ABSTRACT
Would you feel worse if someone called you unethical or if someone called you immoral? Most of us react differently to these two words, but we can’t quite pin down the reason why. From a purely definitional standpoint, “ethics” comes from the Greek word ethikos which, in turn, comes from ethos, which means character, custom, or manners. “Moral” comes from the Latin word moralis, which comes from moris, which means essentially the same thing as ethos did to the Greeks. However, ethics has come to be recognized as the study of concepts such as ought, should, duty, and so on, while “moral” tends to be attached to activities that are either good or bad and to the rules that we develop to cover those activities. Some prefer to think of morals as being culturally transmitted indicators of right and wrong and of ethics as merely a way to determine what we ought to do.
