Descriptive Ethics and Relativism
Descriptive ethics does not explicitly discern between good and bad ethical theories. This can be interpreted in two ways.
- Descriptive ethics claims, implicitly or explicitly, that amorality (not to be confused with immorality) is moral. Descriptive ethics thus embraces moral relativism. Or,
- Descriptive ethics makes no claim that amorality is moral. Its innate amorality is solely due to a practical division of labour between descriptive ethics and normative ethics.
The first position holds descriptive ethics to be in competition with normative ethics, whereas the second holds it as complementary to normative ethics.
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Famous quotes containing the word ethics:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)