National Ethics Awareness Month – March 2025

History of National Ethics Awareness Month

The study of ethics, which also includes the fundamental issues of practical decision-making, is concerned with the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human acts can be regarded as right or bad. Many people claim that there are no moral universals and that because cultures differ so greatly, no single moral principle or judgment can be accepted universally. This is not the case, however. Sure, there are significant differences in how the general principles articulated are put into practice. Children’s responsibilities to their parents, for example, are one thing in ancient Chinese cultures but quite another in modern Western countries. Concern for kin and reciprocity, on the other hand, are generally valued in practically all human cultures.

It’s tough to establish the exact year and location when it comes to the origin of ethics. The original ethical principles must have been passed down through the generations by word of mouth from parents and elders, but as civilizations learned to write, they began to record their ethical ideas. A collection of lists of precepts to be taught by youths of Egypt’s ruling elite, compiled approximately 3,000 years before the Christian Era, are the earliest surviving documents that may be considered ethics textbooks. They frequently contain sound advice about how to live peacefully, avoid unneeded problems, and succeed in one’s vocation by earning the respect of authorities. Several passages, on the other hand, advocate for more generally based principles of behavior that were more appropriate for the time, such as the following: rulers should treat their subjects fairly and evaluate them impartially.

Then came normative ethics, which intended to establish guidelines or standards for behavior. This refers to the discussion of norms about what one should do, which has been a key aspect of Western ethics throughout history. Since the mid-1960s, the most notable trend in the study of ethics has been the rise in interest among philosophers in practical, or applied, ethics — that is, the application of normative ethical theories to real-world situations.

Modern-day ethics revolve around normative ethics and their application in settings such as workplaces. National Ethics Awareness Month encourages companies and people to look at their code of ethics and what they can do to be fairer and just in their application.