ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3 of this book, John Strain rejects the usefulness of the distinctions between ethics and morality on the one hand and between ethics and metaethics on the other. I would suggest that there are useful distinctions to be made here. I think of ethics as a practice: a practice based upon values, ideals, moral convictions, character, or socially accepted norms. Morality in contrast, is a theoretical construct which posits a set of obligations, prohibitions and principles which are intended to act as a curb upon our wills. Accordingly, morality has a more limited scope than ethics. The two seem to intersect in that many people consider that the practice of ethics is based almost exclusively upon moral principles. It is this that suggests that ethics and morality may indeed be coextensive, though I doubt that this is true.1 But even if they were coextensive, the two terms do not have the same connotations. Morality, as Bernard Williams (1985) has argued, connotes a system of ideas which is said to undergird the practice of ethics. This system of ideas, in turn, requires intellectual justification and defence. It is the task of meta-ethics, or moral theory, to supply these. The fundamental question for meta-ethics is, why or how are the norms of morality binding upon us? What is the source of their normativity?
