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ethics
(redirected from Ethics (philosophy))
Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Financial, Wikipedia.

ethics,
in philosophy, the study and evaluation of human conduct in the light of moral principles. Moral
principles may be viewed either as the standard of conduct that individuals have constructed for
themselves or as the body of obligations and duties that a particular society requires of its
members.

Approaches to Ethical Theory

Ethics has developed as people have reflected on the intentions and consequences of their acts.
From this reflection on the nature of human behavior, theories of conscience
have developed, giving direction to much ethical thinking. Intuitionists (Ralph Cudworth,
Samuel Clarke), moral-sense theorists (the 3d earl of Shaftesbury
, Francis Hutcheson
), and sentimentalists (J. J. Rousseau

, Pierre-Simon Ballanche
) postulated an innate moral sense, which serves as the ground of ethical decision. Empiricists
(John Locke
, Claude Helvtius
, John Stuart Mill
) deny any such innate principle and consider conscience a power of discrimination acquired by
experience. In the one case conscience is the originator of moral behavior, and in the other it is
the result of moralizing. Between these extremes there have been many compromises.

The Nature of the Good

Another major difference in the approach to ethical problems revolves around the question of
absolute good as opposed to relative good. Throughout the history of philosophy thinkers have
sought an absolute criterion of ethics. Frequently moral codes have been based on religious
absolutes. Immanuel Kant
, in his categorical imperative, attempted to establish an ethical criterion independent of
theological considerations. Rationalists (Plato

, Baruch Spinoza

, Josiah Royce

) founded their ethics on a metaphysics.

All varying methods of building an ethical system pose the question of the degree to which
morality is authoritative (i.e., imposed by a power outside the individual). If the criterion of
morality is the welfare of the state (G. W. Hegel

), the state is supreme arbiter. If the authority is a religion, then that religion is the ethical teacher.
Hedonism
, which equates the good with pleasure in its various forms, finds its ethical criterion either in the
good of the individual or the good of the group. An egoistic hedonism (Aristippus
, Epicurus
, Julien de La Mettrie
, Thomas Hobbes
) views the good of the individual as the ultimate consideration. A universalistic hedonism, such
as utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham
, James Mill
), finds the ethical criterion in the greatest good for the greatest number.

Twentieth-Century Ethical Thought

Among ethical theories debated in the first half of the 20th cent. were instrumentalism (John
Dewey
), for which morality lies within the individual and is relative to the individual's experience;
emotivism (Sir Alfred J. Ayer
), wherein ethical considerations are merely expressions of the subjective desires of the
individual; and intuitionism (G. E. Moore
), which postulates an immediate awareness of the morally good. Agreeing with Moore that the
morally good is directly apprehended through intuition, deontological intuitionists (H. A.
Prichard, W. D. Ross) went on to distinguish between good and right and to argue that moral
obligations are intrinsically compelling whether or not their fulfillment results in some greater
good.

Important ethical theories since the mid-20th cent. have included the prescriptivism of R. M.
Hare, who has compared moral precepts to commands, a crucial difference between them being
that moral precepts can be universally applied. In his arguments for virtue ethics, Alasdair C.
MacIntyre
has cautioned against unbridled individualism and advocated correctives drawn from Aristotle's
discussion of moral virtue as the mean between extremes. Thomas Nagel has held that, in moral
decision making, reason supersedes desire, so that it becomes rational to choose altruism over a
narrowly defined self-interest. See also bioethics
.

Bibliography
See H. Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics (1902); A. C. MacIntyre, A Short History of
Ethics (1965); M. Warnock, Ethics since 1900 (1979); W. D. Hudson, A Century of Moral
Philosophy (1980); B. Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985); P. Singer, ed.,
Applied Ethics (1986).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright 2013, Columbia University Press.
Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia Copyright 2013, Columbia University Press.
Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/

ethics
the philosophical study of the moral value of human conduct and of the rules and principles that
ought to govern it; moral philosophy
http://ethics.acusd.edu/
http://www.ethics.org/
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition HarperCollins Publishers 2005
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition HarperCollins Publishers 2005

ethics
1. the moral code of a person or society.
2. the branch of PHILOSOPHY concerned with how we ought to act in order to be moral.
Two predominant schools of thought can be identified:
a. those which emphasize that matters of right and wrong should be decided only by
an analysis of the consequences of action (e.g. UTILITARIANISM); and
b. those which assert that at least some duties are independent of consequences (e.g.
not telling lies). Generally in the social sciences (a) has had more significance

than (b). Other topics in ethics are similar to those that occur in sociology, e.g.
issues surrounding the FACT-VALUE DISTINCTION and VALUE FREEDOM
AND VALUE NEUTRALITY.
3. a moral code that guides the conduct of a professional group such as medical doctors or
lawyers. For sociologists and social researchers in the UK two quasi-official ethical
governing exist, one published by the British Sociological Association, the other by the
Market Research Society
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. HarperCollins Publishers 2000
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. HarperCollins Publishers 2000

ethics
computer ethics
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)
This article is provided by FOLDOC - Free Online Dictionary of Computing (foldoc.org)
Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be
outdated or ideologically biased.
Warning! The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be
outdated or ideologically biased.

Ethics
the philosophical science that studies morality as a form of social consciousnessas a major
aspect of human activity and a specific sociohistorical phenomenon. Ethics illuminates the role
of morality in the context of other types of social relations; it analyzes the nature and internal
structure of morality, studies its origin and historical development, and provides theoretical
justification for one or another moral system.
In Eastern and classical thought, ethics was initially combined with philosophy and law; it had
the primarily practical function of moral instruction directed toward physical and mental health.
In the form of aphorisms, such moral instruction can be traced back to oral tradition, through
which late clan society had already firmly laid down how individual conduct in practice was to
benefit the social whole (that is, the community or tribe). Ethical propositions were derived
directly from the nature of the universe and of every living thing, including manthis being
connected with the cosmological character of Eastern and classical philosophy.
Characteristically, the defense of one system of morality and the condemnation of another (for
example, by Lao-Tzu in ancient China and Hesiod in ancient Greece) were based on the
opposition between the eternal law of nature and human enactments. Even the shifting of
focus to the spiritual world of the individual (as in the case of Buddha and Socrates) led not to
the isolation of ethics as an independent theory but rather to a moral conception of a
philosophical world doctrine as a whole.

Ethics was made into a separate discipline by Aristotle; it was Aristotle, in fact, who introduced
the term by using it in the titles of his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and the work
generally known as Magna Moralia. He placed ethics between the doctrine of the soul, or
psychology, and the doctrine of the state, or politics; ethics, based on the former, serves the latter,
inasmuch as its goal is to mold virtuous citizens of the state. Although the central issue in
Aristotles ethics was the doctrine of virtues, which he viewed as moral faculties of the
individual, his system already incorporated many of the eternal questions of ethicsfor
example, the nature and source of morality, freedom of the will, the foundations of the moral act,
justice, and the meaning of life and of the highest good.
The traditional division of philosophy into three branches logic, physics (including
metaphysics), and ethicsis derived from the Stoics. This division, continuing through the
Middle Ages, was adopted by Renaissance and 17th-century philosophy. It was also adopted by
I. Kant, who used it merely as a basis to differentiate between the studies of method, of nature,
and of freedom (or morality). Until modern times, however, ethics was frequently understood as
the science of mans nature and of the causes and goals of his actions in general; that is, it
coincided with philosophical anthropology (as, for example, in the works of the French
Enlightenment thinkers and D. Hume) or even merged with natural philosophy (as in the works
of J.-B. Robinet and B. Spinoza, whose principal work, Ethics, is concerned with substance and
its modes). This kind of expansion of the subject matter of ethics resulted from the interpretation
of its goals; ethics was called on to instruct man in right living on the basis of his own nature
(natural or divine). As a consequence, ethics combined the theory of mans being, the study of
the passions and affects of the psyche (or soul), and, at the same time, the doctrine of the ways to
attain the good life (that is, the general welfare, happiness, or salvation). Thus the underlying but
unacknowledged thesis of pre-Kantian ethics was the unity of that which is and that which ought
to be.
Kant criticized the combination of naturalistic and moral aspects of ethics. According to Kant,
ethics is only the science of what ought to be and not of that which is or that which is causally
conditioned; it should seek its foundations not in what isnot in nature and not in mans social
beingbut rather in the purely nonempirical postulates of reason. As a result of Kants attempt
to single out the specific subject matter of ethics (namely, that which ought to be), such questions
as moralitys origin and social conditionality were removed from the field of ethical
consideration. Nevertheless, practical philosophy (which was what Kant considered ethics to
be) proved incapable of resolving the problem of the practical implementation of ethically valid
principles in historical reality.
The Kantian formulation of the proper subject matter of ethics has won many adherents in 20thcentury bourgeois ethics. It should be noted that the positivists exclude normative ethics from the
sphere of scientific philosophical research, whereas the proponents of irrationalist ethics reject
the possibility of a general theory of normative ethics, considering the resolution of moral
problems to be the prerogative of the individual moral consciousness acting within the
framework of each inimitable life situation.
Marxist ethics identifies its subject by a fundamentally different method; it rejects the opposition
of the purely theoretical to the practical, inasmuch as all knowledge is merely an aspect of

mans objectively practical activity in mastering the world. The Marxist concept of ethics is a
many-sided one; it includes normative morality as well as historical, logical-cognitive,
sociological, and psychological aspects as organic elements of a unified whole. The subject
matter of Marxist ethics includes (1) the philosophical analysis of the nature, essence, structure,
and functions of morality, (2) normative ethics, which explores the criteria, principles, norms,
and categories of a given moral system (and which is also concerned with problems of
professional ethics), and (3) the historical development of moral training.
The principal problem in ethics has always been the question of the nature and origin of
morality; in the history of ethical doctrines, however, this was usually posed as a question of the
basic notions on which moral awareness of duty is foundeda question of the criteria of moral
judgments. Depending on what a given doctrine regards as the basis of morality, every ethical
doctrine in history may be assigned to one of two categories. The first includes the theories
whose moral injunctions are derived from the immediate reality of human existence, or mans
naturethe natural needs or strivings of people, their inborn feelings, or the facts of their lives,
considered as the self-evident and extrahistori-cal basis of morality. Such theories usually tend
toward biologic-anthropological determinism; they contain elements of materialism (as
exemplified by the ancient Greek materialists, Aristotle, Spinoza, Hobbes, the 18th-century
French materialists, utilitarianism, L. Feuerbach, and the Russian revolutionary democrats), but
frequently their predominant tendency is toward subjective idealism (as in the 17th- and 18thcentury English school of moral-sense theorists, including J. Butler, and in the modern
bourgeois ethics of J. Dewey, R. B. Perry, E. Westermarck, E. Durkheim, V. Pareto, and W.
Sumner).
The second category consists of theories in which the basis of morality is a certain unconditional
and extrahistorical principle that exists outside of man. This principle may be interpreted either
naturalistically (as in the case of the Stoics law of nature, the law of cosmic teleology, or the
theory of the evolution of organic life) or idealistically; examples of the latter interpretation are
Platos highest good, G. Hegels absolute idea, the divine law in Thomism and neo-Thomism,
Kants a priori moral law, and such simple and self-evident ideas or relations, not dependent on
the nature of the universe, as those of the Cambridge Platonists. A special category in the history
of ethics must be reserved for the authoritarian conceptions of morality, according to which
moral injunctions are solely based on some type of authorityeither personal or divine.
In contemporary bourgeois ethics the problem of the basis of morality is often presented as
altogether insoluble. In intuition-ism the basic moral concepts are regarded as unrelated to the
nature of everything real and hence as self-evident, unprovable, and irrefutable. The advocates of
neopositivism, juxtaposing facts and values, conclude that moral judgments cannot be
scientifically substantiated. The existentialists claim that the essence of man resists general
definition and therefore cannot serve as a basis for the formulation of any specific moral
principles. It is true, however, that in the ethical naturalism of the 1950s and 1960s (as
represented by A. Edel and R. Brandt in the USA, for example), which opposes irrationalism and
formalism in ethics, the bases of morality are derived from the demands of social life as well as
from the data of anthropology, ethnography, and sociological research.

In the history of ethical thought, the problem of the nature of morality is sometimes presented in
a different formthe question being whether moral activity is essentially purposeful, serving to
fulfill all kinds of practical goals and to achieve specific results, or whether it is entirely
purposeless, representing merely the implementation of a law and fulfilling the demands of some
abstract concept of duty that takes precedence over any kind of need or goal.
The same kind of choice was presented in the question of the relationship, in morality, between
the concepts of amoral good and moral dutywhether, that is, the demands of duty are based on
the attainable good (a point of view subscribed to by the overwhelming majority of ethical
philosophers) or whether, on the contrary, the very concept of the good should be defined and
substantiated on the basis of duty (a view held by Kant and by the English philosophers C. Broad
and A. Ewing). The first alternative usually led to a consequential ethics, whereby the choice
and evaluation of moral acts must depend on their practical results (for example, in hedonism,
eudaemonism, and utilitarianism). The moral problem was thus simplified; the motives of an
action and conformity to a general principle were regarded as unimportant.
The opponents of consequential ethics pointed out that what is of primary importance in morality
is the motive as well as the very act of implementing a law (Kant), and not the consequences.
What matters is the intention, striving, and application of effort rather than the result, which does
not always depend on man (W. D. Ross and E. F. Carritt of Great Britain). It is not the content of
an action that is important but rather the subjects relation to itfor example, the fact that the
choice is freely made (J.-P. Sartre) or that man is critical of his own moral actions and impulses,
no matter what they may be (K. Barth and E. Brunner).
Finally, the question of the nature of morality has often been formulated in the history of ethics
in terms of the very nature of moral activity and its relationship to all other types of everyday
human activity. From antiquity until our own times, two opposing ethical traditions can be traced
hedonist-eudaemonistic ethics and rigorist ethics. In the former the problem of the basis of
morality merges with the question of how moral requirements are to be fulfilled. Inasmuch as
morality here is derived from mans true nature and his daily needs, it is assumed that people
ultimately serve their own interests by carrying out the demands of morality. This tradition
reached its apogee with the concept of rational egoism.
In the history of antagonistic class society, however, the demands of morality were often found to
be in sharp conflict with the strivings of the individual. In the moral consciousness this was
reflected in the form of the age-old conflict between inclination and duty, or between practical
calculations and higher motives; in ethics, the conflict served as the basis of the second tradition,
which included the ethical concepts of Stoicism, Kantianism, Christianity, and the Eastern
religions. Those who adhere to this tradition consider it impossible to use mans nature as a
starting point; they regard morality as being in primordial opposition to peoples practical
interests and natural inclinations. It was this opposition that gave rise to the ascetic concept of
moral activity as stern selflessness and suppression by man of his own natural impulses, as well
as to the pessimistic evaluation of mans moral faculty.
On the level of philosophical theory, the idea that the fundamental principle of morality cannot
be derived from mans beingthat it cannot be found in the sphere of realityended with the

concept of an autonomous ethics, which in 20th-century bourgeois ethics has been expressed as
the denial of the socially expedient character of moral activity (for example, in existentialism and
in Protestant neoorthodoxy). A particularly difficult problem for non-Marxist ethics is that of the
relationship, in morality, between the universal and the specifically historical; the specific
content of moral requirements is understood either as something eternal and universal (ethical
absolutism) or as something that is merely private, relative, and transient (ethical relativism).
Supported by the previous course of development of ethical thought, Marxist ethics has raised
the materialist and humanist ethical traditions to a new stage by organically linking the objective
study of the laws of history to the recognition of mans real interests and of the vital rights
flowing therefrom. In the final analysis, Marxist ethics considers the basis of moralitymoral
ideas, goals, and aspirationsto lie in the objective laws that govern mankinds continuing
development.
Through its sociohistorical approach to morality, Marxist ethics has overcome the antithesis
between ethical relativism and absolutism. Any particular class morality expresses the position of
different social groups in the process of the social production and historical development of
culture, and ultimately it also reflects, in one way or another, the objective laws of history.
If the social attitudes of a given class are historically progressive, and especially if such
progressive attitudes represent the viewpoint of the toiling masseswho have personally
suffered under the yoke of exploitation, inequality, and violence and who therefore have an
objective interest in the establishment of more humane, equitable, and free relationsthen a
specific morality, while maintaining its class character, becomes part of universal human
morality and thus contributes to the moral progress of society as a whole. This is particularly
applicable to the revolutionary morality of the working class; the working class, as Marx pointed
out, proceeding from its particular situation, undertakes the general emancipation of society
(see K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 425) and was the first to set the goal of
abolishing classes altogether, thereby establishing a truly universal human morality. Thus it is
uniquely Marxist ethics, with its specifically historical approach to moral phenomena, that makes
it possible to understand the relationship between private or class views of morality and the
common laws governing the continuing development of morals; it is the Marxist approach that
reveals the common course of universal moral progress emerging from the conflictual
development of morality in class society.
The solution of moral questions is the proper province not only of the collective consciousness
but of the individual one as well; the moral authority of any given individual depends on his
correct realization of the general moral principles and ideals of society (or of a revolutionary
movement) and of the historical necessity reflected therein. It is, in fact, the objective foundation
of morality that allows the individual, independently and to the extent of his own awareness, to
apprehend and fulfill the demands of society, to make decisions, to work out his own rules for
living, and to evaluate events as they occur.
The problem that arises here is that of the relationship between freedom and necessity. The
correct definition of the general foundation of morality still does not signify that from such a
foundation one can simply derive specific moral norms and principles or that the individual will

spontaneously follow the historical tendency. Moral activity includes not only the
implementation of norms and principles but also the creation of new ones and the search for
ideals that are best suited to the times as well as ways in which such ideals can be realized.
The formulation of the question of moral criteria in Marxist ethics is similarly defined. Only in
the most general sense do the laws of historical development determine the content of moral
ideas; they do not predetermine the specific forms that such ideas will take. Inasmuch as in
morality every social activity that has a specific purpose is prescribed and evaluated from the
point of view of its conformity to a single law that holds equally for all men and for the mass of
individual situationsthat is, its conformity to a norm, principle, or ideal that is regarded as a
moral criterion properthis means not only that economic, political, ideological, and other
specific concerns do not predetermine the solution of each separate moral problem but that, on
the contrary, the means and methods of implementing such specific concerns are evaluated, in
morality, in terms of such criteria as what is good, just, humane, or honest.
The reason that these criteria are relatively independent is not that they flow from a different
source than do concrete social requirementsnot at all; the reason is that they reflect such
requirements in their most universal form and that they are concerned not simply with the
attainment of certain particular goals but with societys diverse requirements at any given stage
of its cultural development. Morality therefore sometimes forbids and condemns actions that
may be perceived as most efficient and expedient in terms of the current moment or from the
point of view of ones private concern over some specific issue.
When faced with this contradiction, non-Marxist ethical theorists usually tend toward a
pragmatically utilitarian treatment of moral criteria or else view the contradiction as reflecting
the age-old conflict between morality and expediencybetween morals and politics (or
economics). In reality, however, this contradiction is not an absolute one; rather, it is itself an
expression of specific sociohistorical contradictions.
In the course of social progress, and particularly in the course of revolutionary changes, it has
been found in every instance that the demands of social expediency, if viewed from the general
perspective of the continuing development of society, ultimately coincide with the criteria of
justice, liberty, and humaneness, as the moral consciousness of the masses expresses such
demands in their historical perspective and hence in their most universal form. The utilitarian and
opportunistic approach to the solution of specific problems not only contradicts the demands of
communist morality but also is politically shortsighted and inexpedient from the point of view of
broader and less immediate social goals and consequences.
With its concept of the indissoluble unity of what is moral and what concerns society as a whole,
Marxist ethics was able for the first time to resolve rationally the contradiction between morality
and politics, between ends and means, between practical needs and moral demands, between
social necessity and humane criteria, and between the general moral principle and private
expediency. The spirit of utilitarianism is just as alien to Marxist ethics as is the absolutely
moralizing point of view, which asserts the higher authority of moral judgments over the
objective necessity of the laws of history.

Marxist ethics has also resolved the traditionally problematic choice between the motive and the
act in evaluating moral activity. Mans moral conduct must always be evaluated as an integral act
that joins together the goal and its realization, or the thought and the deed. This, however, is
possible only if moral conduct is regarded as a private aspect of mans entire social activity. On
the one hand, the merit of an individual action is manifested only through its social usefulness or
harmfulness; on the other hand, the motives of actions, the goals that are pursued, and the given
subjects attitude toward society as a whole, toward different classes, and toward the people
surrounding him are discovered and made manifest by analyzing the entire course of conduct of
the individual (or, for that matter, of the social group or party).
By thus approaching the problem, Marxist ethics has succeeded in overcoming the traditional
opposition between external action, or action that is obvious to the observer, and internal
motive, which is regarded as inaccessible to othersthat is, as something about which other
people can have no reliable knowledge. In the evaluation of moral activity, the problematic
relationship between motive and action is interpreted as the connection between public and
private behaviorbetween individual action and moral activity in its entirety.
Marxist ethics also goes beyond certain other traditional moral alternativesnamely, the choice
between hedonism and asceticism, between egoism and altruism, and between the morality of
spontaneous aspiration and the rigorist morality of duty. By disclosing the sources of these
alternatives, which can be found in the contradictory nature of the antagonistic society and in its
conflicting interests, Marxist ethics poses this question not on the plane of moralistic preaching
on behalf of a life of pleasure or in favor of asceticism but rather on the sociohistorical plane,
thereby removing, in practice, any kind of absolute or universal opposition between them.
Communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness to egoism, nor do they express
this contradiction theoretically, either in its sentimental or in its high-flown ideological form.
They rather demonstrate its material source; when the source disappears, the contradiction
disappears by itself (ibid., vol. 3, p. 236).
The choice between carrying out an external obligation and fulfilling an internal demand must
always depend on the solution of a different problemnamely, the problem of finding the most
appropriate ways, in each particular instance, to combine social and personal interests so that the
historical prospect of achieving their ultimate union may be made apparent. Progress toward this
goal is, in fact, what gives moral justification to self-sacrifice, which is found to be necessary in
situations of conflict and crisis. Such is the path toward the scientific Marxist solution to the
problem of humanism.
Thus, the solution of these problems in Marxist ethics does not lie in the purely theoretical
elimination of past errors in ethical thought. Unlike all previous and contemporary bourgeois
ethics, which proceed from the ascertainment of existing relations and contradictions (these
being either justified by apologia or simply condemned), Marxist ethics is based on the historical
necessity of overcoming these contradictions; this, in fact, is what defines the effectively
practical nature of Marxist ethics.
Within the system of categories of Marxist ethics, morality is restructured as an integrated social
formation that has multiple aspects and elements. It is a system based on the categories of moral

activity, moral relationships, and moral consciousness; these categories reflect the three
fundamental aspects of moralitynamely, the content of morally prescribed and evaluated
actions and their moral motivation; the method used by morality to regulate such activity, this
method being expressed in the totality of social ties that direct and control individual and group
behavior; and finally the ideal reflection of activity and of moral relationships in consciousness,
together with their specific moral grounds.
The category of moral activity includes the following elements: the structure of an individual act
and its component factors (motive, inducement, intent, choice, decision, action, ends, means, and
consequences), the general course of the individuals conduct (including moral customs, habits,
inclinations, convictions, and feelings), and the norms of behavior and social mores that in their
aggregate constitute the moral way of life of society as a whole.
By analyzing the structure of moral relationships and moral consciousness, one can establish the
connections between such categories as moral requirement, obligation, duty, responsibility,
dignity, and consciencewhich reflect the various forms of the relationship between the
individual and societyas well as the interrelationship of such categories as norm, moral quality,
evaluation, moral principle, social and moral ideals, good and evil, justice, the meaning of life,
mans purpose, and human happinesswhich make up the logical framework of any system of
morality and whose content is constantly changing.
Although Marxist scholars may differ in their definition of the specific functions of morality and
in the determination of their number, most consider moralitys most important functions to be the
regulative (in its specific evaluative-imperative form), the cognitive-orientational, and the
educational function.
The 1960s and 1970s saw a significant increase in the number of Marxist studies devoted to
questions of ethics and morality, including Marxist ethics as a whole and various individual
issues within it, the elucidation of the humanistic meaning of communist morality, the moral
aspects of communist upbringing, and critiques of contemporary bourgeois morality and ethics.
The practical significance of ethics for the solution of the social problems of modern times and,
in particular, for solving the problem of molding a fully developed personality can be realized
only through its close interaction with other sciencesspecifically, sociology, psychology, the
theory of social upbringing, pedagogy, and aesthetics, which pose a number of questions that are
coterminous with various ethical problems.

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The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All
rights reserved.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All
rights reserved.
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