Moral philosophy and ethics

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Ethics or perhaps moral philosophy is the discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. It wasn’t long after that philosophers realized the need to understand human nature along with the universe.  How should we live? Shall we aim at happiness or at knowledge, virtue, or the creation of beautiful objects? And a spectacle of more particular questions that face us: is it right to be dishonest for a good cause? Can we justify living in opulence while elsewhere in the world people are starving? Is going to war justified in cases where it is likely that innocent people will be killed? Are we obligated to the generations of humans who were to come after us?.

Ethics is by origin a branch of philosophy, however, its all-embracing practical nature links it with many domains, including anthropology, biology, economics, history, politics, sociology, and theology. It could be argued that moral philosophy remains a distinct discipline because it is not a matter of factual knowledge in the way that the sciences and other branches of inquiry are. The concept of eudemonia (a good life) is characteristic of ancient Greek philosophy and has led to several other theories and notions such as stoicism that stem from the different forms of ‘good life’ an individual can undergo.

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