Abstract

In scientific ethics which is equivalent to the theory of human action analysed in terms of the value of goodness, researches tend to follow different directions depending on how its principal problems are solved. Thus, as regards the scope of procedure of ethical research, we can distinguish between individual and social ethics. The question about the source of morality is the point of departure of heteronomic and autonomous ethics. Different answers to the question about the ethical emotionalism or intellectualism, with ethical rigorism as one of its variants. The answers to the problems involved in the ethical criterion, as far as its concerned, lead either to teleological or ateleological or nomical ethics. If it is thought necessary to justify some ethical criterion, the justifications tend either in the direction of ethical criterion is answered either in terms of absolutist or relativists ethics. Metascientific analyses of the cognitive status of ethics in turn provide the points for debates between those advocating the scientific nature of moral axiology and normative ethics and the followers of descriptive ethics.