# Ethics — Branch of Philosophy Ethics studies what we ought to do and what kind of people we ought to be. Its three classical families are virtue ethics (Aristotle: cultivate good character), deontology ([[Immanuel Kant]]: follow universalizable duties), and consequentialism (judge acts by outcomes). ## Why it matters for this KB Almost every right-wing moral argument is, structurally, a stand in one of these camps. The post-liberal revival led by [[Alasdair MacIntyre]] (*[[After Virtue]]*) and routed through [[Thomas Aquinas]] is an explicit return to Aristotelian virtue ethics and [[Natural Law]] against what it calls modern "emotivism." At the opposite pole, the [[Nietzscheanism]] strand on the dissident right rejects universal morality outright as "slave morality," prizing strength and hierarchy. [[Stoicism]] supplies the manosphere's self-mastery ethic. The abortion, sexuality, and bioethics fights are downstream of these foundational disagreements about the source and objectivity of moral value. ## What morality is *for* The three classical families all answer *what should I do?* A fourth line of argument, associated here with [[Moshe Halbertal]], asks the prior question — what is the moral faculty correcting? — and answers: the structural bias built into having a self. Each of us occupies a viewpoint from which our own interests arrive pre-weighted, and morality is the discipline of subtracting that unearned weight rather than adding a rule. See [[Self-Transcendence]]. This reframing does specific work for this knowledge base. It supplies a test that cuts across ideology (does the argument survive deleting the speaker's position in it?), and it explains a pattern the standard families cannot: why movements built on genuine selflessness produce worse outcomes than movements built on greed. If self-transcendence is the engine, then a misdirected engine is the real danger — the analysis at [[Sacrifice and Political Violence]] and [[Political Idolatry]]. The moral-psychology literature the vault also carries — [[Moral Foundations Theory]] on which intuitions fire for whom, [[Moral Disengagement]] on how the moral sense gets switched off — sits downstream of this question rather than answering it. ## Relationship to other branches Ethics overlaps [[Political Philosophy]] (justice is the ethics of institutions) and rests on [[Metaphysics]] wherever it appeals to human nature or God. See the [[Philosophy]] hub.