Ethics: The Missing Manual
To answer this particular question, I advocate using your Weird Idea Radar, constantly saying yes to new experiences until you stumble upon something that you can really sink your teeth into.
But equally important is a tool with which to measure the value of your experiences, an instrument that will not only give you readings of “Bad”, “Good”, “Better”, and “Best” but that also explains why this is so. That instrument is ethics.
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that illuminates the path to right action. It is not just about determining which actions which should be legal or illegal; any evaluation of bad, good, better, and best, whether on a personal, social, or societal level falls within the concern of ethics.
If your moral code is based on Marxist ideas, your life goals are going to be completely different from someone whose moral code is derived from Objectivism. Likewise, a hedonist’s ethics will result in a completely different day-to-day experience compared to someone whose moral guide is the Bible.
And here’s the thing: not all moral codes are created equal. If your moral code is broken, it doesn’t matter how you answer the goals question, because the answer will always point you in the wrong direction.
Ethics is the primary deliverable of philosophy. The rest-metaphysics (the nature of reality), epistemology (the nature of knowledge), and esthetics (the nature of beauty)-is interesting only because it all lays the groundwork for understanding how to conduct our lives.
And while an entire book on ethics is at the core of most contributions of those we consider great philosophers-Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
In most cases, it is conspicuously ignored.
Excerpt from Why you should study Philosophy,
