伦理道德用英文怎么说

伦理道德是一种规范。当代“伦理”概念蕴含着西方文化的理性、科学、公共意志等属性，“道德”概念蕴含着更多的东方文化的情性、人文、个人修养等色彩。“西学东渐”以来，中西“伦理”与“道德”概念经过碰撞、竞争和融合，目前二者划界与范畴日益清晰，即“伦理”是伦理学中的一级概念，而“道德”是“伦理”概念下的二级概念。二者不能相互替代，它们有着各自的概念范畴和使用区域。那么，伦理道德用英文怎么说呢？

What is ethics

什么是道德伦理

What is ethics? It is clearly not a matter of following one’s feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical.Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the saint. Religion can set high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion.

Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the old apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from what is ethical.

Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing “whatever society accepts.” In any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society.

Moreover, if being ethical were doing “whatever society accepts”, then to find out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts. To decide what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American society and then confirm my beliefs to whatever society accepts. But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist.

What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.

Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one’s ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one’s standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

什么是道德，或道德的实质是什么，这是数千年来一直困扰着无数哲学家和伦理学家的一个深不见底的问题。依照其美德伦理学，亚里士多德把道德（arete――通译为“善”）视作为支配人们选择的某种理想的品质。根据其道德情感论，休谟把道德视作为源自人性中的自然原则即“同情心”的某种“约定”（convention）。出于其批判哲学的进路和对理性的划分，康德把道德（法则）界说为人的实践理性中的“定言命令”（categorical imperative）。基于其元伦理学（meta-ethics）的理论建构，斯蒂文森（Richard L. Stevenson）把道德视作为知识领域之外的某种“态度”。依照其规定主义伦理学（prescriptivism ethics），黑尔（Richard M. Hare）把道德归诸为某种语言的“命定性”（prescriptivism）和“可普遍化性”（universalizability）。在什么是道德和伦理的问题上，还是维特根斯坦来得简单：伦理问题是“超验的”，是“不可言说”的。