Normative ethics

Normative ethics is the study of ethical behaviour and is the branch of philosophical ethics that investigates questions regarding how one ought to act, in a moral sense. Normative ethics is distinct from metaethics in that normative ethics examines standards for the rightness and wrongness of actions, whereas meta-ethics studies the meaning of moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts. Likewise, normative ethics is distinct from applied ethics in that normative ethics is more concerned with "what ought one be" rather than the ethics of a specific issue (e.g. if, or when, abortion is acceptable). Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptive ethics, as descriptive ethics is an empirical investigation of people's moral beliefs. In this context normative ethics is sometimes called prescriptive (as opposed to descriptive) ethics. However, on certain versions of the view of moral realism, moral facts are both descriptive and prescriptive at the same time. Most traditional moral theories rest on principles that determine whether an action is right or wrong. Classical theories in this vein include utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and some forms of contractarianism. These theories mainly offered the use of overarching moral principles to resolve difficult moral decisions.