Business Ethics

Business Ethics

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that inquires into the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong (“ethics,” Collegiate). Ethics is not primarily concerned with the description of moral systems in societies. That task, which remains on the level of description, is one for anthropology or sociology. In contrast, ethics deals with the justification of moral principles.

A Brief History of the Study of Ethics

Ethics has been studied since ancient times. In the oldest of the Indian writings, ethics is an integral aspect of philosophical and religious speculation about the nature of reality. These writings date from about 1500 BC. They have been described as “the oldest philosophical literature in the world, and what they say about how people ought to live may therefore be the first philosophical ethics” (Everson 5).

In ancient China,