Ethics and morality are two of the most important components of human life. Living in society makes us create norms about what is right and wrong, good and bad, to govern our own lives and try to have the people around us follow the same rules of the game.

However, in this aspect it is easy to get confused with the concepts related to our way of understanding good and evil, since these are very abstract concepts. For this reason, we will now see what the differences between moral, amoral and immoral consist of, elements linked to each other that tell us about the degree to which certain behaviors are desirable or not.

Differences between moral, amoral and immoral

While sometimes a strongly held scale of ethical values or a series of religious dogmas will cause almost everyone in a community to have a similar conception of what is good and what is bad, there are always exceptions. For example, when someone guides their life based on values that are very different from those followed by others, it is easy to be branded as immoral or amoral indiscriminately and, therefore, often incorrectly.

To clarify this, it is good that we first define what we mean by moral, immoral and amoral and then go deeper into their differences.

Morality is the set of rules that establish what is right and what is wrong , not in an aesthetic or functional sense, but in an ethical one. For example, in Western society it is assumed that killing children is always wrong, and that helping the disadvantaged by providing them with basic necessities is right.

On the other hand the immoral is, in short, that which goes against morality, while the amoral is that which is outside of it .

Let us now look at the differences between these concepts.

1. Morality and immorality can be relative, amorality cannot

In philosophy and in all the fields of knowledge that hang from this area, there is much discussion about whether the rules of morality are relative or whether they are universal (and there was even more discussion about this in the past). That is, it is possible that moral rules and what constitutes a violation of the idea of good do not exist as a separate entity from our expectations and social constructions in general, in the same way that money only exists because we have agreed to it.

The amoral, on the other hand, cannot be relative , because by definition it is what remains when there is no morality.

2. Morality and immorality depend on abstract thought

To create behavioural norms it is necessary to have the ability to think abstractly, that is, to think about concepts that group together characteristics and properties that cannot be isolated in nature (the way in which a vegetable can be isolated from the rest of the garden).

For example, aggressiveness is not something tangible, but it can be found in the behavior of many animals or, if we use a greater degree of abstraction, even in some climatic phenomena, landscapes, works of art, etc.

The amoral, on the other hand, exists independently of whether there is a way of thinking based on the abstract and on semantics, because it is the option that is given “by default” in nature. On a planet inhabited only by beings incapable of using language and creating norms of behaviour, amorality.

3. Amorality is useless, the other two are

As we have seen, the amoral exists without the need for minds with the capacity for abstract thinking to appear on the scene. Therefore, it does not pursue any purpose, in the same way that the waves of the sea are not there because they are useful to someone.

Morality and immorality do exist because they fulfill a function . Specifically, they act as a glue that holds society together, allowing networks of relationships between individuals to exist.

4. Moral is desirable, immoral and amoral is not

Morality is almost always built by more than one individual, and the same is true of the immoral. This means that morality is always referred to as something to be aspired to; after all, because there are people who respect it, society exists as such. In the same way, the immoral and the amoral, being elements that are not moral despite belonging to the same sphere of knowledge (the definition of what is good and what is bad) are conceived as the undesirable, that which must be avoided .

5. Morality and immorality define each other

Implicit in moral rules is that which is immoral . For example, if according to a religion it is said that eating turkey meat together with dairy products is forbidden, the moral thing is not to mix these foods, while the immoral thing is to do so.

The amoral, on the other hand, does not belong to the domain of morality, and therefore there is nothing in the latter that tells us what is amoral. A living being can avoid eating turkey meat together with dairy products because of the demands of its biology, without following moral rules.