The Subject-Matter of Ethics

Abstract

Ethics may be described as the theoretical treatment of moral phenomena. I use the phrase “moral phenomena” to cover all those facts, and only those, in describing which we have to use, in a specifically moral sense, such words as “ought”, “right”, “good” and their opposites, or any others which are merely verbal translations of them. (This is not intended as a definition; if it were it, would be circular; for I have had to introduce the phrase “in a specifically moral sense” into my description of moral phenomena.) I have had to do this, because words like “ought”, “right”, and “good” are also used in various non-moral senses, and then Ethics is not directly concerned with the facts which they describe.