Two concepts underwrite the study of the rightness and wrongness of human behaviour:  ethics and morality.  Though often used interchangeably to refer to correct moral behaviour and the values on which this is based, each term can also be employed in a more specific sense.  Morality tends to refer to the rightness and wrongness of certain behaviours and focuses on the individual in practice – the term is derived from the Latin word moralis (relating to manners and customs). The word ethics comes from the Latin term ethicus and is often used to refer more specifically to the values, systems and concepts that lie behind what is considered moral behaviour.  Albeit, in practice, theorists vary in their definitions of terms.

Ethics ultimately encompasses the study of human motivation, as all human actions involve a moral dimension.  Incumbent upon this is the realization that anything which affects moral decision --making it the subject matter of ethics.  In an attempt to make this complex reality more intelligible, ethicists create models  of  axiology (the study of values in general – from the Greek axio, meaning worthy).  

It is not surprising that religion has had a big impact on the discipline of ethics. Most people through history have at least in part defined themselves and their actions on religious grounds.  However, this is not exclusively so.  The nineteenth century German Economist and Sociologist Max Weber, for example, developed a biological model of moral determinism.   He believed that what passed for morality was the product of groups and individuals negotiating in an attempt to meet basic human needs – these being:  security, shelter, food and water, clothing and self-realization.  For Weber, God was a human invention created to help achieve these objectives.  

From this dichotomy flows one of the key debates in contemporary ethics.  If ethics and morality are concerned with what one ought to do, there must be an ultimate source of moral authority.  If however people are driven only by biological determinism and self-interest and there is no ultimate source of moral authority, then it can be argued that ethics and morality do not exist.    Therefore, ethical systems which do not address the fundamental issue of  the source of  “rightness” and “wrongness”  are problematic when it comes to their classification as ethical systems.

Many factors affect the creation of an ethical system; indeed, ethical systems are part of our everyday lives.