Ideal (ethics)
An ideal is a principle or value that one actively pursues as a goal. Ideals are particularly important in ethics, as the order in which one places them tends to determine the degree to which one reveals them as real and sincere. It is the application, in ethics, of a universal. It is roughly similar to the relative intrinsic values.
Someone who claims to have an ideal of honesty but is willing to lie to protect a friend is demonstrating that not only does he hold friendship as an ideal, but, that it is a more important one than honesty. Thus ideals can be seen to be similar to values.
However, the -ism of ideals is slightly contrasted with idealism (which is the doctrine that ideas, or thought, make up either the whole or an indispensable aspect of any full reality, so that a world of material objects containing no thought either could not exist as it is experienced, or would not be fully "real.")
Read more about Ideal (ethics): In Applied Ethics, In Politics, Idols and Heroes, Ideal and Virtue, Relative Ideal
Famous quotes containing the word ideal:
“But I must needs take my petulance, contrasting it with my accustomed morning hopefulness, as a sign of the ageing of appetite, of a decay in the very capacity of enjoyment. We need some imaginative stimulus, some not impossible ideal which may shape vague hope, and transform it into effective desire, to carry us year after year, without disgust, through the routine- work which is so large a part of life.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)