ABSTRACT
Morals, ethics and values deal with a wide area of human attitudes and behaviour seen in all races and ethnic groups across all nations and social formations. Though they may be used interchangeably, each term has a range of specific connotations: morals are often identified with religious views of right and wrong, with relations between the sexes figuring prominently in their general usage; ethics tend to refer to an articulated code of conduct as practised in the professions; values are invariably applied particularly to relatively permanent dispositions that guide reactions of approval or disapproval in regard to social events and the actions of individuals and social groupings. The essential common feature of all three concepts is that they are
associated with strong feelings or emotions, involving mental and even physical agitation. It is noticeable that the more strongly the morals, ethics or values are held, the more intense are the feelings and the actions likely to be taken by the holders to oppose what they see as a violation of their own values and to promote – or try to impose – their own. In this sense, one can agree with David Hume’s opinion that what he viewed as ‘inborn moral sentiments’ constituted the ground on which the motivation to act occurred, compared with which reason was inert. Adam Smith largely agreed with Hume, though in a more nuanced
way, as we can see from his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments published some seventeen years before The Wealth of Nations. Smith’s theory was based on the proposition that:
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.1
