The Archive

Here follows a glossary of key terms and of potentially unknown words used in the articles displayed on this site. Selected entries will link to articles detailing the term in more detail.

Agape - the asexual love of God or Christ for mankind, or the asexual love of Christians for others.
Commandment - generally refers to one of the Ten Commandments, but may also refer to one of the 613 Mitzvot.
Conscience - the moral sense of right and wrong, chiefly as it affects one's own behaviour.
Consequentialism - the belief that consequences form the basis for any valid moral judgement about an action. From a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence.
Conventionalism - the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality.
Deontology - an approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining acts.
Eudaimonia - a classical Greek word commonly translated as 'happiness' that refers to the greatest good for an individual human being: a state of excellence characterized by objective flourishing across a lifetime, and brought about through the exercise of moral virtue, practical wisdom, and rationality.
Fundamentalism - a term referring to a belief in a strict adherence to a set of basic principles (often religious in nature), sometimes as a reaction to perceived doctrinal compromises with modern social and political life.
Golden Rule - an ethical code that states one has a right to just treatment, and a responsibility to ensure justice for others; also known as the ethic of reciprocity.
Just War - a doctrine of military ethics that holds that a conflict can and ought to meet the criteria of philosophical, religious or political justice, provided it follows certain conditions.
Kingdom of God - a concept of heaven as a hierarchical dominion with God at the top and a court of saints, archangels and angels.
Morality - in this context, simply a synonym for the word 'ethics'.
Natural Law - an ethical theory that posits the existence of a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere.
Sin - a violation of a moral or religious law. See here.
Situation ethics - a Christian ethical theory that states that sometimes other moral principles can be cast aside in certain situations if love is best served, as proposed by Joseph Fletcher.
Teleology - an approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining the results of acts.
Thomism - the philosophical school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas.
Virtue theory - an approach to ethics which emphasizes the character of the moral agent, rather than rules or consequences.