Ethics (from the Ancient Greek "ethikos", meaning "arising from habit"), a major branch of philosophy, is the study of value or quality. It covers the analysis and employment of concepts such as right, wrong, good, evil, justice and responsibility.

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• The most optimistic ethics have all begun by emphasizing the element of failure involved in the condition of man; without failure, no ethics; for a being who, from the very start, would be an exact co-incidence with himself, in a perfect plenitude, the notion of having-to-be would have no meaning. One does not offer an ethics to a God. It is impossible to propose any to man if one defines him as nature, as something given. The so-called psychological or empirical ethics manage to establish themselves only by introducing surreptitiously some flaw within the manthing which they have first defined.
  • Simone de Beauvoir, in The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)

• Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
  • Jean Cocteau, in Diary of an Unknown (1988)

• Strong ethics keep corporations healthy. Poor ethics make companies sick. Values are the immune system of every organisation.
  • Patrick Dixon, in Building a Better Business (2005), p. 131

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Thu Feb 4 05:03:59 2010