Normative ethics is primarily concerned with ...

Normative ethics is primarily concerned with ...

• A. What people ought to do
• B. The meaning of ethical systems
• C. The analysis of professional ethics
• D. Descriptive accounts of behavior

Answer: (A)

Normative ethics asks what people ought to do, providing standards for right and wrong actions and the reasons that justify them. It seeks prescriptive guidance—principles, duties, and virtues that tell us how we ought to act in various situations. This focus on action guidance distinguishes it from descriptive accounts, which describe how people actually behave without judging it, and from meta-ethical studies that analyze the meanings and justification of moral terms. While professional ethics can be normative in nature, normative ethics as a whole is about determining the norms that should govern conduct rather than merely describing or interpreting ethical systems. So the core concern is identifying what we ought to do.

Normative ethics asks what people ought to do, providing standards for right and wrong actions and the reasons that justify them. It seeks prescriptive guidance—principles, duties, and virtues that tell us how we ought to act in various situations. This focus on action guidance distinguishes it from descriptive accounts, which describe how people actually behave without judging it, and from meta-ethical studies that analyze the meanings and justification of moral terms. While professional ethics can be normative in nature, normative ethics as a whole is about determining the norms that should govern conduct rather than merely describing or interpreting ethical systems. So the core concern is identifying what we ought to do.