The simple answer to this question, of course, is that morality is a term derived from a Latin root, mores, while ethics is based upon a Greek word, ethos. The fact is that one sees the terms used nearly synonymously, especially in the more popular literature. More professionally, or perhaps more technically, morality is frequently used in reference to a descriptive set of expectations, while ethics is virtually the exclusive term invoked to refer to the study of (moral) rules, behaviours and methods of evaluation or decision-making. In this sense, the former term tends to be thing-oriented, or if you will, “object-ive”, while the latter deals more directly with a performative or “act-ive” dimension.

The study of ethics, then, in the sense of “what is ethics studying”, can be described without contradiction as being equivalent to analysing something people actually do – not their acts or deeds, but the phenomenon of actually engaging in a process of free and wilful, although not always conscious, activity. In short, such an approach considers ethics to be a skill. “Being” ethical means functioning on an ethical level. It does not necessarily mean being ethically “good”, for that would presuppose a determined manner of what constitutes good behaviour in every conceivable set of circumstances. “Being” ethical merely means that one is (now, in this instance, at this level) exercising the acquired skill of being able to deal with what can legitimately be called ethical issues and decision-making.

Such an approach to the understanding of ethics carries a number of implications. Perhaps the most significant of these is the realization that ethics – as the investigation of a skill or, when looked at in a systematic manner, a discipline – is not in the business of dictating solutions for ethical problems. Ethicists don't tell people what to do or not to do. They provide information or awareness about the things that people might take into account in determining their own decision-making and behavior. Another implication of this understanding of ethics is that the work of the ethicist can be carried on without getting stalled by the intransigent problem of establishing an ultimate or absolute goal to be reached through ethical decision-making and behaviour. The determination of such things is part of the discipline itself, the practice of the skill. The role of the ethicist is to unearth this goal or to help persons who are striving to function ethically to become aware of such ultimate goals or purposes.

A further implication of this sort of approach is that it lets ethics get on with its primary job, namely analyzing and literally tearing apart the structure of ethical events in order to examine their constituent parts. I like to use the example of driving a car and executing the manoeuvre of crossing two lanes of oncoming traffic in order to make a turn. To the experienced driver, this is a relatively "simple" thing to do, but for the student driver it frequently proves to be a serious challenge. The difference between the two is obvious: experience that comes from practice in the development of a skill. Ask the experienced driver how it is done and you probably won't get much more than, "well, you just get to know, don't you?" Ask an expert for a technical breakdown about the manoeuvre, however, and you begin to understand just how complex the exercise is. A physicist can tell you all about momentum, inertia, friction, acceleration, and so forth as well as about the complex calculations necessary for estimating whether one has a chance to execute the turn without having a collision - even if the physicist in question has never acquired the skill.

The ethicist is to the ethical event as the physicist is to the manoeuvre described above. In order to understand precisely what is going on - or in the case of a mishap, what went wrong - it is necessary to engage in a technical, informed analysis of all the relevant components of the event and to perform the necessary "calculations" based upon the data available to estimate whether the goal stated by the participants is indeed achievable.

Analyzing the structure of ethical activity

The attempt to analyze ethical experience has been the object of scholarly pursuit for centuries, some would even say millennia. While this may be true in a general sense, I would suggest that in our time something new has been added to this project of analysis, namely the willingness to take seriously a real plurality of ethical experience. At least in Western civilization, in ancient times, people and civilizations who demonstrated behaviour that differed from one's own experience were considered "barbarians". In the medieval world, deviations from an accepted norm were considered a challenge to the authority that supplied that norm and, because such behaviour contradicted the view of the world held in common, it was judged to be at odds with some kind of "natural order". Even in the so-called modern era, cultural and behavioural differences were considered a curiosity, but there remained a fundamental belief that global harmony was still possible, if not ultimately inevitable. I would go so far as to speculate that it has only been since the second half of the twentieth century that cultural difference has been taken as exactly that: difference, and not simply divergence from some "common reality".

Much anxiety has been caused by a fear of "fragmentation" that results from genuine plurality, not to mention the dread of differing world views leading to global conflict. Perhaps the realization of these nightmares was finally incarnated in the provocative book by Peter Haas that suggested that the Nazi's were not so much immoral as simply operating within a different ethical framework.[1]

Rather than trying to answer this question, we should spend some time examining one of its most fundamental, yet usually unspoken, premises: that there has to be a common (ethical) reality that everyone is ultimately capable of recognizing and accepting. So great is this presumption that it turns into a taboo what appears to be its logical, ethical opposite, namely "cultural relativism". The idea that some people can consider a particular behaviour meritorious while others consider the same behavior nearly criminal is experienced as deeply threatening to many people, not the least of whom are those who wield power and covet control. And yet, a moment's reflection should reveal that not only is such divergence possible but, if a society ever comes to admit the reality of change, necessary. Consider the case of using physical force to discipline children: is it, "spare the rod, spoil the child" (Prov. 13:24), or, "firm but friendly discipline" (Dr. Spock)?

To suggest that there is no final, unified, ethical reality may sound like heresy to the ethical project itself, but this is only the case when one considers ethics to be a science in the sense of its object being an unchanging reality, rather than a discipline, which involves the learning and development of skills in a changing world. The object of ethics, what is being observed, described, analysed and consulted, is not a thing but an activity - and how that activity functions within the context of a person's entire life can be thought of as a system. Even the so-called goals to be reached through the system are subject to change. One constantly seeks greater purity and perfection in relation to God or some other ultimate reality, one needs to keep adjusting in order to achieve harmony with nature, one needs to keep informed about the latest stipulations drafted by the democratic state, or one has to remain sensitive to the needs and aspirations of their fellow human persons if their goal is to live in friendship or community (i.e., respecting human rights).[2] Whatever "ultimate" goal one understands to be the purpose of ethics, none of these can be reached by rigid or repetitious behaviour. A system is precisely that: change one part or function of the whole and other parts and functions need to be adjusted as well. There is an old ethical adage to the effect that once you assess a situation, make a decision and carry it out through behaviour, you change the initial situation so that the process needs to begin all over again. In a sense, ethical decision-making and behaviour changes the very world within which it functions.

This does not mean that the ethical project is finished or meaningless. Quite the contrary, with an appreciation of genuine ethical pluralism, we can give up the search for "the" ethical truth and turn our attention to the process itself, i.e., the structure of the discipline: what are the various aspects or components of this skill we call ethics (i.e., being ethical, as opposed to "doing ethics" which is the project of observation and analysis) and how do they function in relation to each other?[3]

Action and Intention

Even better news is that we do not have to start this project ex nihilo. Deep within the Western medieval tradition we can find traces of a theory that was practically rather than theoretically oriented. Not surprisingly, the theory was developed not to make judgments about morality or immorality but rather to determine levels and degrees of responsibility. The theory was called the "three sources of morality" (tres fontes moralitatis) and it was used as a rule of thumb to help Roman Catholic priests hear confessions.

Rather than reconstructing this theory, which would be pointless since we are here operating in an entirely different genre,[4] let us just take its basic insight and apply it to our question: what are the basic components of this skill we call ethics? As we analyse the ethical experience, we first become aware of two components of this sort of activity that are so intimately tied up with each other that they are virtually impossible to separate. These two aspects answer to the questions; "what is one (contemplating) doing?" - the ethical act or event - and "what does one hope to accomplish (with this activity)?" - the intention or end.

Neither is this insight limited to the ethical project alone. Most courts of law make a distinction between determining what a person did (not) do and the kind or degree of motivation or intention that lay behind specific behaviour. Humanistic psychology tends to make a clear distinction between the person and their behaviour. Literature is filled with stories that explore the relation between action and intention, including those stories that radically divorce the two, the genre known as "tragedy" in which persons might be severely punished for doing something they had no intention to do (Oedipus).

The problem is that especially in ethics, it remains difficult to maintain the distinction long enough or at a sufficient distance to appreciate the tension between the two. A case can be made that actions which are not intended, especially those which take place without conscious reflection, are not even candidates for ethical evaluation. Similarly, plans or schemes which are never carried out in some kind of action beg questions about their ethical relevance: are these not simply fantasy or wishful thinking that even the person who entertains them does not take seriously? Act and intention are always tied up with each another, but they are without a doubt distinct: they can be spoken of independently and they answer to different questions.

The kind of ethical analysis that I am describing puts a good deal of effort into maintaining the distinction between intention and action as separate objects for analysis. In doing so, it creates a tension between them by intellectually pulling apart elements of ordinary ethical experience that ultimately must be linked with each other to construct a complete picture of that experience in real life.

But what the ethicist is doing is not "in real life". For, the ethicist is not making ethical decisions (for others) or defining pre-packaged solutions to problems, but merely observing, consulting and offering information and advice. In doing so, one must consider each element according to an appropriate criterion. Acts and events cannot be evaluated according to some kind of intentional measure without falling into a kind of nominalism or subjectivism ("something is good or evil because I believe or want it to be"). Some kind of objective[5] criterion is needed to access events taking place in a material and cultural world. By the same token, intentions cannot be evaluated according to some kind of physical or material measure without reducing the human person to a kind of programmable automaton ("an intention is good or bad depending upon whether it conforms to some fixed set of rules"). In order to assess human intentionality, we need criteria that are based upon a thorough understanding of human personality, including psychology, sociology and anthropology, as well as philosophy and cultural and religious studies that help reveal the broader dynamics of personality that includes the goals and aspirations that inform what most people would describe as "meaning".

Analysis Reveals Polarity

Keeping these two, distinct elements of the ethical experience apart and assessing them independently creates a certain polarity. Like the poles of a magnet, the two continuously tend to collapse into each other, for, in the end, the ethical experience is a unity. For the purposes of assessment, however, it is necessary to separate the different components and look at them independently. The process itself reveals the presence and the role of a third element of ethical experience that is equally important as the two we have just considered.

When we attempt to assess and evaluate ethically relevant acts or events, we need to begin with a clear statement or description of precisely what it is that we are looking at. Because the object of this description is a specifically human act, it is virtually impossible to render an adequate statement without providing some kind of context.[6] Considering events such as "walking" or "taking (possession of) something" does not provide enough information to grasp what is going on. In order to become a candidate for ethical assessment we need a context, what has traditionally been referred to as circumstances. Ultimately, it is only "acts and their circumstances" that conveniently lend themselves to some kind of assessment relevant to ethical decision-making. Taking something that washed up on a deserted beach is a very different event than taking a wallet that just dropped onto the beach from another person's pocket, although neither of these descriptions of events renders sufficient information for a final ethical judgment about what is going on.

When we attempt to assess and evaluate human intention from an ethical perspective, we run into a similar problem. Even intentions demand context in order to be properly understood. The intention to use physical force to impel or prevent a person from doing something has completely different meanings related to one's life situation. Whether a person is acting as a soldier, a policemen, a judge, a psychotherapist, a parent or a member of the clergy, makes all the difference in the world with respect to understanding and evaluating one's intentions.

One of the great insights implicit in the theory of the sources of morality is that what one may refer to as a life situation from an intention point of view, and what one calls circumstances from an act-event perspective, largely overlap in the real world. Consider the following diagram.[7]

The congruence of circumstances and life situations lends itself to yet another observation. When one attempts to evaluate acts or potential events, even with their particular circumstances in space, time and culture, one is always looking at these things from the intentional pole. Thus, one is looking at these possible events through the lens of one's own life situation. Through this lens, e.g., being a policeman or a psychotherapist, one evaluates a given object, e.g., the use of physical force, in a very different manner.

When one attempts to evaluate intentions or attitudes that accompany actions, one is always looking at these things through the lens of circumstances. Through this lens, e.g., someone holding me at gunpoint or someone demanding that I pay appropriate taxes, one evaluates the intention of the perpetrator, e.g., increasing one's personal wealth at the expense of others or seeking to achieve a just re-distribution of wealth, also very differently.

It is not my purpose here to suggest that there is only one way of assessing and evaluating either human acts or intentions. The presence of good and evil in human events can be assessed according to various criteria (law, nature, person) and the worthiness of intentions is usually viewed against the background of a moral tradition (from a Christian love of neighbour to a Confucian respect for tradition). However, both these types of assessment remain outside of the ethical experience itself which always involves the relation between these components in the skilful performance of actually being ethical.

The ethicist, like the physicist in the example provided earlier, is not called upon to formulate theories for their own sake, but rather to analyse, explain or offer information about real human experience. Rather than being an exercise in theory formation and refinement, ethics is dedicated to learning, correcting and perfecting skills that the ethicist may not even be very good at practicing personally. The focus of the ethicist, therefore, should not be some personal quest to tell other people how to be ethical or some other utopian mission to make the world a better place. Rather, it should be a focus on the project of helping persons clarify their intentions and broadening their understanding of their options.

In order to accomplish this, understanding act and intention as polar realities can be of great benefit. If we can not simply distinguish but actually, though artificially, separate the poles from each other, we will also see that each of the two principle components of the ethical event need to be understood and analysed in isolation.

Analysing ethical acts or objects, such as using physical force against another person, reveals aspects of human activity that can be evaluated against a definable standard - regardless of what one's intention might be. This is usually called "normative ethics" and, although controversial in itself with respect to determining the standard to be used, it deserves a good deal of (independent) attention, especially in light of continuous technological, scientific and cultural change.

Analysing ethical intentions, such as an attitude that favours creating and maintaining opportunities for all members of a given group to attain their needs and aspirations, opens a discussion about the kinds of goals that may be worth pursuing in comparison with what we believe or envision to be the meaning of our existence - regardless of the specific actions that one might undertake to achieve these goals. This has more recently been characterized as a kind of "virtue ethics", although an number of other accents could be used to describe what is an ethics of intention. This discussion needs to be carried on without engaging in the consideration of concrete, physical activity, lest one limit one's own vision about human goals merely to what is "possible", simply for the moment. If politics is the art of the possible, then ethics should be the art of the desirable - ultimately tempered but not shackled by a realistic appreciation of the world in which we find ourselves.