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Ethics is a branch of philosophy dealing with right and wrong in human behaviour. All religions have a moral component, and religious approaches to the problem of ethics historically dominated ethics over secular approaches. From the point of view of theistic religions, to the extent that ethics stems from revealed truth from divine sources, ethics is studied as a branch of theology. Many believe that the Golden Rule, which teaches people to "treat others as you want to be treated", is the common denominator of all moral codes and religions.

Ethics in the Bible

Main article: Ethics in the Bible

Western philosophical works on ethics were written in a culture whose literary and religious ideas were based in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament. As such, there is a connection between the ethics of the Bible and the ethics of the great western philosophers. However, this is not a direct connection; significant differences of opinion in how to interpret and apply passages in the books of the Bible lead to different understandings of ethics. Not a few have suggested that modern understandings of the Bible are fundamentally mistaken; or that biblical morality is itself wrong.

Jewish ethics

Jewish ethics stands at the intersection of Judaism and the Western philosophical tradition of ethics. Like other types of religious ethics, the diverse literature of Jewish ethics primarily aims to answer a broad range of moral questions and, hence, may be classified as a normative ethics. For two millennia, Jewish thought has also grappled with the dynamic interplay between law and morality. The rich tradition of rabbinic religious law (known as Halakha) addresses numerous problems often associated with ethics, including its semi-permeable relation with duties that are usually not punished under law.

Jewish ethics may be said to originate with the Hebrew Bible, its broad legal injunctions, wisdom narratives and prophetic teachings. Most subsequent Jewish ethical claims may be traced back to the texts, themes and teachings of the written Torah.

This section has its own article, Jewish ethics.

Ethics in the Apocrypha

Ethics in systematic form, and apart from religious belief, is as little found in apocryphal or Judæo-Hellenistic literature as in the Bible. However, Greek philosophy greatly influenced Alexandrian writers such as the authors of IV Maccabees, the Book of Wisdom, and Philo.

Much progress in theoretical ethics came as Jews came into closer contact with the Hellenic world. Before that period the Wisdom literature shows a tendency to dwell solely on the moral obligations and problems of life as appealing to man as an individual, leaving out of consideration the ceremonial and other laws which concern only the Jewish nation. From this point of view Ben Sira's collection of sayings and monitions was written, translated into Greek, and circulated as a practical guide. The book contains popular ethics in proverbial form as the result of everyday life experience, without higher philosophical or religious principles and ideals. More developed ethical works emanated from Hasidean circles in the Maccabean time, such as are contained in Tobit, especially in ch. iv.; here the first ethical will or testament is found, giving a summary of moral teachings, with the Golden Rule, "Do that to no man which thou hatest!" as the leading maxim. There are even more elaborate ethical teachings in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in which each of the twelve sons of Jacob, in his last words to his children and children's children, reviews his life and gives them moral lessons, either warning them against a certain vice he had been guilty of, so that they may avoid divine punishment, or recommending them to cultivate a certain virtue he had practised during life, so that they may win God's favor. The chief virtues recommended are: love for one's fellow man; industry, especially in agricultural pursuits; simplicity; sobriety; benevolence toward the poor; compassion even for the brute (Issachar, 5; Reuben, 1; Zebulun, 5-8; Dan, 5; Gad, 6; Benjamin, 3), and avoidance of all passion, pride, and hatred. Similar ethical farewell monitions are attributed to Enoch in the Ethiopic Enoch (xciv. et seq.) and the Slavonic Enoch (lviii. et seq.), and to the three patriarchs.

The Hellenistic propaganda literature made the propagation of Jewish ethics taken from the Bible its main object for the sake of winning the pagan world to pure monotheism. It was owing to this endeavor that certain ethical principles were laid down as guiding maxims for the Gentiles; first of all the three capital sins, idolatry, murder, and incest, were prohibited (see Sibyllines, iii. 38, 761; iv. 30 et seq.). In later Jewish rabbinic literature these "Noachide Laws" were gradually developed into six, seven, and ten, or thirty laws of ethics binding upon every human being.

The Mussar Movement is a Jewish ethical movement which developed in the 19th century, and which still exists today.

Christian ethics

Christian ethics developed while early Christians were subjects of the Roman Empire. Christians eventually took over the Empire itself. Saint Augustine adapted Plato, and later, after the Islamic transmission of his works, Aquinas worked Aristotelian philosophy into a Christian framework.

Christian ethics in general has tended to stress grace, mercy, and forgiveness; it stresses doubt in human (as opposed to divine) judgement. It also codified the Seven Deadly Sins. For more see Christian philosophy and the Seven virtues.

Paul teaches (Rom., ii, 24 ff) that God has written his moral law in the hearts of all men, even of those outside the influence of Christian revelation; this law manifests itself in the conscience of every man and is the norm according to which the whole human race will be judged on the day of reckoning. In consequence of their perverse inclinations, this law had become, to a great extent, obscured and distorted among the pagans; Christian understand their mission as, to restore it to its pristine integrity. The New Testament generally says that all moral rules follow from the duty to love God with all one's self and one's neighbor as oneself. The sense that "follow" has in this claim is, however, controversial. Ecclesiastical writers, as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine of Hippo all wrote on ethics from a distinctly Christian point of view. Interestingly, they made use of philosophical and ethical principles laid down by their Greek (pagan) philosopher forbears.

The Church fathers had little occasion to treat moral questions from a purely philosophical standpoint and independently of Christian Revelation; but in the explanation of Catholic doctrine their discussions naturally led to philosophical investigations.

This is particularly true of Augustine, who proceeded to thoroughly develop along philosophical lines and to establish firmly most of the truths of Christian morality. The eternal law (lex aeterna), the original type and source of all temporal laws, the natural law, conscience, the ultimate end of man, the cardinal virtues, sin, marriage, etc. were treated by him in the clearest and most penetrating manner. Hardly a single portion of ethics does he present to us but is enriched with his keen philosophical commentaries. Late ecclesiastical writers followed in his footsteps.

A sharper line of separation between philosophy and theology, and in particular between ethics and moral theology, is first met with in the works of the great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, especially of Albertus Magnus (1193–1280), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Bonaventure(1221-1274), and Duns Scotus (1274–1308). Philosophy and, by means of it, theology reaped abundant fruit from the works of Aristotle, which had until then been a sealed treasure to Western civilization, and had first been elucidated by the detailed and profound commentaries of Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas and pressed into the service of Christian philosophy.

The same is particularly true as regards ethics. Thomas, in his commentaries on the political and ethical writings of Aristotle, in his Summa contra Gentiles and his Quaestiones disputatae, treated with his wonted clearness and penetration nearly the whole range of ethics in a purely philosophical manner, so that even to the present day his words are an inexhaustible source from which ethics draws its supply. On the foundations laid by him the Catholic philosophers and theologians of succeeding ages have continued to build.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, thanks especially to the influence of the so-called Nominalists, a period of stagnation and decline set in, but the sixteenth century is marked by a revival. Ethical questions, also, though largely treated in connection with theology, are again made the subject of careful investigation. We mention as examples the great theologians Vitoria, Dominicus Soto, L. Molina, Suarez, Lessius, and De Lugo. Among topics they discussed was the ethics of action in case of doubt, leading to the doctrine of probabilism. Since the sixteenth century special chairs of ethics (moral philosophy) have been erected in many Catholic universities. The larger, purely philosophical works on ethics, however do not appear until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as an example of which we may instance the production of Ign. Schwarz, "Instituitiones juris universalis naturae et gentium" (1743).

Far different from Catholic ethical methods were those adopted for the most part by Protestants. With the rejection of the Church's teaching authority, each individual became on principle his own supreme teacher and arbiter in matters appertaining to faith and morals. The Reformers held fast to the Bible as the infallible source of revelation, but as to what belongs or does not belong to it, whether, and how far, it is inspired, and what is its meaning — all this was left to the final decision of the individual.

Philipp Melanchthon, in his "Elementa philosophiae moralis", still clung to the Aristotelean philosophy; so, too, did Hugo Grotius, in his work, "De jure belli et pacis". But Cumberland and his follower, Samuel Pufendorf, moreover, assumed, with Descartes, that the ultimate ground for every distinction between good and evil lay in the free determination of God's will, a view which renders the philosophical treatment of ethics fundamentally impossible.

In the 20th century, some Christian philosophers, notably Dietrich Bonhoeffer questioned the value of ethical reasoning in moral philosophy. In this school of thought, ethics, with its focus on distinguishing right from wrong, tends to produce behavior that is simply not wrong, whereas the Christian life should instead be marked by the highest form of right. Rather than ethical reasoning, they stress the importance of meditation on and relationship with God.

Criticism of Christian ethics

In some ways the futility question is illustrated well by this situation: though some Catholic philosophers debated or deplored the rape, extermination and enslavement of the peoples of the New World, it continued without limit, especially in South America, often with the active participation of the Church. Of course, the Church very often protected native converts to Christianity and shielded them from harm, where it could. Friedrich Nietzsche, called the Christian ethics a "slave ethics" for counselling submission to the authority of invaders/enslavers.

Hindu ethics

Hindu ethics are related to Hindu beliefs, such as reincarnation, which is a way of expressing the need for reciprocity, as one may end up in someone else's shoes "in a future life". Charges of fatalism are primarily misunderstandings of the role of karma in Hinduism. Intention is seen as very important, and thus selfless action for the benefit of others without thought for oneself is a cardinal rule in Hinduism, known as the doctrine of karma yoga. This aspect of service is combined with an understanding that someone else's unfortunate situation, while of their own doing, is one's own situation since the soul within is the soul shared by all. The greeting namaskar is founded on the principle that one salutes the spark of the divine in the other. Kindness and hospitality are key Hindu values.

More emphasis is placed on empathy than in other traditions, and women are sometimes upheld not only as great moral examples but also as great gurus. Beyond that, the Mother is a Divine Figure, the Devi, and the aspect of the creative female energy plays a major role in the Hindu ethos. Vande Mataram, the Indian national song (not anthem) is based on the Divine mother concept as embodied by 'Mother India' paralleled to 'Ma Durga'. An emphasis on domestic life and the joys of the household and village may make Hindu ethics a bit more conservative than others on matters of sex and family.

Of all religions, Hinduism is among the most compatible with the view of approaching truth through various forms of art: its temples are often garishly decorated, and the idea of a guru who is both entrancing entertainer and spiritual guide, or who simply practices some unique devotion (such as holding up his arm right for his whole life, or rolling on the ground for years on a pilgrimage), is simply accepted as a legitimate choice in life.

Ethical traditions in Hinduism have been influenced by caste norms. In the mid-20th century Mohandas Gandhi, a Vaishnava, undertook to reform these and emphasize traditions shared in all the Indian faiths:

vegetarianism and an ideology of harms reduction leading ultimately to nonviolence
active creation of truth through courage and his 'satyagraha'
rejection of cowardice and concern with pain or indeed bodily harm

After his profound achievement of forcing the British Empire from India, these views spread widely and influence much modern thinking on ethics today, especially in the peace movement, ecology movement, and those devoted to social activism.

Many New Age traditions also derive from his thought and other Hindu traditions such as acceptance of reincarnation, which is a way of expressing the need for reciprocity, as one may end up in someone else's shoes "in a future life". However Hindu beliefs may help excuse not helping someone in distress, due to both fatalism and the teaching that one deserve's the life one gets. In part to compensate for this, a cardinal virtue in Hinduism is kindness.

Buddhist ethics

Buddhism's ethical foundation for laypeople is the Pancasila: no killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct, or intoxicants. (Some Mahayana followers add further items such as gambling.) That is, in becoming a Buddhist--or affirming one's commitment to Buddhism--a layperson is encouraged to vow to abstain from these negative actions, in order to avoid accumulating negative karma. Buddhist monks and nuns take many hundreds more such vows (see vinaya).

An interesting feature of Buddhist ethics is that it seems to consist of hypothetical imperatives rather than categorical imperatives. That is, a Buddhist does not abstain from killing and stealing simply for the sake of doing what is right, but in order to attain a certain end, namely enlightenment. If we imagine a parallel universe where karma rewards those who kill and steal, one wonders what the Buddhist response would be. (Most Buddhist thinkers would deny that such a universe would be possible, since an effect must resemble its cause.)

We may also note that Buddhism simply assumes "enlightenment"--variously understood as the cessation of suffering and its causes, the removal of obscurations to one's innate luminous nature, etc.--to be a worthy goal. A Christian, for example, might wonder whether suffering might be intentionally chosen, for the sake of others (a perspective which Buddhism would not necessarily reject).

Mahayana Buddhists stress the bodhicitta principle--that one should seek enlightenment not only for one's own sake, but for the sake of "all sentient beings." (Cf. the Theravadin practice of mettabhavana meditation, in which one wishes all beings well.) This orientation however is not so much altruistic as reflective of the Mahayana belief that bodhicitta is instrumentally necessary in order to develop omniscience--that is, in order to become "fully enlightened."

The nature of enlightenment is typically held to transcend dualistic or conceptual categories such as good and evil. Might an enlightened being commit murder, or adultery? On one hand many such stories can be found in Buddhist lore (and not all of them ancient); on the other hand, strong social constraints against this philosophy obviously exist. By the same token, some may conclude from the teaching of sunyata (emptiness) that such things as human life do not ultimately matter--a conclusion which Buddhism roundly rejects.

Buddhist denials of the "self" (atman) lead to many involved philosophical conundrums, many of them apparently posed by the Buddha himself. If "I" do not exist, then who is the "moral agent" (as ethicists would say)? What connects the identity of the person who committed the negative action in the past, with his "future incarnation" who will suffer the corresponding negative karma? Where Western ethicists have agonized over divine justice, arguing for example whether God is ethical or not, such discussions tend not to arise in connection with karma, which is perceived as an impersonal amoral law, like gravity.

One of the teachings of Gautama Buddha, the historical founder of Buddhism, was the Middle Way. This interests ethicists for its resemblance to Aristotle's Golden Mean. However, Buddha does not seem to have been a virtue ethicist, as Aristotle was.

Another interesting feature of Buddhism is that it emphasises "detachment", whereas many ethicists believe that on the contrary, attachment to others is a virtue. Not a few dharma students have raised the clever question of whether it is wrong to become "attached" to Buddhism or enlightenment, or for that matter to one's spouse (as opposed to all the other possible partners of the world). However, Buddhists understand "attachment" to mean "selfish attachment." Selfless "attachment"--including love for others (to the extent that this is truly selfless")--is positive.

Many Buddhists, especially in East Asia, believe that Buddhism teaches vegetarianism. While Buddhist theory tends to lump killing animals together with killing people (and avoids the conclusion that killing can sometimes be ethical, e.g. defense of others), as a practical matter most Buddhists do eat meat. In Theravada countries, monks must accept whatever food is offered them. (Buddha himself seems to have died from eating rancid pork.) Vegetarian Tibetans are rare indeed (and not only for lack of vegetables in Tibet, since Tibetan exile monks in India actually consume more meat). The Dalai Lama once engaged in an amusing ethical discussion with Theravadan Buddhists, who believed that as long as one was determined to eat meat, seafood was preferable to red meat. The Dalai Lama responded that one bowl of shrimp would kill multitudes of sentient beings, but one sheep or cow would feed many people!

During the 1990's, the Dalai Lama debated American gay activists over certain Buddhist scriptural admonitions against homosexuality (or more specifically, the use of the "wrong orifice"). The Dalai Lama seemed confused over the demands of the activists, that he somehow abrogate what he saw simply as statements of karmic law from the Buddhist scriptures. Whether to follow the advice or not was up to the individual practitioner.

All traditions of Buddhism describe or assume different roles for men and women (including monks and nuns). The resulting inequalities have led to predictable responses from feminists, especially Western nuns. An example would be the campaign to restore the bikhuni (fully-fledged nun's) ordination in Theravadin countries, where the move has met with intense social resistance.

Some Buddhists are under the impression that their religion is morally superior to others. For example, one sometimes reads that there has never been a Buddhist holy war. However, a glance at the contemporary politics of Sri Lanka will find Buddhist monks regularly urging military action against that island's Tamil minority. Other historical examples could be cited, e.g. from Tibet and its relation to the Bön faith.

Chinese traditional ethics

Chinese traditional systems of thought are both varied and often syncretic, so it is difficult to point to a single, central structure to Chinese ethics. In addition, there is always the question of whether beliefs form behaviour, or behavior forms beliefs — in other words, whether an ethical system is something that people try to follow, or just a description of what they do. However, this being said, it is nonetheless true that there are several basic threads in Chinese traditional ethics.

Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism emphasize the maintenance and propriety of relationships as the most important consideration in ethics. To be ethical is to do what one's relationships require. Notably, though, what you owe to another person is inversely proportional to their distance from you. In other words, you owe your parents everything, but you are not in any way obligated towards strangers. This can be seen as a recognition of the fact that it is impossible to love the entire world equally and simultaneously. This is called relational ethics, or situational ethics. The Confucian system differs very strongly from Kantian ethics in that there are rarely laws or principles which can be said to be true absolutely or universally.

This is not to say that there has never been any consideration given to universalist ethics. In fact, in Zhou dynasty China, the Confucians' main opponents, the followers of Mozi argued for universal love, jian'ai. The Confucian view eventually held sway, however, and continues to dominate many aspects of Chinese thought. Many have argued, for example, that Mao Zedong was more Confucian than Communist. Confucianism, especially of the type argued for by Mencius (Mengzi), argued that the ideal ruler is the one who (as Confucius put it) "acts like the North Star, staying in place while the other stars orbit around it". In other words, the ideal ruler does not go out and force the people to become good, but instead leads by example. The ideal ruler fosters harmony rather than laws.

Confucius stresses honesty above all. His concepts of li 理, yi 義, and ren 仁 can be seen as deeper expressions of honesty (cheng 誠, commonly translated as "sincerity") and fidelity (xiao 孝) to the ones to whom one owes one's existence (parents) and survival (one's neighbours, colleagues, inferiors in rank). He codifed traditional practice and actually changed the meaning of the prior concepts that those words had meant. His model of the Confucian family and Confucian ruler dominated Chinese life into the early 20th century. This had ossified by then into an Imperial hierarchy of rigid property rights, hard to distinguish from any other dictatorship. Traditional ethics had been perverted by legalism.

There are many other major threads in Chinese ethics. Buddhism, and specifically Mahayana Buddhism, brought a cohesive metaphysic to Chinese thought and a strong emphasis on universalism. Neo-Confucianism was largely a reaction to Buddhism's dominance in the Tang dynasty, and an attempt at developing a native Confucian metaphysical/analytical system.

Laozi and other Daoist authors argued for an even greater passivity on the part of rulers than did the Confucians. For Laozi, the ideal ruler is one who does virtually nothing that can be directly identified as ruling. Clearly, both Daoism and Confucianism presume that human nature is basically good. The main branch of Confucianism, however, argues that human nature must be nurtured through ritual (li 理), culture (wen 文) and other things, while the Daoists argued that the trappings of society were to be gotten rid of.

The Legalists, such as Hanfeizi, argued that people are not innately good. Laws and punishments are therefore necessary to keep the people good. Actual governing in China has almost always been a mixture of Confucianism and Legalism.

When the last dynasty of China, the Qing (1644-1911) fell, Chinese Nationalist reformer and Christian convert Sun Yat-Sen introduced modern notions of ethics and democracy. He remains the only twentieth century figure respected by Nationalist, Communist and modernizers alike.

Mao Zedong combined Classical Legalism and other native political infuences with the Marxist-Leninist emphasis on the role of economics in determing ethical relations. His Quotations of Chairman Mao were mandatory reading, and perhaps a billion copies are in existence. He emphasized the relation between power and the "mass line" of choices made by ordinary people in real life. Maoism is not very popular today, but his absolute rule of China made it impossible to avoid this strict bottom-up, agrarian, concept of ethics. In practice, of course, power flowed from the top. Ethical discourses are still viewed with suspicion in most of China today, as the behaviour of power seems rarely to be actually motivated by ethical norms.

Still, honesty and fidelity remain central to Chinese ethical thought. Where Mao is remembered unsympathetically in China, it is less for his brutality than for not doing as he said.

Islamic ethics

Islam is monoetheistic and emphasizes submission to Allah (God). It sees all of natural law, including that revealed by science, as an aspect of that law. Indeed, everything in the universe "is Muslim" but does not necessarily know it. This tradition informed and spurred the development of most, late medieval science in the West.

Muhammad founded a tradition of ethics built on knowledge. Later Muslim thinkers developed this with the investigation of alternatives, the "ijtihad". Early Muslim philosophy applied it with decreasing diligence, eventually ossifying into a legal code, the fiqh, that served the purposes of the Ottoman Empire. A five-century gap followed while ethics as such was seen only as blind mimicry, or taqlid, using these traditional schools and categories. The hadith, the sayings of Muhammad, filled a popular role in ordinary ethical disputes, and in the mosque where they were usually resolved by a shaikh ("judge"). The Shia branch of Islam built a hierarchy and rigid ethical codes, while Sunni Islam did not, and relied much more on local figures and traditions. It is critically important in Islam to develop an al-urf, or "custom", to adapt Islam to local conditions, leading to situated ethics.