1. Moral philosophy (ethics)as a branch of philosophy (The subject-matter of moral philosophy) Moral philosophy (ethics) is a branch of philosophy from the very beginning of philosophy considered it a part of practical philosophy. First of all, we must distinguish between morality as such and knowledge on morality. Philosophers do not create (invent) morality philosophers create theories (knowledge)of morality. Morality exists before any That's why in philosophy we distinguish "ethics" and "morality". Morality (from the Latin moralis, meaning "manner, character, proper behavior") is a system of norms of behavior that develops in society. The word "ethics" is derived from the Greek "ethos ", meaning "custom" or "habit ". Ethics denotes the theory.the knowledge of good,while morality indicates its practice. Secondly, we must distinguish between scientific knowledge on morality and non-scientific knowledge on morality. Non-scientific knowledge on morality includes (1) practical, ordinary ,(2) mythological, and (3)religious types of knowledge on morality. In the process of social life, people have certain ideas about morally acceptable or unacceptable. In this case, the moral norms themselves are considerec eternally existing. The question of their origin is almost not put. This is how ordinary knowledge of morality develops. Roughly speaking , people know what is moral and what is not, but they do not ask why something is moral , and something is not and so on. Religion proclaims the sacred character of moral norms, asserts that they are given to people from above. Religious texts give a certain justification for moral behavior. The philosophy of morality (ethics) arises as a rational knowledge on morality. In other words, it arises when thinkers begin to make attempts to prove the existence of objective grounds for morality and to deduce them in a rational way. The first such attempt was made by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, and that's why he is considered the founder of the science of morality - ethics. One of the greatest ethical treatises in the history of philosophical thought belongs to Dutch thinker B. Spinoza, and is called Ethics in Geometrical Order.Explaining this name, he wrote: "My reason for my procedure is this:nothing that happens in Nature can be attributed to any defect in it; for Nature is always the same - the laws and rules of Nature that govern all events are the same at every place and every time, which is to say that Nature 's excellence and power of acting are everywhere the same. So our 39 way of understanding the nature of anything, no matter what it is must also be uniform; specifically, it must be through the universal laws and rules of Nature. () So I shall treat the nature and powers of the affects, and the power of the mind over them, (...) in the way I would approach questions about lines, planes, and bodies." Third, ethics arise as an integral part of philosophy. However, with the development of scientific knowledge, morality becomes the subject of other sciences. Therefore, it is necessary to determine what moral problems are related to philosophy. There are applied ethics , descriptive ethics,normative (prescriptive)ethics, meta- ethics. Applied ethics studies how people of a given profession must act in concrete situations. For example , must a physician say to an ill man that he is seriously ill? There are many applied ethics: medical ethics , bioethics, social worker ethics. political ethics, sports ethics media ethics, etC. It is clear that many of the problems which are studied in these areas of ethics are not philosophical. Descriptive ethics answers the questions, how people in a given society act, what do they consider good or bad, right or wrong? Such an approach to morality takes place, for example,in the studies of anthropologists. Descriptive ethics uses "morality" to refer to a code of conduct that exists in different societies. Descriptive ethics denies the existence of universal codes of conduct, denies that there is any universal normative morality and claims that the actual moralities of societies are the only moralities there are. Normative (or prescriptive)ethics answers the question, how people must conduct themselves. For example, it says that a murder is bad. Meta-ethics (or analytic ethics)analyzes ethical language and the rational foundations of ethical systems. For example, it asks: "What does "good 'mean?" It can be concluded that only normative (prescriptive)ethics and meta-ethics are "purely" philosophical sections. And so, we can give the following definition: Moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature and foundations of morality.