it is made lawful. Privilege is a form of positive law.
ReplyIs morality outdated?
I think that morality is not outdated. As the times and people change, their beliefs, values, and principles change with them. But there are also those, who stay the same and their beliefs could be harmful for them or the people around them as there is a difference between how people live now and how they lived in the past. It is important to, from time to time, modify our beliefs but also we cannot blindly follow others because someone who doesn’t have a strong moral “spine” can easily be manipulated.
In conclusion, morality is what makes society work and live together- it can’t be outdated as it constantly changes.
I think that morality isn’t outdated because many people are guides by moral code, not by law. Most of them don’t like law and disagree with it. They just don’t see any sense in it. There are a lot of rapes and murderers that are above the law because of the high state of a villain, and normal mortals that want justice are victims. This is why morals will stay because the law is wrong.
ReplyIn my opinion, morality is certainly not outdated. It helps people to operate in daily life. Morality prevents from making inhuman decisions and people destroying each other. Of course, it is various for every culture, country, religion but the main point of it is to not hurt others and be the best version of yourself. It is true that more specific “rules” change because the world is changing all the time. Humans learn from their mistakes, from history and thanks to that they can refine the moral code.
ReplyIn my opinion morality is not outdated and never will be. The environment has always influenced our views, is influencing and will influence. This action kind of creates our morality, how we should or shouldn’t behave. It is inherent part of our society. When our ethical behaviour is personal, then morality is like public and common rules in our society.
ReplyI stand for the fact that morality is the law our minds follow. While normal, democratic law is for societies and organisations, morality is about our own subjective opinions .That’s why I do not think it’s outdated, as it shapes our personalities and trailes of thought.
ReplyIn my opinion, morality imposed by a higher power than man is never outdated. It is only when men reject the universal precepts of said higher power, God that they can change their morality by whoever has the power to force theirs upon other.
ReplyIn my opinion morality is not outdated, but in some circles is becoming less important than law and ethics. For example people doing business wonder less about the morality of their actions and more about if it’s legal. We cannot however say morality is becoming outdated because societies will always have a moral system.
ReplyIn my opinion, morality is useful and we need it because only in this way people will know what is good and what is bad without dogmas. When people think about morality, they think about boring books and essays, but morality is in everyday life and sometimes we don’t see this. We shouldn’t ask the question: “is morality outdated” but we should ask “how morality has changed and is changing over the years”.
ReplyI think that that morality is the law of our minds that we need to follow. While noraml law as we know it is only for societies . Morality is our own opinion and we don’t always agree with the law. And because of that I think that morality is specific for a ceratain person and that’s why it can’t be outdated
ReplyPhil J
Change is certain, so I think that none of these 3 concepts can become outdated. Maybe the way they are ordered can be changed or the overlapping can become greater or diminished but context must always be a consideration.
Google’s opinion,
” Ethics and morals relate to “right” and “wrong” conduct. While they are sometimes used interchangeably, they are different: ethics refer to rules provided by an external source, e.g., codes of conduct in workplaces or principles in religions. Morals refer to an individual’s own principles regarding right and wrong.” Do you agree?
Morality is not outdated, but it seems to be evolving. Laws, morality, and their underlying ethics are aggressively changing. In most of the world, behaviors, traditions, and activities that were once considered abominable, or put chills on human souls, are now widely accepted. Sometimes speaking out about one’s ingrained ethical values could be regarded as unethical, immoral, and sometimes punishable by law. Again, morality is contextual; this is so because the socio-cultural background of a group and their system greatly influenced what is moral, ethical, or lawful in their circle. In sum, the values underlying these concepts could are so complicated and, at times, mystifying.
ReplyI think this is a fascinating topic. I see these as interrelated yet distinct concepts. Morality is the foundational element of individual or communal beliefs in right/wrong when faced with situation, belief, etc. Our moral thermometer gives us a sense of where a particular moral belief falls within the threshold of acceptability: good/acceptable, morally neutral, wrong/unacceptable. The intensity of these feelings drives our convictions on a specific topic. When a moral belief is challenged, there are effects to the individual and society (from intellectual stimulation to negatives like moral injury, moral distress, moral disengagement) that requires an ethical re-evaluation and ultimate action, to either amend or reinforce that moral value stance. When there is enough social consensus on the moral belief, it will generally be codified as law and become a social value.
However, this approach does not always align for the individual. An individual who is morally and ethically opposed to abortion may never approve of a law that provides a woman to choose. Their moral thermometer for the issue(s) surrounding this topic will likely dictate their actions. They may not go out and protest abortion clinics, but they may become a one issue voter. Conversely, if the individual has strong moral convictions about a topic (i.e. LGBT human rights), they will find like-minded people to advocate through many means (political, media, protests, etc.) for social and legal acknowledgment and codification of this value as a positive law, as defined by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan.
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Is morality outdated?