Final answer:
Morality refers to the social phenomenon of the shared understanding of right and wrong, influenced by culture, religion, and society, while ethics is the systematic study of moral principles and theories. Ethics delves into questions about the nature of morality, including its origins, universality, and relationship to divinity and religious belief.
Step-by-step explanation:
The concepts of morality and ethics are often used interchangeably, but there are important distinctions between them. Morality refers to the social phenomenon of shared rules, understandings, and judgments about right and wrong behavior. It is a code of conduct that guides what people ought to do in various situations and is influenced by cultural, religious, and societal norms. In contrast, ethics is the systematic study of morality, including theoretical analysis and the application of moral principles. Ethics examines such questions as the origins of moral values, the nature of moral judgments, whether there are universal moral truths, and the relation between morality and religion.
Furthermore, ethics is broken down into subfields like metaethics, which explores foundational theoretical questions about moral reasoning and language, normative ethics, which studies moral standards and how they should be applied, and applied ethics, which deals with the practical implications of ethical principles in various fields of human activity.
When considering the relationship between ethics and divinity, some argue that ethical principles are an expression of divine authority, while others maintain that ethics can be understood separately from any religious context, highlighting the psychological and cultural components of moral behavior. The study of virtue ethics is an example of how the discussion on morality and ethics can also touch on the development of good character traits or habits rather than solely focusing on the rules or outcomes of actions.