N Normative Ethics Andrew B. Gustafson Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA Synonyms Moral philosophy; Moral principles; Rules of conduct Introduction Ethics are the principles guiding one’ s moral behavior. Ethics is also the study of these princi- ples – namely, what is good, and which actions are right or wrong. Normative ethics is concerned with what people ideally ought to do (Kagan 1997). Typically it is thought that people ought to do the right thing, and ought not to do the wrong thing. People should be good, not bad. People ought (or ought not) to do certain things and when such claims are made, they set forth norms of behavior – the way things ought to be. Ethical behavior is not always common, and this is why it is frequently said that it is difficult to do the right thing. Normative ethics also play an important role in providing moral justification for one’ s own behavior. One may ask, “why did you make this decision?” and what is being asked is “what is your moral justification for doing this? – why did you think this was the right thing to do?” and in asking this, one is asking them to provide a moral justification for their action. The goal is to know which normative ethical principles were underlying their deciding to do this instead of something else. If they say “I was just tired” that is not a moral reason (although it is a reason of sorts). A moral reason is what is sought – and it is best to see a moral reason which can demonstrate that they did what someone did makes sense in terms of an understandable normative ethic, so one can see why they thought they ought to have done what they did. So this is what normative ethics tries to discover – how one ought to live, behave, and act in the world. First, consideration will be given to some of the typical ways by which normative ethics are fre- quently established, but first, to help clarify what normative ethics is, one should be clear about what is not normative ethics. What Normative Ethics Is Not Descriptive Ethics: There are studies of behavior – ethical behavior – which tell us what people do, or tend to do. Such studies are not normative, but rather descriptive. Of course one can describe what sorts of principles guide someone’ s behav- ior, for example “Sally is always selfish” or “it’ s hard for John to tell the truth – he is a natural liar” and in those cases again one is providing descrip- tions of people’ s ethics. This is descriptive ethics. Descriptive ethics tells us how people do behave © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. C. Poff, A. C. Michalos (eds.), Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1222-1