Normative ethics, Meta-ethics and applied ethics (medical, business, engineering, legal ethics etc) are all branches of the discipline called ethics , which is in turn a branch of the discipline call philosophy .
“Philosophy” derives from the Greek words for love ( philo ) and wisdom ( sophia ). For the ancient Greeks, “philosophy” was love of wisdom. But while this might give us the beginning of an idea of what philosophers do today, we need to get more specific to really understand what modern philosophy is.
[Caveat: not all modern philosophers would agree with the following explanation of philosophy. Interestingly, the nature of philosophy is itself a controversial issue among philosophers.]
Philosophy is an area of inquiry .
Inquiry is an attempt to discover truths about the world.
In this way, philosophy is like the sciences, historical research, investigative journalism and detective work. But philosophy is different than these other areas of
Professional ethics encompass the personal and corporate standards of behavior expected by professionals.