The relationship between ethics (theory) and morality (practice)

Abstract

If a study is made of ethics in Western thought, a structure in moral theories as they have been constituted throughout the centuries in terms of changing, variabie conditions of life, manis contingent life-experience, the universal experience of all men, will emerge. This structure, which illustrates the relationship between ethics (theory) and morality (practice), may be said to find its clear articulation for the first time in Plato's and Aristotle's ethics in terms of the triad; moral ground or moral incentive. The specific conflict-experience from which the practical need for a moral theory on the grounds of the given contextual conditions of life arises; the moral norm indicated by the specific moral theory constituted, by which manis action can be judged good or evil, morally right or wrong. In other words, the moral norm facilitates moral judgement, and the practical moral act, the act that is performed in observation of the moral norm.