Ethics: Overview
From the perspective of science, technology, and ethics, ethics itself—that is, critical reflection on human conduct—may be viewed as a science, as a technology, and as providing multidimensional independent perspectives on science and technology. The encyclopedia as a whole constitutes manifold illustrations for each of these possibilities. It is nevertheless appropriate to provide in a separate entry some orientation within the manifold.
Ethics as Theory and Practice
In the works of Plato (c. 428–347 B.C.E.), dialogues rather than treatises, ethics is interwoven with logical analysis and theories of knowledge, reality, and political affairs so as to resist clearly distinguishing these different branches of philosophy. What came to be called ethics nevertheless clearly serves as first or primary philosophy. In Socrates's autobiography (Phaedo 96a ff.) it is not the foundations of nature but the ideas of beauty, goodness, and greatness that act as the basis of philosophical inquiry. The search for a full account of ethical experience calls forth an appreciation of different levels of being and different forms of knowing appropriate to each—although the highest reality is once again ethical, the good, which is beyond being (Republic 509a–b).
According to Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), however, philosophy originates when discourse about the gods is replaced with discourse about nature (compare, e.g., Metaphysics 1.3.983b29 and 1.8.988b27).
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