Descriptive ethics, also known as comparative ethics, is the study of people's beliefs about morality. It contrasts with prescriptive or normative ethics, which is the study of ethical theories that prescribe how people ought to act, and with meta-ethics, which is the study of what ethical terms and theories actually refer to. The following examples of questions that might be considered in each field illustrate the differences between the fields:
- Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right?
- Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act?
- Applied ethics: How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice?
- Meta-ethics: What does 'right' even mean?
Read more about Descriptive Ethics: What Are Descriptive Ethics?, Lawrence Kohlberg: An Example of Descriptive Ethics, Descriptive Ethics and Relativism
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“Ethics and religion differ herein; that the one is the system of human duties commencing from man; the other, from God. Religion includes the personality of God; Ethics does not.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)