Systems of

ristian ethics?patristic and scholastic. 4. Modern ethics?English, French, German, American, including various schools and writers to the present time. chapter{Section 4Chapter II THE SPHERE OF ETHICS TTTHICS: a normative science.?Ethics is called a -?' normative science because it exhibits the norms, or types, of right conduct, and lays down the laws or rules of action in reference to an ultimate or ideal end, called the highest good, or the summum bonum. In this respect, ethics differs from those other sciences which treat of facts, their relations and laws, without special reference to their application, which is left to the corresponding practical arts. The principles of ethics have direct relation to practice by keeping the ends of conduct?happiness and perfection? continually in view. In giving the ideal of moral life, ethics teaches us what to be and to do. Though not strictly the art of living, yet ethics is the philosophy of the art of living. It is the theory of right and wrong willing and doing. It seeks also to cultivate right states of the sensibility and to establish right moral purposes. It aims at the perfection of character and the attainment of the highest happiness for self and others. 2. Ethics: theoretical, practical, and historical.?Ethics is theoretical when dealing with the principles relating to the moral constitution of man, his relation to the moral universe and to the laws of nature, as they...